A Specific Invitation (Isaiah 55:1-9)

 🖤Valentine’s Day was coming up. It was my last year of elementary school, the last year when students typically bring Valentines for everyone in the class. 

I had an idea, which I thought would be hilarious: I knew that I needed to write on each card the name of the person I was giving it to; but what if I sealed the card up in the envelope, but on the envelope, just wrote, “whosit.” Every envelope would say “whosit.”

It would work, because if I wrote the name on the card clearly enough, I could just see the name through the thin paper of the envelope, and still deliver the right card to the right person. Everyone would wonder how I did it. 

The plan worked perfectly. My classmates laughed, and wondered how I did it. However, the long-term effects were minimal, as it did not quite improve my social standing the way I hoped that it would. 

I share this with you because I knew, even as a kid, that a Valentine had to have someone’s name on it. 

You can’t just send a Valentine or an invitation and not put someone’s name on it. You can’t write, “Dear Valentine, whoever you are…” No! 

Same with an invitation. If you’re inviting someone to a party, you don’t say, “You’re invited! I want you there… whoever you are…”

Valentines and invitations need to be specific.

⚫In today’s scripture, the prophet is issuing an invitation. And the prophet is specific about who is being invited.

The invitation is given specifically to those who are thirsty, to those who are hungry, to those who have no money.

The prophet could have just said, “Come, everyone! Whoever you are! Come, eat and drink! All are welcome!”

But no; the prophet directed the invitation to specific groups of people. “Come, you who are thirsty; come, you who are hungry; come, you who have no money.”

In the next chapter, Isaiah extends another invitation; and, again, the prophet is specific about who it is that is being invited. 

In chapter 56 Isaiah says: “to the eunuchs…I will give a monument and a name, an everlasting name… and to the foreigners…I will bring you in, and make you joyful in my house of prayer; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

You might be familiar with that last part, the part about God’s house of prayer being a house of prayer for all peoples; but maybe you never realized that this statement of welcome was addressed specifically to eunuchs and foreigners.

It’s a specific invitation, addressed to specific people, for one very specific reason.

See: eunuchs and foreigners had long been excluded from the temple. In fact, Deuteronomy 23 specifically mentions eunuchs and foreigners as being prohibited from the assembly of the Lord.

And in all the generations since, up to Isaiah’s time, eunuchs and foreigners had been singled out for exclusion and persecution. They had been denied the right to enter the sanctuary and worship, and to take their place among God’s people.

Because they had been denied their rights and had been specifically excluded, Isaiah felt the need to specifically include them, and specifically invite them and welcome them, by name, into the house of the Lord.

It’s the same with those who are thirsty, those who are hungry, those who have no money. Isaiah knew that they were victims of injustice legislated by kings, something that went against God's desire for humanity; so Isaiah knew it was important to specifically include them, invite them, and welcome them by name.

So in Isaiah’s vision of a world that follows God’s ways, the thirsty, the hungry, and the poor—and foreigners and eunuchs—receive a specific invitation and welcome, to receive their share of God’s abundance.

The invitation, the promise, and the welcome are given specifically to those who have been historically prevented from receiving these gifts and blessings.

Isaiah knew that it was important to invite them, specifically, by name.

⚫Many generations later, there was a disciple of Jesus named Philip, who was traveling through the wilderness from Jerusalem to Gaza. On his way, he encountered a man who—get this!—was both a eunuch and a foreigner! He was a eunuch from Ethiopia!

Philip knew this man was a foreigner, because he was riding in a chariot, and the chariot had on it symbols of Candace, the queen of Ethiopia. 

And Philip knew this man was a eunuch, because—well, I’m not sure. But eunuchs often presented themselves as androgynous; genderqueer; nonbinary. If they were castrated early enough in life, their voice and appearance would be affected. And maybe there was insignia on him that indicated he was a eunuch. (Maybe it was the earrings we see in this, I’m sure, highly accurate image!)

And—get this—this eunuch from Ethiopia was reading from the book of Isaiah; and when he and Philip met on that road, the eunuch asked Philip to help him understand what he was reading.

And then, he asked Philip if he could be baptized!

Well, Philip knew that baptism was, among other things, a way of welcoming people into the fellowship of believers. 

And Philip also knew that eunuchs, and foreigners, had traditionally been excluded from the fellowship of believers.

Yet Philip decided to baptize him anyway, and welcome him into the church.

And this story appears in Acts, chapter 8, because Luke, the author of Acts, wanted foreigners to know that they were specifically invited and welcome, and Luke wanted eunuchs to know that they also were specifically invited and welcome.

For Luke, just saying “all are welcome” wasn’t enough. Luke included this story, because Luke knew that groups that had been traditionally excluded needed a specific invitation, to let them know that, YES, the welcome included even them.

