Isaiah 24-27 forms a special unit that commentators call the “Isaiah Apocalypse.” Sunday’s first reading comes from these visionary chapters, which were written to the people of Israel in exile in the 500s B.C.
Isaiah describes a feast which God will prepare for the people of Israel in Jerusalem. The exiles will celebrate this feast on the mountain where the temple stood before the Babylonians destroyed it.
This meal is more than a welcome home festival for Israelites. The prophet describes all nations sharing this table, its food and its fellowship. Isaiah envisions that this communion in God will lift the veil of sorrow from the nations and that God will wipe away every tear.
God’s Feast
On this mountain the Holy One
will provide a feast for all
of rich food and choice wines,
juicy foods and clear wines.
On this mountain God will destroy
the veil that veils all peoples,
the web woven over all nations.
God will swallow death forever,
wipe the tears from all faces,
and take away the disgrace
of the people from all the earth.
On that day it will be said:
This is our God, to whom we looked
to save us, the Holy One
for whom we have waited.
Let us be glad and rejoice
in God’s salvation.
For the hand of God
will rest on this holy mountain.
Isaiah 25.6-10
The imagery of plenty and feasting reaches back into the earliest religious writing we find in the land that became home to the people of Israel. In the land of Canaan, as in California and the Southwest, rain greens the hills with grass during fall and winter months but sun and heat scorch them over the course of spring and summer.
The Canaanites celebrated the greening of the new year each fall. They celebrated the victory of Baal, who defeated Mot, the god whose name meant death and who each year turned the earth to dry dust. Baal rode the clouds, thundered and struck lightning bolts, and brought rains that made the fields fertile.
As Israel learned to worship one Creator God, they still recognized abundant food as God’s blessing. Psalm 23, Sunday’s responsorial psalm, pictures God as a shepherd who finds green pastures and plentiful water for the sheep and a chef who prepares a table in the sight of one’s enemies.
Isaiah’s ancient image of God as host of a table where all may eat calls us to the future work of setting a table for the hungry today. It envisions the ultimate communion of all humankind in God.
- How can you participate in making this ancient vision the future for the human family?
- For whom have you made a place at your table?