Dec 17 | Resistance Lectionary Part 25: Hope Abides

Today’s Citation: Isaiah 6:1-10

This is another passage that is very popular at ordinations, but tends to be cut off early. No-one likes to hear verse 9 and those following! What could they possibly mean? What kind of folks want to hear that their new cleric is bound to speak truth that they will refuse to hear? And who in the world wants to hear that God’s desire is for us not to be saved?

Churches shouldn’t feel too defensive or indeed get too down on themselves when they hear this. People in general would prefer not to hear anything that challenges their deeply guarded sense of self. There is no shame in that – unpleasant truths are unpleasant for a reason. We can so often find ourselves shaken by the realization that we are not perfect…and indeed sometimes we are far, far less than perfect.

But we are called to grow beyond flawed self-images and easy defensiveness, as painful as the growth may be. And in the world we’re living in, where the stakes are getting higher every day, maybe we should sit down and consider whether or not we have allowed our greed and excess to haul us past a point of no return.

What if it is too late to be saved, as we sit here squabbling in a little bubble as the world burns around us and polar bears drown and millions starve while the happy few in the West hoard food even as it spoils?

The gift of Isaiah is that it’s a terribly long book which many scholars believe is actually a collection of three books, possibly written by three different people or groups of people. The first, as we see in this passage, is not very hopeful, and most scholars believe that this Isaiah might have been the OG Isaiah, who was watching the state around him beginning to crumble as it attempted to assert itself and fell victim to corruption and pride. Eventually, of course, the state fell apart and was partitioned off to the ravenous nations that brought about its downfall. This is likely the background for Second or Deutero-Isaiah, written during the Exile, which promises restoration and the coming of a Messiah who will liberate the Jewish people from the Persians (here referred to in code as “Babylon”).

Throughout all the woes and fears of the coming apocalypse, however, is a glimmering thread of hope that God will call back a repentant people into the arms of love.

This is the hope given to us as Christians: that Jesus was sent to us because God cared so much for our salvation that, recognizing we were having trouble obeying Her words on a page, brought us a human figure with whom to identify.

And not a powerful or scholarly or superhero figure.

A poor, likely illiterate brown man, who gathered all people to himself, healing and proclaiming good news.

The joy of Advent is that we are looking forward to the eventual return of Jesus, as well as the revelation of the incarnation at Christmastime, the ecstatic wonder of God taking on our flesh in order to close the gap between fragile mortality and the infinite. And while the response of the empire to his message was arrest and execution, it was not enough to halt the light.

There is always hope, even at the end of the world.