A Feast on the Mountain

Isaiah sees a shadow lying over the whole world — not over one nation or one age, but over all of them at once: "the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations" (Isaiah 25:7). It is the pall we all live beneath and mostly manage not to look at — the plain fact that everyone we love is dying, and so are we. We tell ourselves it is far off, someone else's news, and then one day it is a phone call, an empty chair, a name we still reach for out of habit. Every culture drapes the thing in ceremony; none of them can lift it. And onto exactly this darkened world the prophet sets a table.

"On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined" (Isaiah 25:6). It is an extravagant promise to make to the grieving — not a measured word of consolation but a banquet: the best cut, the oldest wine, a guest list as wide as the nations. Grief is not answered here with an idea. It is answered with a party.

And the reason a feast can stand where a funeral should be is one line: "He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces" (Isaiah 25:8). The verb is chosen with care. Death has always been the thing that swallows — every guest, every host, every table folded away at the last. Isaiah says the swallower will itself be consumed. And God does not send the comfort ahead by messenger; he bends down and dries the faces himself, with his own hand.

How does a promise that large ever come true? Paul tells us it happened at a tomb that could not keep its occupant: "then shall come to pass the saying that is written: 'Death is swallowed up in victory'" (1 Corinthians 15:54). That saying is Isaiah 25:8 itself — the very line we have just read, spoken over the mountain banquet. Paul is not reaching for a poetic phrase; he is telling us that the resurrection of Jesus is the first fruits and the down payment of this ancient promise — its guarantee, sealed and certain, though not yet its full and final harvest. Before death could be swallowed up, it first had to be swallowed down: the Lord of the feast went ahead of us into the dark, tasted death for everyone, and came out the far side holding its keys. This is why the church has always been able to sing at the graveside. What John was shown at the end is Isaiah's mountain made final — God "will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more" (Revelation 21:4). The same hand. The same promise. Kept.

So the prophet hands the waiting people their line for that day: "Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us... let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation" (Isaiah 25:9). We are still, most mornings, on the near side of the mountain, living under the veil, keeping our own small ceremonies over losses we cannot undo — the grief we heard in the voice at the tomb. But the table is already laid. The wine is already poured. The invitation carries our names. And the God who will wipe the last tear from our faces is not a stranger we are hoping to meet, but the One we have been waiting for all along.