Thoughts going in, Sunday Dec. 12th

Note: Sunday Dec 12th will be dedicated to our preschool Christmas program from Grace International Preschool. Having said that, my actual sermon for the day will be a brief Christmas message. However, the regular Thursday night group will remain with the Sunday lectionary and the reading for the Third Sunday of Advent:

1 The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, 2 it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the LORD, the splendor of our God. 3 Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; 4 say to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you." 5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. 6 Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. 7 The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow. 8 And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness; it will be for those who walk on that Way. The unclean will not journey on it; wicked fools will not go about on it. 9 No lion will be there, nor any ravenous beast; they will not be found there. But only the redeemed will walk there, 10 and those the LORD has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. (Isaiah 35:1-10, TNIV)

As mentioned in my sermons recently, one of the difficult things with the book of Isaiah is the question of chronology. It’s a very large book containing prophetic oracles all over the place. Critical scholars see the work of at least 3 separate writers/prophets, with perhaps the work of a fourth and final editor. This is how they square the problems arising from the fact that the “historical” Isaiah who lived/prophesied during the 8th century BC also appeared to have oracles concerning the exile to Babylon and post-exilic period (6th and 5th centuries BC). An alternative explanation of course would be that a “prophetic seer” in the OT sense of the word would be capable of receiving visions about ANY period of time with nothing but the will and good pleasure of God dictating the hows and whens. Regardless, the problem of chronology remains—whether we’re dealing with ONE prophet/author or several.

Isaiah 35 is a case in point. It falls within the *section of the book that is generally thought to be “first Isaiah” (aka the historical 8th century man of God), yet the oracle makes no sense within that period of history. Clearly the oracle seems intended to address the exiles at the time of the decree of Cyrus the Great (540 BC) informing all exiles of Babylon that they may now return home. My approach to the oracles within the ‘book’ of Isaiah is to let the seeming plain context dictate my approach to the text and not worry about whether or not it fits nicely into the division of first/second/third Isaiah on the one hand, or contort the message so as to try to fit it into a different time period on the other hand.

In other words, since it APPEARS to address Jewish exiles in the Diaspora regions in the mid 6th century BC, that’s precisely how I will read the text.

And I must say, right off the bat there are some things that make a LOT of sense about this oracle. For one, it must be remembered that when the prophet says in vs 10: “and those the LORD has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing”… there is NO ZION to enter, per se….and once they get there, singing will probably be the last thing on their mind. In order to immerse ourselves in the story of this text, we need to think of like….post-war Berlin or bombed out Beirut. When the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem ended, the walls were destroyed, the Temple (Mt. Zion) was completely demolished, and the “city” was in such poor condition that when the exiles finally did get back, administration of the area was set up at a point outside of what had been “Jerusalem.” The point that I’m trying to bring out here is that when the prophet talks about “the water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert”…& “the burning sand will become a pool”…& “a highway will be there” & no lion will be there, nor any ravenous beast”…etc. etc., THIS IS A SELL JOB! From the biblical and historical texts of the era we know that not ALL of the exiles returned. Other than Zerubbabel, NO ONE from the royal Davidic line even returns—and the accounts as to what happened to him and how long he stayed are unclear.

What I’m saying is this… God’s people needed to be PRODDED to do the right thing (in this sense, return and re-establish a worshiping Temple community). Imagine that. I’m sure we can all relate. Passive, apathetic inertia seems to come pretty natural to humanity and it’s no different with people of faith. So, the prophet comes along to prod them with amazing tales of miraculous help along the journey. Not only will nature bow to the will of God and their journey, but those who undertake the trip will be all the better for it: the fearful will be brave; the blind will see; the deaf will hear; the lame will be able to make the journey.

Whether these promises were strictly metaphorical (or delayed to be *truly answered in the person of Jesus and his miracles as per Matthew 11), or truly realized by the exiles is sorta irrelevant. The point is, WHEN PRODDED to act in accordance with God’s will and plan…and WHEN WE DO SO, quite often we find that we are walking in a strength/ability that is far greater than anything we could generate on our own. In other words, the *power for week knees to be strengthened lies within the very promises of God and His Spirit working through those promises.

The collect for this week begins: “Stir up our wills O Lord.” We talk a lot about faith and belief, but frankly there’s a lot more to the life of discipleship than just faith. There’s also the renewed will to DESIRE to undertake the journey God has placed in front of us—and to ACT in accordance with that ‘stirred up will.’

Cheers,

TM