Hoy! All thirsty ones, come to the waters!
And whoever is without silver, come, buy, and eat!
Come buy — without silver and without price — wine and milk!
Why do you spend silver for not-bread? And labor for not-satisfaction?
Hear! Hear me, and eat what is good, and let yourselves delight in rich food!
Stretch out your ear and come to me. Hear, and your very self shall live!

Isaiah 55:1-3a (see Isaiah 55:1-5 NRSVUE]

The prophet’s opening ‘Hoy!’ catches me. A loud call, a sudden summons. It echoes in my ears; I slew my head around as if I might see on the street the speaker I see in my mind’s eye: clad in bright motley, wearing some sort of jingly jester’s cap, clothes and stance and call all setting him separate from the streams of passersby, who step to avoid him and continue on their way.

Hoy! The prophet calls. Speaking inestimable abundance — buy without silver, eat and drink wine and milk and goodness itself. Invitation and question together challenge the world’s prices, turns them topsy-turvey. Why spend, why work, for that which is the opposite of life? (He would not mistake public service with ‘lower productivity,’ as if worth is denominated only in dollars.)

The prophet summons the thirsty — meaning everyone — to a table that seems entirely separate from the one at which the oligarchs sit and squabble, jostling for proximity measured in piles of silver. The prophet describes a different circle. Listen! he cries. Look! he enjoins. Hoy! The summons is urgent; the verbs all imperatives, and plural. Go, all of you, from the table at which sawdust not-bread is sold in exchange for silver. Come, all of you, and sit instead at the table on which bread and wine and milk and good things are set.

Oh, it’s not so easy. The table being fought over is not the table that ultimately matters, but in the here and now the bombast spills over and has consequences. (USDA cancels contracts; the hungry are harmed.) Response is required. The prophet reminds that faithful response is not partisan reenactment of scarcity but empowered by the perception of abundance.

Hoy! Prophet in motley. Now I’m picturing the street performer who juggles at the local farmer’s market. His audience comprises a gaggle of open-mouthed children, whose parents are more attuned to the glad awe on their offspring’s faces than the arcs of balls or clubs whirling through the air. But they’re paused. They are tuned to more than their own busy-ness.

That pause may be itself a beginning.

After all, how many heard the prophet when first he spoke? He was no central figure, around whom the world turned. He cried out a word in earshot only of some. (Seal the teaching among my taught-ones, earlier Isaiah had said [Isa 8:16], suggesting both the dearth of immediate response and the conviction that the proclamation’s power persisted.) Some heard and were taught, some spoke and taught others in turn. The prophet’s call, the people’s march: these have purpose. The large public acts are testimony and sign. Resistance to what is wrong and commitment to work towards right. Yet for all that rallies matter, they tend more confirming than transforming. Change I might effect comes in smaller, more connectional increments.

The farmers market juggler catches all the balls, makes a sweeping bow. The children find their voices, tug parents towards whatever’s next. Grown-ups strange to each other read each other’s faces, catch each other’s eyes — smile awareness of the spell, appreciation of the shared experience. A seed for further word to be spoken; from which relationship may be built; through which transformation be born.

Come. Your presence is the only price. Come and hear. Eat and drink and live.