Introduction
Two weeks ago in our service we experienced a ritual of lament as we explored the story of the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonian empire, and the exile of the Hebrew people. It is a story about when the worst thing happens. So we gave time for tears and space to name our griefs and laments. You can still contribute to those personal and collective expressions of lament in the upper foyer.
Today we hear a message of hope from Isaiah 65–a “prophetic vision of the future” in which the “cosmos is renewed and peaceful relationships are restored” (margin notes, Community Anabaptist Bible).
- I am creating new heavens and a new earth (v. 17)
- Jerusalem will be a place of happiness and her people a source of joy (v 18)
- People will live in the houses they build and eat the fruit of their own vineyards (v. 21).
- I will answer them before they even call to me (v. 24)
- The wolf and the lamb will feed together (v. 25)
And here we also find a list of what will plague and trouble the people no longer:
- The sound of weeping and crying will be heard no more (v. 19)
- No longer will babies die when only a few days old (v. 20)
- Invaders will not take their houses and confiscate their vineyards (v. 22).
- No one will be hurt or destroyed on my holy mountain (v. 25).
We need to hear the strong voices of the Hebrew prophets–Isaiah, this week, Jeremiah and Ezekiel in the weeks to come–with visions of hope and renewal. We will still encounter stories from the exile–stories of empire and ego and overreach. Stories of loss and grief, and the soul searching that happens when human kingdoms fail and fall. We will still hear the cries, Hey God! Are you there?! But with these words of hope from Isaiah, we know that the red thread of God’s faithful love still holds.
Isaiah 65 Context
Our text today comes from near the end of Isaiah. Biblical scholars divide Isaiah into 3 major sections. First Isaiah (1-39) reflects a period in the 8th century BCE, when the Israelites had split into a northern kingdom Israel, and a southern kingdom, Judah. First Assyria, and then Babylon are the rising threats in the region. The leaders of Israel and Judah make futile efforts at appeasement and foolish attempts at alliances. But eventually the Northern Kingdom falls to Assyria, and many of its citizens are displaced. Later Babylon conquers Jerusalem, leading to the devastation of exile of Judah. And all of this is interpreted as punishment from God. Hey God. Are you there !?
Second Isaiah (40-55) reflects the time in exile. It is a time of grief and lament. Hey God. Are you there!? Isaiah’s earlier words need to be reinterpreted for this generation. God meets and comforts these grieving people, promises deliverance from exile and restoration to their homeland.
Third Isaiah (56-66) reflects a time, post exile, when a remnant of the people is allowed by the Persian government to return to the land of promise and rebuild. The destruction is extensive, the cost of rebuilding is immense, few people return and they lack resources and expertise. The journey of healing from the trauma of exile is daunting. Hey God. Are you there !?
Isaiah 65 comes from this third section, addressing a group of people who have experienced devastation. They know what it means to lose everything. They know what it is like to build houses and have others take over those homes. They know what it is like to plant vineyards and have others eat the fruit. They know what it is like to have life cut short. They know what it is like to bring children into a world of horrors.
Hey God. Are you there !? is a central question in the experience of exile. And yet, Isaiah offers a “centuries-long view of kings and kingdoms who reign in glory before they are turned to dust. Only God remains.” (Melissa Florer-Bixler, Introduction to Isaiah, Anabaptist Community Bible). When the people are tempted to to save themselves through compromising political alliances, when they are weary exiles, when they are discouraged by the enormous task of rebuilding after the exile, “they are reminded that God will be their strength” (Melissa Florer-Bixler, Introduction to Isaiah, Anabaptist Community Bible). The red thread of God’s love remains.
Journey of the Prophets
We see here in the exile experience a familiar journey–one we have already seen in the Psalms–the journey from orientation, to disorientation to new orientation. But there is another journey going on here too. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar, ecumenical author and teacher writes about this journey in his recent book The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for An Age of Outrage. In it he describes a three part journey of the biblical prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Almost all the biblical prophets follow a “classic pattern” (Rohr, xvi) when they see that the status quo is no longer working. They start with anger, rage, and judgmental words, but then they move into sadness, grief and lament, before ultimately progressing to compassion, forgiveness, healing and new hope. If we read the prophets with that lens we can see texts of anger and judgment, texts of lament and grief, and texts of hope for renewal. Let’s take a closer look at this journey.
