his relatively peaceful conquest of Babylon in the year 539 BCE. Unlike the rulers before him who governed through terror and forced assimilation, Cyrus the Great conquered many nations but he allowed those under his control to maintain their own cultural and religious practices.

For extending this freedom, people from Greece to Babylon praised him. The Greek historian Xenophon describes Cyrus as wise and compassionate, a ruler who cared for all of his subjects "as if they were his own children.”  According to Xenophon, the people he conquered eventually came to call him “The Father" because “he was a leader who bestowed rather than took away.”

But perhaps no one praised Cyrus more than the prophet Isaiah who declares Cyrus to be God’s anointed one, literally God’s …(does anyone know the Hebrew word for “anointed one”? (Messiah. Right! While we are at it, does any one know the Greek word for anointed one? Christ!Very good!) Isaiah referred to Cyrus as God’s messiah.

Thus says the Lord to his anointed, (to his messiah, to his christ) to Cyrus,

whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations… I will go before you and level the mountains, I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron, 3I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places.

You may remember that Babylon had conquered Israel 70 years before Cyrus conquered Babylon. The Israelites had seen their temple destroyed and their best and brightest hauled off into captivity. Well, when Cyrus took over he liberated the captives, saved the Jewish people, and sent them home to Jerusalem to rebuild their lives, their culture, and their temple.

For this reason, Isaiah calls him their messiah. But because Isaiah is telling the story, it isn’t just Cyrus who set the people free, but the God of Israel who is working through Cyrus even though - and this is where it gets really weird - the king does not even know who the God of Israel is.

“For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name …though you do not know me.

…I arm you, though you do not know me.”

Cyrus was not Jewish or a convert to Judaism. If he was anything, he was probably Zoroastrian. And yet he is hailed by the prophet Isaiah as Israel’s messiah.

I want you to sit with this image for a moment, the image of a savior named Cyrus who is Christ the Lord, a messianic king who saves the people of Israel without even knowing who the God of Israel is…because it’s weird, isn’t it? And not just because it reminds us that Christ wasn’t Jesus’ last name.

Cyrus didn’t know God, and yet God used Cyrus to save God’s people.

It’s strange to contemplate. Indeed this is a very strange passage in the Bible and a strange moment in Israel’s history. But this word, “anointed,” “messiah,” “christ,”- this word that carries so much meaning for us as Christians - is the very word at play in this passage.

And I use that word “play” intentionally, because the wonder and danger of Scripture is found in its play, its flexibility, its elasticity. Words are fungible and because they are so fungible it is perilously easy to make the Bible say exactly what you want it to say and so devilishly hard to know what it really means.

“Stories are never innocent,”says Kat Armas, “never impartial.”

They carry the weight of perspective, ideology, and cultural values. Our stories (especially the Biblical ones) are no exception. When we retell them, we do so from the lens of who we are today, with the knowledge and experience we hold in the moment. This means that our understanding of the past is colored by where we currently stand geographically, politically, and socially. We can never truly be objective, neutral observers.…

Meaning,(and this is me now) there is no such thing as just reading the Bible.

“Each retelling is an act of interpretation,” says Armas, “and in that act there is power” (“Liturgies for Resisting Empire” p 13).

A power, my friends, we need to exercise with humility, grace, and care lest we use this book, meant to teach us how to love, as a license to do harm.

To that end, I want to give you two examples of how this one weird little passage has been used as a justification to wield power with enormous consequence.

I learned just this past week as I was doing the research for this sermon, that President Truman actually referred to himself as Cyrus for his role in establishing the modern state of Israel after WWII.

To his credit, Truman helped create a home for hundreds of thousands of Jews who had been displaced during the holocaust. And from historical records of the deliberations, it is clear that his effort was grounded in his reading of the Bible and his belief that God had given the land to the Jews.

In fact, it was a belief he held so strongly that he went against the near unanimous advice of his own administration who rightly warned that the establishment of a modern state of Israel would destabilize the region, forcibly displace and rob 3/4 of a million Palestinians of their homes, and compromise U.S. strategic interests by triggering conflict with Arab nations and jeopardizing Western access to Middle Eastern oil.

They weren’t wrong. Truman’s decision has caused un-imaginable suffering, especially for the Palestinian people, and sparked a conflict that shows no signs of abating 78 years later.

But Truman went ahead and did what he did because he believed the Bible told him so. And here is the rub; in all fairness to Truman, he wasn’t necessarily wrong…at least not when it came to his reading of the Bible. From Exodus onward, what we have here is a story of an oppressed people claiming they have the divine right to take control of a land that is already inhabited by other people.

As people who revere the Bible we must reckon with the fact that Truman was not acting un-biblically when he, like God’s anointed King Cyrus, encouraged and supported the Jews in taking possession of the promised land once again.