In fact, this was so important that Luke dedicated half a chapter to this story, a story that specifically emphasizes how eunuchs and foreigners were to be welcomed and included among the people of God.

Luke knew that an invitation that was both bold and specific was needed.

⚫Then we have the radical welcome offered by the apostle Paul. Throughout Paul’s writings, we see a specific invitation given to the Gentiles, and specific instructions given to the Jews on how they are to welcome and include Gentiles. 

Many of the Jews who were followers of Jesus weren’t sure about welcoming Gentiles. They harbored prejudices against the Gentiles, and thought that the Gentiles needed to become Jews first before they could become followers of Jesus.

So Paul goes to great lengths to instruct his fellow Jews on how the Gentiles should be welcomed. In the book of Galatians, Paul even goes so far as to say that, in our baptism, we are no longer Jew or Gentile, but we are all one in Christ Jesus.

Paul also specifically mentions women and slaves, two other groups of people who hadn’t been fully included among God’s people. In other words, Paul specifically affirms Gentiles, and specifically affirms women, and specifically affirms slaves, as people who are a part of the fellowship of believers.

All these biblical writers—Isaiah, Luke, and Paul—felt it was important to be specific about who they were welcoming into the church, inviting them by name.

I could go on. The book of Ruth, for example—that whole book was written to show how Moabites, a group that had been historically excluded, were to be included and welcome among God’s people. 

And Jesus—Jesus specifically mentioned Samaritans, to cite one example; he specifically mentions Samaritans and lifts them up precisely because they were so hated and persecuted against by the Jews. 

Prejudice against Samaritans was incredibly strong, and so Jesus knew they needed to be welcomed and affirmed by name. Just saying “all are good, all are welcome,” isn’t specific enough. Those who had been persecuted and condemned for far too long needed to be mentioned by name. They needed a specific invitation.

⚫So it’s clear that scripture calls on us to issue invitations that are specific, and to offer a welcome that is specific. Identifying oppressed people by name, saying “we especially welcome you,” is important.

That’s why FCC and many other congregations have declared themselves to be “Open and Affirming.” It’s why we are specific in mentioning the LGBTQIA+ community —the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex, asexual community— when we talk about the welcome we offer. 

Just saying “all are welcome” isn’t enough. We need to be specific in our invitation, mentioning by name those who have, in the past, been excluded, and who are still excluded in many places today.

In fact, this is even more important in 2025, now that hate against the queer community, and against those who are transgender in particular, is on the rise. 

Transgender rights are threatened. Not even just threatened; they are already being taken away. My cousin got a new passport a few weeks ago, but the government refused to honor his gender identity, and marked him as a female on his passport. Because that doesn’t match his identity and doesn’t match any other form of ID he has, he now cannot leave the country. The right to travel has been taken from him.

When rights are being taken away, when groups are being excluded and persecuted, it’s more important than ever to be specific in our invitation.

When I start each worship service by mentioning my pronouns, I’m not doing it to be political. But I know that among transgender people, and especially among transgender youth, rates of depression, suicide and destructive self-medication are astronomical. 

However, having even one affirming adult in their life can reduce the risk of suicide for a young transgender person by 40 percent.

So, it’s not about politics. It’s about saving lives. When we are specific in our invitation, we are saving lives. 

I admit, years ago, when I first started getting to know some transgender people, I was uncomfortable. As I got to know them, my discomfort faded. But even back when I was first starting to learn, I knew that my discomfort was a small price to pay for saving people’s lives.

A few blocks from my home, there is a church with a sign out front that says, “Black Lives Matter.” There’s another example of extending a specific invitation. 

Why can’t they just say, “all lives matter?” Why do they need to single out Black lives?

I hope that, by now, the answer to that is clear. Black lives have historically not mattered in this country. Black lives have too often not been affirmed, or welcomed, or celebrated. 

In many ways, that’s still true today.

So it’s important to extend a specific invitation to those who have been denied invitations in the past.

Imagine if, when Jesus left the 99 sheep to go find and save the one that was lost, that the other 99 started complaining, and saying: “Why are you going after that one lost sheep? What about the other 99? Don’t we matter, Jesus?”

Obviously, all the sheep matter to Jesus. But the one that was lost needed some extra attention, so that he could be safely brought back into the flock.

We here at FCC are still growing, still learning. (I’m still growing and learning.) We’ll always be learning and growing. We don’t get everything right all the time. We make mistakes, and we fall short at extending a sincere and specific welcome in all the ways that God calls us to.

