What Are You Afraid Of?
Isaiah 36:1-3, 13-20; 37:1-7; 2:1-4; Matthew 5:14
The Assyrian army came to Jerusalem to conquer and destroy. King Hezekiah said to the prophet Isaiah: “This is a day of distress, of rebuke, and of disgrace; we are like those with child about to be born but without the strength to give birth.” And Isaiah responded: “Do not be afraid. In days to come all nations will come to Jerusalem, to the house of the God of Jacob, that God may teach us God’s ways, that we may walk in God’s path.”
Our reading today ends with this very familiar passage – the day is coming, Isaiah sees, when swords will be beaten into plowshares, when young people will train for war no more, when the word of God will go out from Jerusalem and judge and instruct and teach all the nations God’s ways of peace. It is a vision of the coming reign of God over the whole world that promises peace and security for absolutely everyone. A vision that has inspired people for centuries – from the statue in front of the United Nations building in New York of a sword being beaten into a plowshare – to people living through war or the threat of war and violence or danger, in ancient times right up to our own day.
This promise that one day human beings will be free of the violence that we do to one another, when young people will no longer have to train to defend themselves and their neighbors, when we can put down our weapons of war and use our resources to feed and care for one another. This promise that seems so far away at times, and yet feels very close – this promise of something that everyone, or almost everyone at least, would love to see fulfilled, and yet seems so far away, so impossible to achieve. And yet, century after century, the dream of God’s peace lives on, the vision of peace that Isaiah saw so long ago.
This familiar passage, however, comes at the end of a story that you may never have heard before. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard this particular story read in church before today. Which on one level is surprising, because this story of Assyria’s failed attempt to attack Jerusalem in 701 B.C. is one of the oldest stories in the Bible for which there is also abundant historical evidence outside the Bible, Assyrian and other nations’ records written on stone rather than paper, and that have therefore survived to the present day.
The Assyrians were the military superpower of the Middle East in the 700s and 600s B.C. In 722 B.C. the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, and 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel were deported and sent into exile. But the Assyrians were distracted by other battles and problems and never made it to Jerusalem. Now, under a new king called Sennacherib, in 701 the Assyrians came back to attack the southern Jewish kingdom of Judah. They arrived at the gates of Jerusalem with a huge army and prepared to surround the city and starve its inhabitants until they surrendered. There is even a stone obelisk with the story of King Sennacherib’s battles, discovered by archeologists in 1830 in the ruins of Nineveh and that is now in a museum in Chicago, in which Sennacherib boasts, “As for King Hezekiah, I shut him up like a caged bird in his royal city of Jerusalem.”
Our reading today begins with a high-ranking Assyrian official called “The Rabshakeh,” which is a cool name. But his message is anything but cool. He arrives outside the gates of Jerusalem and the disinformation begins. Surrender now, do not resist, the Rabshakeh tells the people – in Hebrew, so everyone can understand. Yes, we will deport you and send you into exile – but don’t worry, you’ll like your new homes just fine. But if you fight us and try to resist us, you will suffer greatly and you will fail. Everyone else has. And if King Hezekiah tells you the Lord will protect you – don’t listen to him. The Lord won’t protect you. The Lord can’t protect you. Our army is too large, our weapons are too powerful, our gods have given us victory over everyone. The gods of Hamath, the gods of Arpad, the gods of Sepharvaim – they didn’t do their people any good. So when Hezekiah says to you, Let’s fight back, the Lord will help us – don’t listen to him. Save yourselves and surrender.
Now, it’s easy to say – that’s the enemy talking. But it is true that the Lord does not give Israel victory in every battle. Is this a time when we have to hang in and trust that, despite all appearances, against all the odds, God will deliver the victory? Or is this is a time to be realistic and avoid a pointless loss of life? And how are you supposed to know?
This is a real issue, not just in 701 B.C., but today. It happens in war. At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, when everyone thought Russia would capture Kyiv in a few days, remember when the US offered to evacuate President Zelenskyy to a safer place – and he replied, “I don’t need a ride, I need ammunition.” That’s brave, and so far it’s worked, but at a frightful cost.
