Proper 13: OT, Isaiah 55:1-5

About as close as I ever got to a true Carnival Barker was walking up and down the rows of the Jackson County Fair, where the carnival game proprietors would call out, “Step right up and try your luck,” or “You can’t win if you don’t play.” Classic summertime lines meant to get you to take one more look and then to plop down your coin for a try at midway immortality.

Our Old Testament text for this Sunday hearkens us back to that kind of summer, but this is no game and the immortality is infinitely greater. Isaiah 55:1 says four times, “Come.” God is the barker and He is motioning to His OT people with a blood-stained cross, several hundred years from Isaiah’s day, but it is as if He doesn’t want His treasured Israel to miss their opportunity. And His sense is the same for those of us living a couple thousand years after Jesus “Carnival Mission.”

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost” Isaiah 55:1, NIV.

Oh the sweetness of a God who favors us by saying to us “you who have no money,” no means whatsoever to secure the blessing I offer. That IS the gospel isn’t it? That joyous invitation to embrace our God and God, His Son in the power of the Spirit who calls and draws and ratifies the offer with the resurrection of Jesus. Sublime rejoicing and mystery!

Please, in the days prior to Sunday, read and savor these five verses. Ask for understanding and wisdom to place them in your pocket. No walk down carnival row will ever be the same.