Rohr describes prophets as truth tellers. They see reality in its fullness and they need to get angry at what they see. Rohr says a prophet serves as the “licensed critic…who names and exposes their own group’s shadow side” (Rohr, xiv). And like an “early warning system within any culture at risk… trying to warn us against the suffering that our own collective behaviour is bringing upon us” (Rohr, 7). The “Bible is unique in all world literature in spotting this universal human avoidance of our own dark side” (Rohr, xx). And the Jewish prophets have no parallels in helping to spot the hidden, communal, and disguised shadows. Starting about 1300 BCE, all through the era of the kings, the exile and conquest prophets performed this task–calling the people and their leaders to return to God and to justice, trying to stop them from relying on arms, money, lies and power to stay safe and in control.
Rohr writes, “All the prophets started with anger, or even rage, at all the right things: injustice, oppression, deceit, misuse of money, power, even religion itself” (Rohr, 9). But their threats and warnings can soon sound like belligerent, self-serving zeal, like they have a superiority complex, placing themselves above others. Their words become moral, self righteous and full of threat and retribution (Rohr, 10). They reflect an angry, judgmental spirit that they project onto God, who seems to be seeking control through willpower, force, retribution and violence.
But, Rohr notes, “Most anger comes, first of all, from a place of deep sadness…life disappoints and hurts all of us. A gut-level knowledge of systemic injustices will leave us exasperated and ultimately sad. But the majority of people…do not know how to react–except…with anger and rage. It is defensive, reactionary and totally understandable…[but sadly] only creates cycles of bitterness and retaliation” (Rohr, 5). Rohr writes, “if we stay with our rage and resentment too long, we will righteously and unthinkingly pass on the hurt in ever new directions, and we injure our own souls in ways we don’t even recognize” (Rohr, 5). We should also note that anger doesn’t always get expressed outwardly. Often it gets stuffed down, only to surface later, or it gets projected onto an “other” or it even gets turned inward into shame and judgment of oneself.
But if the prophets are able to mature and help their people through devastation, Rohr says most of them move through what he calls the “way of tears” (Rohr, 4). They take time to recognize the sadness and tragedy, the mistakes and failures. They help to express the deep sadness that most people carry under the rage, and resentment and anger.
Something shifts when the prophets do this grief work for themselves and alongside their people. Tears can generate deeper compassion. Sadness and rage can be refined into empathy and active compassion. “It is hard to be on the attack when you are weeping. (Rohr, 4). The prophets grow up spiritually. They move to become more patient, forgiving, loving, like God (Rohr, xviii). The sympathy that wells up can be life changing, drawing people out of themselves. It doesn’t always happen overnight. In their writings we can see that for the prophets changing and growing up is not a one time thing. They often cycle back into an earlier stage of judgmental anger. We learn things slowly. But if they have traveled the way of tears, if they have attended to the pain underneath the righteous anger, then “They [can] offer not only criticism but also visions of a more just, more merciful, more peaceful society–and call the people to live into it” (Rohr, xx).
When the prophets travel the way of tears they also shift their understanding of God. “Language about God having emotions is always a projection of our human emotions onto God” (Rohr, 8). We can easily confuse our own truth with God’s truth. Our untransformed self speaks as if it were God. And so the prophets and we assume suffering is retribution from God. But Rohr says, “My favourite thing about the prophetic books of the Bible is that they show a whole series of people in evolution of their understanding of God” (Rohr, xvii). They are now able to see a God of mercy and forgiveness, and God of compassion and love.
What is the Good News?
As Cynthia and I prepared for this service we found it particularly striking to note the images of animals. “The wolf and lamb will feed together. The lion will eat hay like a cow” (v. 25). This is more than former enemies getting along. Here the predator–prey relationship is totally changed. The predator–the one who uses force and violence and intimidation–completely changes. This shifts our understanding of how justice happens.
We were also struck by what is not here. In rebuilding a new community, there is no vision of retribution, no thirst for revenge on their enemies, no desire to exact punishment on those who did them wrong. No “us” and “them” language. There is no hatred expressed against an “other.” Instead it is all language of renewal, peace and justice according to the character of God.
It reminds me of another time in the bible when vengeance is sidelined. In Luke 4 we read about Jesus going to the synagogue in Nazareth on the Sabbath, as was his custom. He stood up to read the Scripture, and the great Isaiah scroll was handed to him. He unrolled it until he found the place he wanted–a text very close to the one we read today. It is another vision of healing and hope. A Jubilee image of a just society.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because he has anointed me
To bring good news to the poor,
He has sent me to proclaim
Release to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To let the oppressed go free,
To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” (Luke 4:18-19).
