White as Snow

Picture a stain that will not come out. You scrub it and scrub it, but the deep red is still there. Now picture someone taking that cloth and handing it back to you, white as fresh snow.

This is Jerusalem, about seven hundred years before Jesus. The prophet Isaiah lives through the reigns of four kings of Judah. On the outside, the city looks very religious. The temple courts are busy. People bring sacrifices, keep festivals, lift their hands in prayer. But Isaiah has a hard message from God. Their worship has become an empty show. Their hands, God says, are full of blood: they cheat the poor, ignore orphans and widows, and twist justice for bribes. God says he is tired of their festivals. When they spread out their hands in prayer, he will hide his eyes. And then comes the turn.

God says: Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil. Learn to do well. Seek justice. Relieve the oppressed. Defend the fatherless. Plead for the widow. It is a very practical list. Not more festivals. Not more sacrifices. Stop hurting people. Start protecting the ones who have nobody to protect them: children without fathers, women whose husbands have died, people being pushed around. That is what turning back to God looks like. Notice that God says learn. Doing good is something you practise, day by day, like learning to read or to play an instrument.

Then God says something astonishing. “Come now, and let us reason together.” It is like a courtroom, where the judge invites the guilty party to come and talk the case over. And the judge's offer is this. “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Scarlet and crimson were the deepest, strongest reds people knew, the colours of dyes that soaked right into cloth and stayed. Snow and natural wool were the brightest whites. God is saying: the stain you cannot get out, I can.

But the invitation also asks for an answer. God goes on. “If you be willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured with the sword. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.” The offer is real, and so is the choice. God is not forcing anyone. He is holding the door open. He wants his people to come, to be made clean, and to live in his good land again, not as people who only perform religion, but as people who do good and seek justice.

Why scarlet? In Isaiah's world, the most prized red dye came from a tiny insect, the kermes scale insect, gathered from oak trees. The Hebrew phrase for scarlet literally means something like the worm of scarlet. The dye was colourfast: it held tight to wool and linen, which is why it was used for the curtains of the tabernacle and fine clothing. A scarlet stain was the kind that does not wash out.

White as snow. You can read it in Isaiah chapter one, verses sixteen to twenty. God invited his people to stop doing evil, start doing good, and let him wash away what they could not. At Christmas, many churches sing of the child born to wash away the stains of the world, and Christians believe God's invitation still stands. Come now, let us reason together. So here is a question to carry with you. God says, come now, let us reason together. What would you like to talk over with God today?