A few weeks ago, I brought my work computer home for Nick to take a look at. It’d been running sluggishly for a while, but it was getting to where I wasn’t even able to get my work done anymore. At some point, its performance had gone from being an annoying inconvenience to being an active hindrance. I'd tried all the tricks I knew to help speed it up a bit – largely by uninstalling programs and deleting unused files – but nothing had made even the slightest bit of difference. So, I decided that it was time to bring in my own personal in-house expert. I didn't love what he had to tell me, though. “I have some newer parts I can install,” he explained, “but even then, the bulk of the problem is probably being caused by stuff that’s already in there and hard to get rid of. Your best chance of fixing it is to do a factory reset.”
Has anyone here ever had to reset their computer to its factory settings? Nobody likes it. It takes time to get a computer set up exactly the way you want it, with all your login information saved and all your software downloaded, and a factory reset means losing all of that and having to start over again. Those who don’t have the foresight to marry tech support like I did sometimes spend hundreds of dollars trying to figure out a way to avoid this worst-case scenario. But the fact is that after a while, all computers get bogged down with so much junk – not even necessarily viruses or malware; just clutter – that not even an expert can “fix it”. Your only options are to give up and buy a completely new machine or start over again from scratch.
In today’s scripture reading, the kingdom of Israel has been heading towards a factory reset for a long time. Even before agreeing to anoint Saul as their king, God had warned them on no uncertain terms that a human monarchy would inevitably go bad: “[Your king] will take your sons and…use them as his commanders of troops…or to do his plowing and his harvesting, or to make his weapons or parts for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, or bakers. He will take your best fields, vineyards, and olive groves and give them to his servants…He will take your male and female servants, along with the best of your cattle and donkeys, and make them do his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and then you yourselves will become his slaves!” [1 Samuel 8:10-17, CEB] By Isaiah’s time, all of this had come true, and then some.
While God remained faithful to Israel despite their stubborn choice, the monarchy was never going to last indefinitely. Evil kings rose and fell, relatively good kings took their place, yet very little of the bigger picture ever changed. Just as God had warned, the system wasn’t sustainable, especially as it became more and more deeply entrenched, as more and more flawed human beings had a hand in shaping it. Isaiah’s call narrative in chapter 6 is a sort of turning point for Israel’s monarchy: although the southern kingdom of Judah would last for over 100 more years, this marked the point of no return. Everything was going to fall apart, and there was nothing – no sudden epiphany or genuine repentance – that could stop it. Isaiah wasn’t tasked with convincing the people to change; he was instructed to prepare them for what was now inevitable.
Now, this SOUNDS like a punishment, and many who read Scripture interpret it that way. But personally, I don’t see that as what’s happening here. If God wanted to punish Israel, the kingdom would have collapsed far earlier it ultimately did. God had plenty of excuses to rain down wrath upon them before the Babylonians finally invaded in 597 BCE – over 400 years of excuses. I don’t think God WANTED to destroy them. But the kingdom’s dysfunction had progressed beyond the point that a new prophet or a new leader would be able to fix things. The only thing that could save the people now was a completely new beginning – a factory reset.
Obviously, the stakes are much higher in rebooting a kingdom than in rebooting a computer, so it’s understandable that humanity rarely wants to consider it an option, much less a necessity. I’m sure that plenty of Israelites refused to accept Isaiah’s prophecies. “God wouldn’t do that to us,” they might have reasoned. “We’ve messed up in the past, and God has always rescued us before. We’re a world power now, and there’s no way we could ever go back to those bleak times of slavery and exile. God will intervene so that we can stay on the same path of progress that King David put us on.” The fact that nothing happened to them right away probably reinforced this belief. It’s really hard, especially when so many people have been so comfortable for so long, to accept that anything truly catastrophic could happen to their way of life.