But Jesus stops there. He leaves out the last line. He leaves out the line about “the day of vengeance of our God” (Isaiah 61:2). And then he says, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing… (Luke 4: 21). Today I am inviting you into this kind of community. It is happening now! It is possible! But many of his listeners are not ready for it. Because when he expands on this text, and teaches about how God’s mercy and grace extends to the outsiders and even to our enemies, these words so enrage his listeners, they run him out of town threatening to kill him.
It would seem that like the prophets, Jesus too knows the way of tears. He knows that if we do not soften our own hearts with compassion, if we do not address our anger and our pain, we are bound to see a vengeful God, and desire an exclusive God on our side. If we do not express our laments and allow tears to fall for our pain and the pain of the world, we will only project onto God our own desire for retribution, and even contribute to ongoing cycles of injustice and violence. Like Isaiah, when Jesus describes the new community he leaves behind the image of a vengeful, punishing God, and a judgmental, exclusive community.
Instead Jesus and Isaiah show us a God who is in the business of making all things new. A God who is in the business of redemption. Redemption that will come “not through the power of nations and the might of armies but through…God’s saving purpose on earth…These visions offer us hope for a time when” everyone will have a place to call home, the ability to provide for family needs, safety and security and long life. A world into which you are not afraid to bring children. “When ‘the wolf will live with the lamb’ (11:6) and where nations will beat ‘spears into pruning tools. Nation will not take up sword against nation; they will no longer learn how to make war’ (2:4)” (Melissa Florer-Bixler, Introduction to Isaiah, Anabaptist Community Bible).
The way on to hope it seems is through–through the valley of the shadow, through our pain and our struggle, through the wounds of our lives, lest we remain frozen, stuck in anger or judgments or fear or despair. This is not easy. Rohr thinks it is important for spiritual communities to offer people a place where they can do this work. Much like we did with our ritual of lament 2 weeks ago. Many of us will benefit from some kind of help to get through–a wise guide, a trusted friend, a circle of support, a counsellor. Does this way of tears resonate with you? Where do you find yourself on this journey?
I admit, it can be hard to believe in this beautiful, peaceful community, given what is going on around us in our world. Recently, I was listening to CBC radio and heard a fascinating interview with Edie Widder, a marine biologist, and Tasha Van Zandt, a documentary director who created a film called “A Life Illuminated” (at TIFF) about Edie’s life and work in studying ocean life. Edie has a particular interest in bioluminescence, the capacity some creatures have through chemical reactions, to make their own light. We know this best from fireflies, among a very few creatures on land who can make their own light. Deep in the ocean it is another story. There 75% of creatures have bioluminescence. Edie speculated that light in the dark ocean may actually be a form of communication, and set out to study and photograph this phenomenon for the first time. Until recently, we have not had cameras sensitive enough to do this work. The depths of the ocean is like a different world. As you descend through the sunlit zone into the twilight zone, 200-1000 m down the light goes dimmer, and eventually, below 2000 m there is perpetual darkness. Diving 3300 m in a submersible, to the ocean floor, using a special camera system, Edie has been able to study what she calls the “language of light.” In complete darkness, if you know how to look for it, that is where you see sparks and embers of creatures using bioluminescence–flash patterns and glowing–to find food, to attract mates, to warn predators. Flash a light, and they flash back. Edie continues to be amazed that in the deepest and darkest depths of the ocean there is so much life! In the process of these creatures evolving, bioluminescence has a survival value. Strangely, the drivers for vision are so strong, even in a world without sunlight most animals have eyes, And then Edie said something quite profound that stopped me in my tracks. How do you survive in the dark? She asked. Make light. CBC Interview with Edie Widder How do you survive in the dark? Make light.
We can send out sparks and embers. We can use flash patterns. We can communicate the light that we know. We can be beacons of hope –we can offer compassion. We can learn forgiveness. We can be agents of mercy and kindness. We can be prophetic voices, calling our leaders and our communities to justice.
Joan Chittister is a Benedictine Sister, a speaker and writer and tireless advocate for peace and justice. In the dedication to her book The Time is Now: A Call to Uncommon Courage, she writes,“In all my years of traveling around the world, one thing has been present in every region…everywhere there are people who, despite finding themselves mired in periods of national darkness or personal marginalization refuse to give up the thought of a better future…they never lose hope that the values they learned in the best of times or the courage it takes to reclaim their world from the worst of times are worth the commitment of their lives” (Joan Chittister, The Time is Now: A Call to Uncommon Courage, dedication). AMEN?
From the very beginning, from the first breath of the Creator over the waters, there is a thread, there is a light, there is a love that will not let us go. Thanks be to God.