Example number two: in our own era, President Trump has also been hailed by many evangelical leaders as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as a modern day Cyrus. Netanyahu has celebrated Trump, among other things, for policy shifts that favor Israel such as lobbying for the return of the Oct. 7 hostages, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital, and moving the US embassy there. Very Cyrus(y) things to do.

And here in America, conservative clergy and Christian nationalists have hailed Trump as a Cyrus who, though he obviously “does not know God,” is nonetheless working at the behest of God because he is advancing the agendas of Christians like them.

In fact, the more corrupt Trump’s behavior the more amazing God must be for being able to work through such an (and I quote) “imperfect vessel.”

Yeah, the logic is staggering, but the consequences are real. In their minds and in their sermons, ministers like like Franklin Graham, Paula White, and Lance Wallnau have made it clear to their people that if Trump is a modern day Cyrus anointed by God than Christians need have no qualms about supporting him in spite of all his moral failings.

But qualms… I have a few, and I imagine you do too. I have qualms about both of these men being labeled as modern day “messiahs.” I have qualms about the Bible and how easily it can be used to prop up leaders like this and justify the damage they do, be it collateral or downright intentional.

I have qualms about how easy it is, even for people like you and me, to read the Bible in ways that affirm what we already believe to be good and true and right, because we are not perfect or unbiased either. And I have qualms about the book itself, written as it was by people just as human as you and me.

I’ve often heard people question whether they are living biblically or acting biblically, but just from this one little passage I think it’s clear that the bible is way too complicated for a question that simple. I think we’d do better to ask ourselves if we are reading the bible humanely, ethically, consciously, with an eye toward the good of all, rather than just ourselves alone.

I mean, just because something is in the Bible, doesn’t mean it’s ok.  Some of it is indeed prescriptive, meaning it is telling us what to do in order to live a godly life. I’m thinking of passages like the Ten Commandments or the Beatitudes. But if we’re honest, most of the Bible is descriptive, meaning that it is simply describing who we are as humans in relation to God…and who we are is not necessarily who God wants us to be. Last I checked, everyone I know is a work in progress.

And the other wonderfully weird thing about this passage before us today is that it makes clear - Bible or no Bible - that God in and of God’s self is way beyond our understanding. “My ways are not your ways,” says the Lord elsewhere in Isaiah (55:8-9).

This very passage which people have been quick to borrow for their own political purposes actually warns us against doing exactly that. The God we meet in this weird little passage is mysterious, inscrutable, and not simply on any one people’s side. There is no one like God from east to west. This God who creates light and darkness, weal and woe, who can choose one people over other people for the sake of all people, make a messiah out of Cyrus but allow his own son to be crucified…this is not a God I fully understand or ever will.

This is a God who gives me pause…and that’s a good thing. I think this God who offers Cyrus the treasures of darkness might just be offering us the gift of darkness as well.

By which I mean, it’s ok to be in the dark about some things. It’s ok to be a know it some rather than a know it all. When we move in the dark we move slowly, cautiously, carefully lest we harm ourselves or others. In the dark it is unwise to charge ahead boldly and I think that spirit of humility and care is so important whether we are approaching the mystery of scripture or the mystery of God.

And yet, all that being said, I still believe God is good. I believe God loves us and wants us to love one another and honestly that desire to love is still the best interpretive key that I know.

I had one professor in divinity school who used to pick up his Bible and say, “this is the good news. If you read it and don’t find good news in here then you need to read it again.” And I had another professor who said, “if it isn’t good news for everyone, then it’s not good news for anyone.” I like to hold those two ideas in tension when I come to scripture. I want to read it in such a way that it’s not just good news for me, but helps me live a life that is truly good news for all.

If we go back to the original Cyrus whom God anointed, we see that he was hailed as a messiah by Isaiah, lionized by the Greeks, and immortalized as a just ruler on that ancient cylinder, because his rule wasn’t just good news for his people but good news for all people whether they looked or spoke or worshipped like Cyrus or not.

Truman’s decision was good news for the Israelis but not for the Palestinians. Perhaps he should have taken that into account before he read the Bible and came to the conclusion that he was called to be a messiah.

And Trump….well…the people who helped put him in power claimed he was a Cyrus and we will know in two weeks if they still believe his reign is good news for them. But I think it is fairly clear that his rule has not been good news for all. I don’t think his comparison to Cyrus is going to age all that well.

But that sort of misreading is nothing new.

People within the church have long misread the Bible for their own selfish gain and it’s easy in hindsight to see where they lost their way and got it wrong…so easy to catalogue the abuses committed in the name of God. It’s maybe a little less easy to see how we do it ourselves.

So may this morning’s reading, and this Season of Origins give us pause.

May it humble us in our rush to make meaning out of mystery.

May we remember that when we read scripture to justify our own ambitions we are on shaky ground and when those ambitions are realized at the cost of others may we realize that we have most certainly lost our way.

May God grant us the wisdom and the patience to look again and again and again until we can read the Bible in such a way that it truly is good news for all. Amen.