But not believing in something doesn’t mean that it’s not necessary, and it certainly won’t stop it. Denial only makes the reality of a kingdom’s brokenness harder to face. As traumatizing as exile was for the Israelites, I’m sure it was made a thousand times worse by the fact that the people “listened carefully, but didn’t understand; looked carefully, but didn’t comprehend.” One of the gifts of scripture is that we have the chance to learn from our ancestors of faith. So, whenever it feels like things may be falling apart around US, we now know that we shouldn’t pretend it’s not happening. If we’re heading towards a factory reset, as scary and unbelievable as it may be, we have to face it head on.
This is a difficult ask, but even though it’s not what we want to happen, there’s still Good News. We can find grace in this story not through a rescue, but a reminder: that a factory reset has a larger purpose than destruction for its own sake. It’s the only thing that can make a fresh start possible. After telling Isaiah, on no uncertain terms, that the kingdom of Israel would be utterly destroyed, “like a terebinth or an oak, which when it is cut down leaves a stump,” God leaves him with one last thought: “Its stump is a holy seed.” Although certain events in human history may seem to us like tragic endings (and in many respects, they are), God is continuously creating seeds out of stumps, hope out of despair, life out of death. It’s kind of God’s thing.
So when God gives us a holy seed, it becomes our responsibility to take care of it. We have to plant it, tend it, water it, and make sure no weeds sneak back in to inhibit its growth. Or, to revisit my original metaphor, in order to make the most of our factory reset, we have to be thoughtful, judicial, and FAITHFUL about what programs we decide to reinstall next. If we just download exactly the same stuff as before, we’ll wind up right back in the same mess that led us to a factory reset in the first place. But if we make new choices with the long-term health of the system in mind, we can create something that works far better, lasts far longer, and is actually able to fulfill the purpose that it was created for.
Now, I don’t claim to know what sort of factory reset we might be facing today, or if we’re even on the path to needing one. I am not Isaiah, nor do I claim to be. I have no idea what’s going to happen – to our country, to the Church at large, to all who sense a large-scale social reckoning on the horizon. What I do know is that we are far from a righteous people. Isaiah’s lament, “I’m a man with unclean lips, and I live among a people with unclean lips,” is a confession that we could all stand to acknowledge more honestly. I also know that human history has a way of repeating itself, and that God has promised not to let injustice and inequity reign forever.
So while I will pray for repentance and reform, I will not turn away from whatever is to come. I will trust God to purge the sickness and injustice from the human systems that are utterly broken – the ones that are failing all of us, whether we realize it or not. I will stay engaged, even when the process is messy and painful, even when I feel hopeless and helpless. I will welcome the chance to finally be freed from the burdens of our apathy and the systems that never actually worked for everyone. And I’ll strive to face all of it with faith and courage, refusing to let my despair stop me from working towards the beautiful city that God is determined to build with us.
As it turs out, Nick didn’t wind up having to perform a factory reset on my work computer after all. I was lucky this time. But that doesn’t mean I always will be. And while that’s not a good thing, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, either. It just means that my computer is subject to the same flaws and weaknesses as any other computer, and that I can’t expect it to carry on the same way forever. Fortunately, whenever the day comes that I DO need to perform a full factory reset (or even to replace my computer entirely), I know that I won’t be alone. As difficult and frustrating as it will be, I know Nick will be there, as he always is, to walk me through it and help me figure out what steps I need to take to make sure my computer works exactly the way I need it to.
God has faithfully remained by our side through every single “factory reset” in human history, and there’s no reason to believe that God would stop now. Once the worst had finally happened and the Israelites found themselves in exile, God assured them in the midst of their struggles that it wasn’t the end and that they weren’t alone: “For surely I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord, “plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” [Jeremiah 29:11, NRSVUE] May we have the ears to hear this promise as one also made to us. Things may become very, very difficult; there may be loss and pain and grief; our situation may very well get far worse before it gets any better, but if we put our faith in the Expert and resolve not to turn away from the hard work ahead of us, then even a factory reset will NOT be the end. For those who trust in the Lord, it never is. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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[After the sermon, I sang "Beautiful City" from the Broadway Revival of "Godspell".]
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