My office has this amazing outlook on the world…on Queen Anne Avenue, actually. In fact, as we have moved offices around a bit, they’ve asked me several times if I want to move to a spot that’s quieter, further away from the street. I’ve declined each time.There’s something about seeing life going on that makes me feel sort of grounded.

But it’s amazing what I see out my window! Let me give you a couple examples.

Tuesday was the snow day. Queen Anne Avenue was like a winter carnival: no cars anywhere, people walking with kids, getting coffee and enjoying the quiet. As I sat at my desk and talked on the phone, I saw one moving vehicle: a Jeep Cherokee driving probably 30 mph through the snow…and towing somebody behind on an inner tube, and on a very short rope! The Cherokee drove by 3-4 times, and finally I said to the person on the phone with me, “This guy is CRAZY!”

Well, the next morning I met a friend of mine at 7 a.m., and I said, “Well, what’d you do on the snow day yesterday?” And he said,

“Oh, it was so cool, I have this friend who has a Jeep Cherokee…!”

He was the crazy one.

Wednesday morning I saw something else interesting. It was about 8:00 in the morning, the snow was melting and the now the avenue was busy with people driving to work. Looking up from my computer, I saw a guy who looked about 50, in a pair of jeans and an old sweatshirt. He was walking down the middle of one of the street lanes, so that cars had to move to get around him. I didn’t notice anyone honking, but people certainly were staring and wondering what was going on. And up on his shoulder he carried a very large sign with a simple message:

“Howard Dean for President.”

It seemed a little premature. But he looked determined. Who knows? Maybe he was walking all the way to Bellingham.

It made me think of our friend Isaiah the prophet. Isaiah had a message to carry. God had given it to him to give to the people. It wasn’t popular. The message is simple:

Trust in God. Not politics. Not armies. God.

How many different ways can you say that? How do you keep people’s attention?

“Loose the sackcloth from your loins and take your sandals off your feet.”

Go naked and barefoot. Biblical scholars have had a field day with this, checking the etymology of various Hebrew words. Was he 100%, newborn baby, nudist-colony naked walking around the streets? Or had he stripped off his outer garments and walked around in his boxers? I’m not sure it really matters. Clearly, he was scantily dressed, to the point where he would garner a lot of attention.

That’s quite an image, isn’t it? This is a horrible passage for those of us who don’t like to stand out. Some of us have an innate fear of God telling us to do something that we are uncomfortable with…

“Witness to that woman over there. Speak in tongues. Go to Africa. Put a Christian fish on your car.”

God would never say those things, would he? To Isaiah he says,

“Loose the sackcloth from your loins and take your sandals off your feet.”

Go naked and barefoot. Silly. One of my favorite quotes that hangs above my desk is from Bill Hybels. It’s a prayer, actually, that says:

“Lord, if my looking foolish would bring glory to you, just do it.”

It’s a hard thing to pray.

What was the point? Certainly, Isaiah attracted attention. It would have been a shocking thing, the first few days he was strolling around Jerusalem. I bet he made a lot of people stop and gawk, listen to what he was saying…maybe even think about it.

You probably have experienced this. Maybe walking downtown, or in the University District.

Years ago there was a guy named Holy Hubert who toured college campuses in Washington and on the West Coast. He had a long beard, and he was a screaming, shouting, accusatory preacher who would find a wall to stand on and start going after people. The first time or two you see someone like that, it’s interesting, and maybe you think about it a bit. Then the next few times, I think there can be a bit of repulsion. Why does he have to act that way? But after a little while…it’s not even a story anymore. You just tune it out. He’s still screaming, but you’re not listening anymore.

God told Isaiah to walk around naked and barefoot for three years. Three years! Kids entered high school and were getting ready to graduate and Isaiah was still naked and barefoot. There’s a pretty amazing story of obedience there. And there’s something in there about the word of God not changing.

Whether people are choosing to listen or not, the word of God is steadfast and is always in front of us, naked and true. It doesn’t change.

Isaiah, you see, was doing what prophets did. He was carrying the word of God…regardless of the consequences to himself. He was enacting the word. His actions were a dramatic sign of what God’s word was for his people. What did Isaiah’s nakedness and bare feet mean?

Israel was caught up in a number of rebellion schemes against Assyria, the ruling power. Most specifically, they were in on a plan to join with the Philistines over on the coast and some others. And behind the plan was the hand of two other major players in the region, Egypt and Ethiopia. They were encouraging the smaller countries of the Middle East to rebel against Assyria, and promising their financial and military support if the going got tough. Jerusalem’s King Hezekiah had even met with Egyptian ambassadors to talk about this.

Isaiah’s word, lived out in his nakedness and bare feet, says “No.” What God wants to say is

“Just like Isaiah is naked and poor, dressed as only a slave would be…that is what will happen to Ethiopia and Egypt. They will be led naked and ashamed away by the king of Assyria, because they cannot defeat him. Your salvation is not in these countries.”

This proves to be exactly the case. Assyria tires of these games, and sends the army out to the coast to crush the Philistines. The Philistine king flees for protection to Egypt…who promptly turns him over to Assyria. Neither Egypt nor Ethiopia can oppose Assyria. And the voice of the people cries out:

“Look at how these mighty have fallen! These are the ones we looked to for deliverance. If this is what happens to them, what will happen to us? “And we…how shall we escape?”

The people are looking to be saved. Where will it come from? Isaiah says,

“Don’t look to Egypt or Ethiopia. That would be looking in the wrong place. But look first to God.”

The prophet Zechariah says it like this:

“Not by might, not by power, but by my spirit says the Lord.”

