[CatherineTorpey]

Hello!

***We go back to Standard Time for Sunday – clocks go one hour backward.***

I will continue to post these notes here on the portal, but for those who have requested it, I’m also now emailing them as well. If you’re on both lists, you might get the notifications twice in your email.

Rev. Jacqui will be preaching on “Repair, Rebuild, Reclaim and Restore with Fierce Love.” Her text is Isaiah 58.1–12.

Isaiah was a prophet from the time before Israel was conquered by Assyria and then Babylon. So, he lived in the 8th century before Christ, and he died before Israel went into exile. However, that Isaiah only wrote the first 39 chapters of our book of Isaiah. The later chapters were written by “Second Isaiah,” – someone writing in Isaiah’s name a couple of hundred years later, after the Exile which was forced upon the people of Israel/Judah by Babylon.

Because the “real” Isaiah wrote before the destruction, he writes chapters 1-39 with warnings of “you better get your act together to avert the coming destruction.” Our chapter today, written by Second Isaiah, is written after the people have been defeated and traumatized, and so the message is one of hope and comfort rather than warning.

The Book of Isaiah’s promise of a new Jerusalem and a new kind of ruler sent from God gave rise to Jewish understandings of the “Messiah,” which is Hebrew for “Anointed One,” which in Greek is “Christ.” Isaiah is one the most quoted book in the New Testament, other than the book of Psalms.

This chapter of Isaiah contrasts true worship with a “just going through the motions” kind of worship. For that reason, it is chanted in the morning worship of the most sacred day in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).

You seem to like these YouTube videos I find, so here’s a good one. I find this channel’s videos to be excellent. From what I know about the folks behind it, they are faithful Christians, but not fundamentalist and not anti-historical in their approach. I have not done a “deep dive,” so I can’t promise that they are totally unproblematic, but this video about Second Isaiah is very well done: https://youtu.be/_TzdEPuqgQg

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