Since Lent is a season of repentance, let us repent of those mistakes: our failure to welcome, our failure to be specific…

and let us commit to growing, and learning…

Let us commit to following the example set by Jesus and by the prophets and by the entire witness of the gospel, to do the best we can at welcoming the world to the Lord's Table; to improving the welcome we offer; and to being specific in that welcome whenever we can.

God's New Way

 Somewhere around the year 600 BCE, Babylon conquered Judah. The city of Jerusalem was destroyed, and many groups of Jews were deported, sent to live in exile.

One of the hardest things for them was not being able to gather together for worship in the temple. In Psalm 137, we hear their song of lament. “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, crying because we remembered Zion… How could we possibly sing the Lord’s song on foreign soil?”

At our coffee tables and dining tables, in our living rooms and bedrooms, there we sat down, crying, because we remembered when we were all together… How could we possibly worship the Lord apart from the congregation?

It would be 50, 60, 70 years before the Jews were able to return to Jerusalem, rebuild the temple, and once again gather within its walls to worship.

For us, it’s been five months since we all were able to gather together within the walls of this sanctuary, for worship. We are starting to understand, in a new way, the sorrow and the longing to return that the Jews experienced in Babylon. 

In the book of Isaiah, we encounter writings that were written before, during, and after this time of exile. Naturally, the content and tone changes over time, depending on when they were written.

Early in Isaiah, there is judgment and condemnation. The prophet says, “this is what is going to happen to you, because you have neglected God’s ways. You have neglected the ways of justice. You have rebelled. You have oppressed the poor and needy.”

Then, later, in the midst of exile, there is consolation. “Comfort, comfort my people; speak compassionately to Jerusalem.”

And finally, near the end of exile, there is a new vision for a restored nation that is, finally, once again able to worship in Jerusalem. In Isaiah 43, God says through the prophet, “Look! I’m about to do a new thing!” And in today’s scripture - Isaiah 56 - we see how that “new thing” plays out.

It is a timely message for the people, because at the end of their long exile, as they returned to Jerusalem, and as they rebuilt their temple, there must have been some thought as to what, exactly, their newly reconstituted nation should look like, and what, exactly, their newly reconstituted house of worship should look like. After their terrible ordeal, how should they restructure their nation, their temple, and their society?

Should they try to make it just like it was before, or should it be different?

In light of the trauma they had endured, they could very easily have chosen to toughen themselves up. They  have circled the wagons, built higher walls, and reinforced traditional standards of purity and holiness. After the terrible hardship inflicted upon them by foreign powers, they could very easily have hardened their own hearts against anything foreign, and seek to preserve their own identity by not accepting outsiders into their society.

Or, they could soften their hearts, and open up their nation and their religion to others, and be a blessing to others - a city on a hill shining for all to see, and welcoming all people with love and compassion. After the harsh way they were treated by Babylon, they could show the world another way, a way of blessing.

Well. Which would it be?

The more hardline approach has its support in several Old Testament passages. When Israel first established itself as a nation, there were rules against marrying foreigners and immigrants, or allowing immigrants to worship at the temple. 

There were rules against welcoming others as well. Eunuchs, for example; because they did not fit within the parameters of what was considered normal. They were sexually different. And anything different was seen as a threat to the unity and stability of the nation.

Following exile, would the people maintain those strict, exclusionary policies?

There are many today who prefer this rigid, hardlined approach to things. There are many today who stand against the inclusion of those who are different. There are many who are against immigrants in our society - they want to deny immigrants and refugees their rights, because they see immigrants and refugees as a threat to the nation’s stability and their own wellbeing.

And the same goes for those who are sexually different. Those who are sexually different or whose gender identity doesn’t fit within what society considers normal are still not welcome in many places, including many churches.

Now, as terrible as the years in exile were, Isaiah saw the end of those terrible years as an opportunity to allow God to do something new with the church; with the temple. It was time for a new vision.

And so, in Isaiah 56, God says to the immigrants and to the sexually different: welcome. The new, rebuilt temple will be a place of joy for you. The house of God will be a house of prayer for all peoples. God will gather all the outcasts together. 

This is the new thing that God is doing.

And God is still doing that new thing, today.

The choice that the Jews had as their time in exile came to an end - the choice between hunkering down and opening up - is a choice we have as well. It’s the choice between hardening our hearts, or allowing God to make our hearts soft. It’s the choice between walling ourselves off, or opening ourselves up.

This week, I watched Immigration Nation on Netflix. The makers of this documentary series were given unprecedented access to ICE operations, and also profiled a number of immigrant families, to present a deep look at immigration in the US today.

I don’t know what, exactly, the answer is to all the issues surrounding immigration - who should be allowed in to this country, who should be given amnesty, and what opportunities should be available to those who are undocumented. I knew even before watching Immigration Nation that these are complex issues.