It happens with illness. Someone is diagnosed with a serious illness. Some people will say you have to fight back with everything you’ve got, if you keep a positive attitude and have faith and believe you’re going to get better you will. Yet sometimes there is nothing to be done but accept what’s inevitable – and eventually that day comes for everyone. How do you know which is right? When is it time to fight and when is it time to accept?
I think of my own experience in my family, when my mother was very ill. In the beginning she was full of fight and positive thoughts despite being in a lot of pain. And then there came a moment when she wasn’t. And I remember some people in our family had a hard time with that – Why doesn’t she try harder? If she would just push through she could do this. That was fear talking – and that’s part of grief. Grief for what we have lost, or fear of what we might lose. In the end, if you know that as St. Paul once wrote, if we live we are the Lord’s and if we die we are the Lord’s, so regardless of whether we live or die we are the Lord’s, it’s much easier to know when it’s time to fight and when to accept.
And so, in the biblical story, we are told Hezekiah goes to the Temple, unrolls the letter from Sennacherib before God seeking guidance. Will God just stand by and let the Rabshekah be proven right, that the Lord is powerless before the gods of Assyria? Eventually the king consults the aged prophet Isaiah. Isaiah says just be patient, the Assyrians will leave on their own.
And it turns out that’s what happened. It seems some epidemic started running through the Assyrian army encamped outside Jerusalem. I guess that before modern medicine or epidemiology or sanitation these things happened quite a bit. The army left on its own, and Jerusalem was spared. How did Isaiah know this was going to happen? I don’t think prophets generally have any special foreknowledge of the future, although sometimes it seems that way. More often prophets have a deep understanding of what is happening in the present, which sometimes enables them to see where things are going. Isaiah understood the Assyrian army was weaker than it seemed, and he was right.
And so Jerusalem was spared – this time. But like the person who is sick, and recovers – perhaps because of good medical treatment, perhaps because of their faith and even divine intervention, but remains subject to the human condition and will not live forever – while Jerusalem’s being spared was celebrated as the Lord’s deliverance, while the plague that killed Assyrian soldiers was hailed as the work of an angel, what resulted couldn’t really be called peace. War was not abolished, eventually – a few generations later – war would return, Jerusalem would fall, the Temple would be burned, the people would all go into exile. And Isaiah knew that would happen too.
This is the world in which Isaiah gives us his vision of what God’s reign will look like. Isaiah sees that the day is coming when the nations will come to Jerusalem, not to attack it or to conquer it, but to worship God there. The day is coming when the people of God will go out from Jerusalem, not fleeing attacking armies or being driven into exile, but going out to bring torah, to bring the teaching about God and God’s way, to all the nations. The day is coming when everyone will not only live in peace, but will feel so safe and secure that they will not even think about preparing to defend themselves, preparing for war. They will get rid of their swords and shields – never to be needed again – or turn them into something useful.
This is a remarkable thing about the reign of God as Isaiah sees it – it not only will be peaceful, but people will feel so safe and secure that they don’t feel the need to arm themselves. And which will come first? Will the disappearance of war eventually get people to relax and let go of their fear? Or is the overcoming of fear the thing that eventually leads to peace?
Jesus shows us how to live in this world – a world where war still exists, where violence still exists, where crosses still exist, where hatred and fear are still powerful – Jesus lives in this world with the kingdom of God fully in our sights. He knows the world is a dangerous place and he is able to imagine a world where we will know ourselves to be safe in God’s hands. And Jesus invites us to do the same. To know that the world is a dangerous place, that we all have our lumps and our scars and our broken places and our grief at all that we have lost. And the faith to know that the world is full of God’s presence and peace and that we are safe and secure in the hands of God and nothing, not even death, can take us out of God’s hands. And so we have nothing to fear.
And so Isaiah’s vision of the kingdom of God, the reign of Christ the King, this vision is not, in the end, something far off in the distant and unimaginably utopian future. The kingdom is here, now. Christ is king right now. The day when we can let go of our fears is today. Isaiah knew enough not to be afraid, and he gave Hezekiah good advice about how to respond with the Assyrians. May God free us from our fears too.