Swallowed Up — Isaiah 25:1-9 · Proper 23, Year A

Tucked inside most wedding invitations is a small reply card with its own stamped envelope. It asks one question: will you attend? A lot of those cards spend weeks on the refrigerator, and almost nobody who has one is against the wedding. This past Sunday Jesus told a story about a king whose invitations went exactly the same way, and Isaiah told us what was on the menu. This is the midweek show. You heard three readings on Sunday and a sermon on top of them, and by now most of it is gone. That is what a week does to things. So we go back and sit with the same readings again, slower. Proper 23, Year A: Isaiah 25:1-9, Psalm 23, Philippians 4:1-9, Matthew 22:1-14. The Hebrew is bala', to swallow, to gulp something down whole. Isaiah uses it twice in a row: in verse 7 God swallows the shroud cast over all peoples, and in verse 8 he swallows up death forever. Most English Bibles give it two different words, so you'd never notice. Everywhere else in the Old Testament, death is the one doing the swallowing. The ground swallows Korah, the earth swallows Pharaoh's army, and Sheol swallows the living. At Isaiah's feast, the swallower gets swallowed. Paul quotes the line in 1 Corinthians 15: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." Also in this episode: the moment Psalm 23 turns from shepherd to host, and why the enemies at the table can't touch you; the Greek ameleo, "made light of it," the word for letting something slide; why most of the guests in Matthew 22 weren't hostile, just busy; the guests gathered from the streets, "both good and bad"; and the man without a wedding robe, who made it into the room and still didn't care. One thing to try this week: pick one invitation you've been letting slide and answer it, before the week swallows it. Monday to Sunday is hosted by Joe Stein. New episodes Tuesday and Thursday. Full archive and written companions at mondaytosunday.life.