But what surprised and shocked me most was how terribly these immigrants are treated. I had heard about family separation and children in cages, but to actually see it, and other horrible practices, really opens one’s eyes.

Many of the agents rounding up immigrants sound as if they are out hunting coyotes or wolves. Immigrants are rounded up, hunted down, and herded. They are detained in captivity for months. The separation of young children from their families is a practice that was supposed to have ended, but many have still not been reunited with their families. This has left permanent emotional and psychological scars on those children, scars that will never heal.

This is not the vision Isaiah presents. This is not the vision God presents. This is not how God’s people are supposed to treat their fellow human beings!

So many of these immigrants are doing everything right. But it’s still not enough. Some are veterans. They have fought for this country; made sacrifices for this country. But this country still treats them like animals. Like trash. 

It is difficult to realize how hardened our hearts have become. 

When I think of hardened hearts, I think of Pharaoh in the book of Exodus. The Bible says that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. And because Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, he treated the Hebrew people harshly. They were foreigners, immigrants who had come from the land of Canaan. Pharaoh made them into slaves. Pharaoh denied their humanity. Pharaoh considered them as property, as something to profit off of. Pharaoh didn’t see them as human.

Our country treats immigrants the same way Pharaoh treated the Hebrews. Once they are picked up by ICE, immigrants are often held in detention  - prisons, really - run by for-profit corporations. They can be kept there for months, a year, or longer. A man named Mario, who has lived here in Long Beach for 30 years, raising a family, has been held in one of these facilities for two years now, while he waits to find out whether or not he will be deported. Two years.

Immigration judges work for homeland security and are not part of the judicial branch of government - They are in the executive branch - and they have been ordered to fill those detention facilities, to keep them full, so that the corporations running them can continue making a profit.

So, just like Pharaoh, our nation sees immigrants like Mario as a plague, an infestation, their only value being how much money we can profit off of them. The leaders who support these policies are no better than Pharaoh himself.

And if we ignore this situation, if we keep silent, because we don’t want to offend anyone with our politics, then we are no better than the countless Egyptians who lived under Pharaoh and who refused to protest, refused to stand with the oppressed Hebrews, refused to look the Hebrews in the eye, all because they benefited from the way things were. So they remained silent.

This is not God’s vision of how the world should be; which is why Isaiah, and all the other prophets, so forcefully paint a picture of what God’s new vision looks like.

It’s a vision that God sets before us today, in our time.

In so many ways, God is using this time to move us to a new way of living, a new way of doing worship, a new way of being church… and most importantly, a new way of showing love and compassion to our fellow human beings.

It is, as Isaiah says, rooted in justice. We are called to join with immigrants and refugees, and people of various sexual orientations and gender identities, in pursuing justice and doing what is right for all people. 

Just as their time in exile allowed the Hebrews to explore and embrace God’s new way, our time of pandemic gives us the same opportunity. 

This pandemic, like the Hebrews’ time of exile, is a terrible thing. I wish we didn’t have it. I wish we had leaders who are more capable of dealing with it. 

But it does allow us to take a good long look at what God is doing in our midst; and what God is calling us to do and to be. It allows us to glimpse a new way - God’s new way - of embracing justice and building a church that affirms the dignity and worth of all people; a church that truly is a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.

Prayer

Oh God, your people had to wait a long time to return to the city and the sanctuary where they could worship together, and we, too, are stuck waiting for the time when we can return to the sanctuary we know, the sanctuary where so many memories come alive. But we wait, because we’ve been told to. And we wait, because of the love we have for one another and for all our neighbors, and our call to care for them, to do what we can to ensure that all people are safe and well.

It’s not easy, Lord. At times we are impatient. At other times, depressed. We have so much to mourn and grieve. So much has been taken from us. 

We confess that, at times, it has made us selfish. We have focused on our own situation more than the situation of others, including some who have experienced true tragedy in these past months. We confess that, at times, our hearts have become hardened, and we have closed ourselves off from the needs of those around us, and the needs of your church.

So remind us again, Lord, of your vision - your vision of a beloved community, a kingdom of God on earth, where there is welcome and affirmation and peace and justice for all. 

Be with those who are denied justice. Be with those whose rights have been taken away from them. Be with those who mourn, and be with those in need of healing.

For those who continue to reach out to us, sharing joy and gratitude and love, we give thanks. So many little acts of kindness really do make the difference in our lives these days. And for all those speaking out against injustice, and marching in the streets, and praying in their homes, we give you thanks. Such actions are helping bring your new vision to reality. And for all those who continue to support your church in whatever way they can, we give you thanks. May the work we do here and in our community be a part of that vision fulfillment, as we work with your Spirit to make your kingdom come on earth. Amen.