It’s an interesting thing to ponder in our day. We live in a day of security alerts, tightened homeland security, wars and invasions, manhunts and military buildups. One of the things that is so interesting in Isaiah is that the people are always looking to be saved politically. And while Isaiah does not ignore the reality of oppression or the international situation…he is always pointing people first to a different kind of salvation. The people say,

“And we…how shall we escape?”

And Isaiah says,

“Trust in God.”

Are we a people who are looking for salvation? What kind? And where are we looking?

A hundred years ago, salvation…being in a right and eternal relationship with God…was a topic discussed on a regular basis, even in the newspaper. Today we mostly hear about salvation as…well, the same way that the people keep going back to in Israel in Isaiah’s day. It’s a military, political or economic solution to the problems of the world. Nothing that has the slightest thing to do with God.

But I have to tell you, when I look around the world at the sheer magnitude of evil, warfare, starvation due to political selfishness, racism, ethnic cleansing, school shootings…when I read the paper on literally any day of the week, Isaiah makes more sense to me.

Isaiah doesn’t ignore the realities of the world. Nor should we. But without people first coming into relationship with God and being changed from the inside out, I don’t see things getting better. They are getting worse.

Are we interested in salvation? And does that start on the inside or the outside?

Isaiah is a book about people being saved. I counted yesterday… 58 times in this book…Isaiah uses save, saved, savior, salvation. In almost every single case, the reference point is God. It is God who saves, God who is the savior, God who will bring salvation. 58 times.

Sometimes I think that what God’s word through Isaiah is trying to do is to get people to the point where at least some of them are at the end of chapter 20: The things we had hoped would deliver us have failed…we, how shall we escape? I suspect that if our reading of Isaiah did nothing else but get us to this point…God would be well pleased. Just to the point of crying out the question: “how shall we escape?” How will we be saved?

Maybe the first question is: What do we need to be saved from?

1. Other people. The human story is one of self-preservation and thereby hurting the people around us. Since Adam said, “it was her fault,” since Cain killed his brother and said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” we have mistrusted and wounded one another. Whether the attacks are small verbal cheap shots and misunderstandings or holocausts and wars, we need protection. Or healing. Or both. Where will this salvation come from?

2. We need to be saved from loneliness. Marla Paul was a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. One day she wrote in her column: “I am lonely. This loneliness saddens me. How did it happen I could be 42 years old and not have enough friends?” She wondered if people were just too busy for friends. It seemed as though everyone’s “friendship quota has been filled and they’re no longer accepting new applicants….It’s easy enough to fill up the day with work…but it’s not enough.” She found that her column struck a nerve. People stopped her on the street, at her kids’ school, all over to say, “I thought I was the only one.” Sometimes we are lonely in the midst of a big crowd, or a crowded social calendar. Sometimes unsatisfying friendships are maintained so that we won’t feel the emptiness of being far from God. How will we be saved?

3. We need to be saved from ourselves. The Bible just says we are sin-sick. Self-absorption, narcissism, addictions flatten our lives into meaningless struggles to simply endure.

To all of these, the cry goes out: How shall we escape? And good Lord, imagine these kinds of things going on into eternity! There is hell in this life, and in the next.

The naked prophet cries out, “Trust in God.” Through prophet after prophet the voice rings out,

“Trust in God. You cry out for salvation: but will you cry out for God’s salvation?”

The message becomes most poignant in John the Baptist, the prophet we read earlier. John keeps his clothes on, but he wears strange clothes, eats strange food, speaks strange words to the people. But it is more poignant now, more direct:

“Look! The lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” John tells those around him, those who will listen…Here is Jesus. John had the pleasure of pointing and no longer saying, “It’s coming,” but “He is here.” Salvation is here. It has come to you.And what a way God chose to bring his salvation to us!

Once a blizzard hit a farming area. Just as the heaviest snow started, one farmer noticed that a flock of wild geese had landed in a nearby field. The geese were weary and confused, unable to track through the snow. They just kept taking off, flying just a little ways above the ground, then landing again, unable to go anywhere.

The farmer felt sorry for the geese, and wanted to help them. As the snow fell thicker and thicker, the farmer had a thought. If he could just get the geese into the barn, they’d be safe and warm until the snow stopped. So he opened the doors of the barn wide. No goose would fly in, not understanding how it might help them.

The farmer tried to get their attention, but that just scared them further off. He tried offering them some bread to lead them into the barn, but they wouldn’t follow. He was almost out of ideas. They wouldn’t follow a human. He thought, “If only I were a goose, I could save them.”

That gave him one last idea. He went into the barn and got out one of his own geese. Walking out to the field, he held the goose up, and then let it go. His goose flew into the air, zoomed between the wild geese and made a beeline for the open barn. All of the other geese in the field followed. In Christ, God came among us, as one of us…to lead us to God, to save us. Salvation has come to us.

“God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Isaiah came as a prophet. God asked him to carry the word, the word that pointed people towards God’s salvation, and called them to trust in God. Isaiah came naked and shoeless, symbolizing the futility of the power of humanity without God.

Jesus came as more than a prophet. Not pointing, not symbolizing. But embodying God’s salvation in himself.

His entire ministry lasted three years…the same length of time that Isaiah went naked. Jesus’ clothes too were forcibly stripped from him and gambled away. He hung on the cross, “publicly exhibited”; Galatians says as the world went by and looked at him, God’s Word hung up like a billboard.

Jesus did not come to symbolize God’s love, but to embody it. Not to remind people that God could save them…but to actually save them.

We can spend our whole lives looking for various things to save us. Or we can look to where the naked prophet points us, and throw our lot in with God’s Savior, Jesus Christ.