God’s Nude, Performance Art Prophet

…at that time the Lord spoke through Isaiah son of Amoz. He said to him, “Take off the sackcloth from your body and the sandals from your feet.” And he did so, going around stripped and barefoot.
Isaiah 20:2 (NIV)

I am taking a step back this morning and thinking long and hard on this little fact from this morning’s rather short chapter: God told Isaiah to strip and walk around naked as a living word picture and performance art piece that foretold what the Egyptians were going to experience under Assyrian captivity.

I heard the voices of many an uptight grandmother, legalistic preacher, and fundamentalist friend explaining  that something must surely be lost in translation and God would never ask His servant to do something so shameful and improper. “Perhaps Isaiah just stripped down to his boxers or something,” I hear the voices say.

Yet just the next verse God makes the message very clear:

“so the king of Assyria will lead away stripped and barefoot the Egyptian captives and Cushite exiles, young and old, with buttocks bared—to Egypt’s shame.” Isaiah 20:4 [emphasis added]

Bare-assed shame was the crux of the message. God was not pulling any punches.

This morning I’m thinking about the ways I let social and societal mores mold the way I see God. The further I get in my life journey the more I’m aware that I sometimes like to put God in the box of my own design, constrained by my own social, cultural, political, and religious preconceptions. The more willing I am to let God out of my own mental and spiritual box, the more deep and full my understanding and appreciation of God becomes, and the more transformative that knowledge becomes in my own life.