Worship without Borders. Blessing without Boundaries.
Another school year is nearing its end. My first full year of seminary studies has concluded. My walk with Christ before the Father continues, imperfectly, yet unabatedly and unabashed. My studies have helped me to fall in love with the Bible all the more. I come to the text more humbly, for I no longer recognize the book which I’ve held close for the whole of my life. I realize that I must become acquainted as one meets a stranger whom they’ve heard about for years. I am enamored with this process of falling more deeply, more viscerally, and more fully into this love. It is costly, yes; but it is so fulfilling.
In January, I continued a slow-reading of the book of Isaiah. (I began during Advent and continued through Epiphany.) Midday January 22, I concluded my daily reading in chapter 20. I was challenged that day in my affective commitments by chapter 19. Today (May 6) this challenge endures.
In the first three-quarters of chapter 19 (v. 1-18), Isaiah prophesies sharp condemnation of Egypt’s imperial systems of power. He illustrates ecological collapse, economic drought, political confusion, and nationalistic despondency. He prophesies the presence of a people whose allegiance is to God rather than the Egyptian empire. Indeed, I’ve always seen the disruption of empire – those systems that deplete life, vitality, and worship – as something good and beneficial, something worthy of celebration. But Isaiah makes a shift in his tone toward Egypt:
“In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the Lord at its border. It will be a sign and a witness to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt. When they cry to the Lord because of oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and deliver them.”
And again:
“Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.”
The prophecy of chapter 19 shifts from retribution to redemption and blessing. God situates Egypt, the empire of Israel’s first enslavement (see Exodus), in a relationship with Israel, the disinherited citizens. Egypt is fitted into this redeemed ecology of God in relationship to God through relationship to Israel. For the language of the Lord here claims them and affixes them to God by calling them “my people” and “my handiwork.”
Elsewhere in the text, God describes the framework of this relationship:
“And the Lord will strike Egypt, striking and healing, and they will return to the Lord, and he will listen to their pleas for mercy and heal them.”
These patterns of relationship are promised by God – striking and healing, pleading and hearing. The observable result of this reconstituted relationship matrix – oppressor to oppressed, God to oppressor, and God to oppressed – appears in the text as worship without borders and blessing without boundaries:
“In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and Assyria will come into Egypt, and Egypt into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians.”
Admittedly, this bothers me.
I dislike the notion that I will be situated so near my oppressor at the end of all things. I take issue with this ask (or, I suppose, requirement) from God. It doesn’t feel just or right. How could God, who is on the side of the oppressed, ask me to become intimately attached to the ideators of my pain? How could God ask the immigrant to be near the ICE agent? How could slave and master be invited to the same banquet? Surely God must recognize the traumas of the oppressed. Surely God is more emotionally intelligent than to ask the oppressed to “get over it” or “forgive and forget” or to “let it go.” Doesn’t God see the fear in the eyes of the victim and the hatred – the violence – in the hearts of the aggressors? How does God’s justice give permission to this imbalanced privilege of emotions?
Perhaps it is precisely at the altar, the space for worship and encounter with the Divine. It is entirely conceivable that God, in his sovereignty, has appointed the space and practice of worship to be so transformational that past offenses are counted as insignificant and ineffectual. Or, rather, perhaps God has gifted us sets of worship practices and spiritual disciplines so powerful that no one remains recognizable according to their past actions or states of being. What a beautiful gift to the oppressed – freedom from identity attached to victimhood! And what deliverance for the disinherited and dispossessed – their oppressor is vanquished by completely wiping out the memory of their crimes ensconced in their identity as “oppressor.” What total victory!
But this bothers me.
In a time where oppressive leaders are violently laying hold to power and shows of strength, this is a dangerous and risky proposition. The eschatalogical hope of Isaiah’s prophecy cannot obscure the very real suffering of the now. It is difficult to fathom redemptive “crossing of borders” when state legislatures in the U.S. are transgressing Black populaces by rapidly and arbitrarily re-drawing maps of voting districts to minimize our collective voice. At the time of this reflection, news outlets are reporting on a recent Supreme Court decision that has disrupted key protections of the 1963 Voting Rights Act:
“President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans are fighting to maintain their control of the House, as well as the Senate, in the November elections.
The court’s move, which came in an unsigned order, granted a request from a group of Louisiana voters who described themselves in court papers as ‘non-African American’. Their lawsuit led to the 6-3 ruling on April 29 striking down an electoral map that had given Louisiana a second Black-majority U.S. congressional district. The ruling gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that had barred electoral maps if they would result in diluting the clout of minority voters.
To give the losing side of a decision the chance to ask for a rehearing, the Supreme Court typically waits 32 days before its formal judgment is issued. But the prevailing party can ask the court to issue its judgment more quickly, as the ‘non-African American’ voters did here.”
It feels compoundingly insurmountable to consider the powerful being involved in God’s good end (telos) for the world while strong nations in 2026 perpetrate violence against weaker nations. Today (May 6, 2026) the Associated Press reports:
“WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Iran with more bombing Wednesday if it doesn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz after a report that an agreement is emerging to end the war.
Trump posted on social media that the war with Iran could soon end and oil and natural gas shipments could restart. But that all depends on Iran accepting a reported agreement that the U.S. president did not detail.
’If they don’t agree, the bombing starts,’ Trump wrote.”
Indeed, God’s vision is broader, more creative, more supernatural, and more holy. But it is disingenuous, harmful, and blasphemous to move quickly past accountability to redemption.
I recognize that God’s vision is clearer than mine, and God’s justice is more just than mine. I acknowledge that it’s easy to end a story with the death – the total vanquishment – of the villain; it’s much more difficult to re-write the villain as a beloved citizen and convince the audience to regard them as much. Holistic restoration must include the parts of the whole that I wish to discard. But, even in the name of restoration, re-writing the villain risks revising history. It risks emotional and spiritual bypassing rather than earnest healing and reconciliation. It can all too easily err on the side of historical dishonesty and amnesia.
How, then, do Christians navigate these risks?
Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter 19 is not a release from accountability. It is a restorative accountability rather than a punitive accountability. Verses 1-18 illustrates God’s passionate response to systemic pain; the pattern of striking and healing in Isaiah 19.22 shows that God will deal seriously with the victimizer. God hasn’t forgotten the wrongs of the oppressor. God is instead moving them past those wrongs and re-forming them deeply in a more just and holy way. What grace, then, that God is inventive enough and kind enough to allow any of us to live down our transgressions. That which I hope God will do for me personally, I am called to partner with God for broadly.
Perhaps this is how we navigate these risks as followers of Christ: we broaden our hope by broadening our worship.
I confess: this bothers me.
Yet, despite my discomfort, I am choosing to receive this challenge of my affections. Yes, I glory in the opportunity! For this is a new mercy today to grow in grace and humility. Here I am presented with an occasion to embody the words of Christ:
“My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”
