In today’s Scripture readings we hear echoes of two very
different ways of describing God. These
differing descriptions serve to illustrate the development of human imagining
about God over the course of the biblical traditions. They are a mirror in which we can see our own
struggle to come to see God with new eyes.
Like our biblical ancestors, all of us are still growing in our capacity
to see with the eyes of faith.
The lesson from Isaiah represents a break-through moment in
the history of biblical religion. Here,
we are given an imagining of God without violence; a God who, rather than being
the agent of violence, offers solidarity with the victims of violence. It comes in the juxtaposition of the
traditional logic of divine punishment with a pronouncement of mercy that
collapses the old god of violence into an abyss of compassion.
Listen to the difference.
First the old god of violent retribution from Isaiah 42:24-25:
Who
gave up Jacob to the spoiler,
and Israel to the robbers?
Was it not the Lord, against whom we have sinned,
in whose ways they would not walk,
and whose law they would not obey?
and Israel to the robbers?
Was it not the Lord, against whom we have sinned,
in whose ways they would not walk,
and whose law they would not obey?
So he poured upon him the heat of his
anger
and the fury of war;
it set him on fire all around, but he did not understand;
it burned him, but he did not take it to heart.
and the fury of war;
it set him on fire all around, but he did not understand;
it burned him, but he did not take it to heart.
Israel sinned against god, refusing to keep covenant with
him, and so Israel is punished with war and exile. Earlier, the prophet tells
us that the people of Israel are deaf and blind to God’s word, and remain
obstinately so even after their punishment.
“But now thus says the Lord,” in Isaiah 43:1-4 – and this is
a big “but” –
But
now thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I
will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom,
Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you.
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom,
Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you.
Because
you are precious in my sight,
and honored, and I love you,
I give people in return for you,
nations in exchange for your life.
and honored, and I love you,
I give people in return for you,
nations in exchange for your life.
But now God is imagined as the go’el, the advocate and redeemer of his people who have become
victims of history. Now, God is not the
source of violence but rather the savior from violence: who walks with the people in a new Exodus
through the water from exile into promise.
This is a God in solidarity with victims, one who protects them from the
fires the beset them rather than igniting the flames that consume them.
Is this one and the same God? Is it God who is changing, or is it our
perception of God that us undergoing a breakthrough, a seismic shift in
awareness? The prophet in this middle
section of the Book of Isaiah heightens the tension between these images of God
until they reach the breaking point, revealing a God of compassionate presence
whose love embraces us in the depths of our brokenness, regardless of whether
we deserve it or not.
Yet, there is this curious business of exchange in the text:
“I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you . . . I
give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.” Is this simply the exchange of one set of
victims for another? With whom is God
trading, anyway? Here, I think we again
see the tension in our language about God brought to the breaking point. The prophet uses the analogy of a relative
ransoming their family member from slavery.
What is at stake is neither some metaphysical transaction within the
Godhead, nor a literal trade – “I’ll give you 6 million Egyptians and see you 2
million Ethiopians for the Jewish exiles” – but rather a poetic statement of
the vastness of God’s love, the willingness to go to any lengths to makes us
whole again.
One commentator notes that the Hebrew word translated as
“people” in “I give people in return for you,” is actually singular: “I give a
man in return for you.”[i] Is it possible that this slight textual clue
signals a relationship to the “suffering servant” of Isaiah 42:1-4 and 53:7-9, the
one who redeems evil through his nonviolent witness to justice:
Here
is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching . . .
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching . . .
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people.
They made his grave with the wicked
and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people.
They made his grave with the wicked
and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
The writers of the New Testament
drew on these passages from Isaiah to make sense of their experience of Jesus’
life, death, and resurrection, which opened up for them a new imagining of God
as boundless love without the prophet’s ambivalence toward divine violence.
Of course, traces of that
ambivalence remain in the New Testament.
We see it John the Baptist’s anticipation of Jesus in Luke 2:11-12: “I
baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful
than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will
baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in
his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into
the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Interestingly, Luke’s Gospel seeks to put some distance between
John the Baptist and Jesus. The omitted
portion of today’s Gospel passage reports the arrest and imprisonment of
John. Jesus is baptized, but by whom we
are not told. Yes, Jesus takes up the
prophetic tradition of Israel, like John, but he takes it in a different
direction. When Jesus is baptized, the
Holy Spirit is there, but there is no fire.
The Spirit takes the form of dove, a symbol of peaceful
generativity. Jesus comes to spread peace,
not fire; except, perhaps, the fire of God’s love.
We are still learning to imagine God as boundless love, free from
our violence; and let’s make it clear, it is our violence that scars history,
not God’s. The other day I saw a meme on
Facebook that I posted on our parish page.
It is a cartoon showing a row of characters: an American right-wing terrorist holding a rifle;
a preacher holding a sign that says “God hates fags”; an African general
clutching a boy soldier with a gun in his hand; an ISIL terrorist holding a
knife to the throat of a blindfolded captive; above each of them was a though
bubble with the words, “I am doing God’s will.”
Fundamentalism in all its forms is
always a regression to the old gods of sacrificial violence. Authentic spirituality follows the trajectory
of the developing consciousness of a God of boundless love that we see in the
biblical traditions. Nurturing that consciousness and allowing it to shape our
identity and action is our life's work.
As Tony Bartlett observes in his
reflection on our passage from Isaiah:
“In Isaiah's prophecy we reach the
thought of eternity only through love and that is what it is, boundless love.
The great affirmation of the uniqueness and eternity of Israel's God only comes
from a revelation of love which is the end of the cultural gods of violence.
Only, but precisely, on this basis is the Judaeo-Christian tradition entitled
to claim the exclusive truth of their God. Conversely, therefore, Christians
must understand that they can only make this claim by acknowledging the full
pathway of revelation . . . from the penultimate God of penal justice to the
God of boundless love. It means as Christians we assume ownership of the anthropological
progression described in the bible. We are the people who have been brought
through this long travail to see ourselves and the world differently, to have
new eyes. We are like Neo in the Matrix
movie who sees not just the surface appearance of people but the codes that
make up their complex violence. The ability to see is the gift of God.” [ii]
May God grant us eyes to see.
