Isaiah: the odd chapters

From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

Isaiah - the odd chapters Advent 3 12 December 2010

The Revd Jenny Wilkens

• Isaiah 5:8-30
• Acts 13:13-41

http://cathedral.wellington.net.nz/index.php/Sermons

I wonder if you've noticed that many of our readings in this season of Advent, including at the Darkness to Light service, come from the prophet Isaiah? We had another this morning, one this evening, and we'll have two more at the Nine Lessons and Carols Service next Sunday evening.

Partly I must confess that I'm a great fan of the book of Isaiah and so if there's any choice in the readings, I'll plump for Isaiah! But in fact this is how our lectionary has planned it - that part of our focus in the weeks of Advent is on the prophecies of Isaiah and how they look forward to God's future.

The immediate question you might ask then is well, which bit of God's future?, and that is always a question when we consider prophetic literature and its fulfilment.

For you see, we could well have 3 futures in mind:

1) the prophet's future and the fulfilment of those prophecies within the immediate context and subsequent history of the people prophesied to

2) the future of God's dealings with humanity through the ages which has come to us through the Hebrew Scriptures and which Christians would see reached its fulfilment in the coming of Jesus, the Word made flesh, and

3) the 'big picture' future of humanity and this earth that will come to fulfilment at the end of time when 'the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our God'.

I'm helped in this by an Advent book I've been reading by Paula Gooder, an English Biblical scholar, called "The Meaning is in the Waiting" (Norwich, Canterbury Press, 2008). She talks about the metaphor of a telescope when we think of prophecy. You can look through a telescope when it's closed up and see a nearer scene, or you can open it half-way and see a scene slightly further off, or extend it to its full extent and see far into the distance. We need to have telescopic sight! So prophecies have validity for their own historical time and context; for the time of Jesus; for our own time; and for the end times whenever they may be. And then of course the challenge is to discern which bit of the prophecy is relevant for which time. And which bits work with multi-levels of meaning and application?

Most of the readings from Isaiah that we hear at this time of year are the 'cheerful' ones - ones that express what we might call the Advent hope, that talk of light and peace and God's salvation. On Remembrance Sunday we heard from Isaiah 2 the well-known and longed for vision of a world without war, where swords are beaten into ploughshares, spears into pruning-hooks.

At our Darkness to Light service, we heard two wonderful proclamations of hope and comfort to the people of Israel returning from exile in Babylon : Isaiah 40's 'Comfort o comfort my people', so well-known to us from The Messiah, and Isaiah 35's vision of all creation blossoming, all humanity healed, which we heard again this morning.

So perhaps it is a bit of a shock to hear Natasha read this evening quite a different prophecy of Isaiah (ch 5) - a catalogue of reproaches against the people for their neglect of their relationship with God and their covenant commitment, which should be lived out in acts of justice and righteousness rather than self-indulgence and oppression.

It would appear even more stark if we had also read the first seven verses of this chapter which set forth a beautiful allegory of God's love and care for his people, his 'vineyard', and then poignantly smash this idyllic image to smithereens as the rest of the chapter rolls out in judgement against the people who have thrown God's good gifts and loving care back in his face.

We need to hear that many of the prophecies of Isaiah, like the other prophets, were about the doom and gloom and judgement that awaited the people of God in consequence of their rejection of God and God's ways. The 'day of the Lord' was not just going to be a trouncing of their enemies, but a day of reckoning for the people themselves, judgement on God's own household first. But for all that, one of the encouraging things about Isaiah's prophecies is that it is a book of light and shade: if there is disaster, there is also the occasional tantalising vision of peace; if there is gloom and doom, there is often a glimmer of light; if there is despair, there is usually a note of hope. And sometimes we lose the impact of that, if we miss out all the bits we find hard to swallow and just go for the edited cheerful readings we like!

So we need to hear readings like the one we heard this evening, sobering as it was, as it reflects a society and world not so different from our own in many ways.

But I don't want to leave it there. Notice that straight after our reading of Isaiah chapter 5, we have the glorious chapter 6 with the account of Isaiah's vision of God in the temple and of his prophetic calling, with his willing response to God, 'Here I am, send me.' That response has galvanised many into God's service over the years, and yet I always find it poignant, for just as it was for Jeremiah, many of Isaiah's prophecies were ignored by those to whom he gave them - his was no easy calling.

Yet from Isaiah's lips we have some of the most precious messages of hope which have sustained God's people in their calling through the ages, both Jews and Christians.

Next Sunday night at our Nine Lessons & Carols service we will hear two of these read from Isaiah 9 and 11, and I want to look at these briefly in advance.

Chapter 8 and 9 are generally pretty gloomy stuff, but then we hear in Chapter 9 verse 2: 'the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shined'. Here is the light and shade of Isaiah; beyond the doom and gloom, there are signs of future hope. And then we are back in the words of 'The Messiah': 'for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace' (verse 6).

Filled with phrases echoing the Davidic monarchy, this describes the longed for king in David's line, the ideal king, the Messiah who would bring salvation to God's people, rescue from their enemies and a rule of justice and righteousness, all the qualities that had disappeared from God's people in Chapter 5.

In due course Christian tradition linked this prophecy with the image from John's gospel of Jesus as the light of the world, the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:5, 8:12) Gradually people equated what they saw in Jesus with these names speaking of the wisdom, power, care and peaceableness of God, part of their growing understanding that somehow in Jesus they were seeing the character of God, the Word enfleshed.

The other reading we will hear next Sunday night is from Isaiah chapter 11, another wonderful picture of the Messiah figure, the shoot from the stump of Jesse, the king in the line of David. On him rests God's spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord so that he may judge with righteousness and equity. This Messiah figure's reign then morphs into a wonderful picture of a golden age, a return to some sort of paradise where all creatures live in harmony, 'the wolf shall live with the lamb, …the lion shall eat straw like the ox…they will not hurt or destroy…for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (Is 11:6,7,9)

I think we can listen to this sort of reading with a kind of intrigue and fascination, but think it's just a piece of whimsical fantasy, and dismiss it. Perhaps the challenge of this vision of such an ideal world and others like it is not to dumb us into apathy that we can never achieve such a thing, or to make us despair when we reflect on the current state of our world and its ecology and climate, the way we treat animals, and the way we treat each other.

Rather the challenge to us is to look for signs of hope, for light midst the doom and gloom, as Isaiah did, to recognise moments of hope when we see them and to encourage more of these moments of hope in our own lives, our community, our society, our world. This I believe is the Advent task Isaiah calls us to. Amen.