Standing Under the Scriptures
December 14, 2008

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

This Sunday the 11 o’clock service will consist of Advent lessons and carols, with (I presume) several readings. In our class I propose to go ahead anyway with the readings prescribed by the lectionary---both of them paralleling but also diverging from those for last Sunday.

Isaiah 61.1-11: Where our Isaiah reading last Sunday had reference to the fact of Israel’s deliverance from exile, this Sunday’s, which begins, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,” is in terms of the implementation of that deliverance.

John 1.6-8, 19-28: These verses give St. John’s version of the role of John the Baptist.

Both our readings last Sunday were outstanding passages: Isaiah’s proclamation of the return of Israel’s exiles from their captivity (40.1-11) and Mark’s succinct portrait of John the Baptist (1.1-8). We discussed their significance in themselves but perhaps not sufficiently their connection with each other. And without this we may not have fully grasped their profundity.

We agreed that the Isaiah passage, to which Handel’s music in Messiah does justice, is one of the most magnificent in the biblical literature. I offered some technical notes. It comes at the beginning of what is generally regarded as Second Isaiah. Chapters 40 and following seem to regard the Exile as coming or having come to an end, whereas the previous chapters presuppose for the most part a pre-exilic setting, albeit they are full of warnings of it. Thus biblical critics have distinguished between them. The distinction accords, in fact, with the non-linear nature of the prophetic writings: Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Minor Prophets as well as Isaiah itself. They appear to be compilations of prophetic sayings not necessarily in chronological sequence by the prophets’ followers more likely than by the prophets themselves.

We focused rather more on how the Isaiah passage “works.” It takes the form of a message to Israel’s exiles concerning their return, impending if not actual, from their captivity in Babylon. It declares that the iniquity of the people, which was the cause of their exile, has by it been fully expiated and that just as their spiritual topography has been altered so also will the physical topography of the intervening wilderness, to expedite their journey home: “Every valley will be lifted up and every mountain and hill made low.” In this the Lord’s presence will be made manifest. In contrast to human ephemerality, the word to this effect that he has spoken will endure. And he is a God who combines surpassing might with tenderness like that of a shepherd for his flock.

So this is a message of deliverance but not just of Israel’s exiles. For it resonates with other experiences of deliverance, including our own. I think of how Thomas Cranmer, to whom we owe our sublime Rite I liturgy, must have felt when Henry VIII plucked him from academic obscurity to be his Archbishop of Canterbury. I think also of how I felt when, after four months of arduous infantry training during World War II I was sent not into combat but into Japanese language training. No doubt class members have had comparable experiences of deliverance.

But there was a catch here, Israel’s exiles, once returned had no easy time of it. Reconstruction of their land was fraught with difficulties. And along the way they fell under foreign domination, first of the Seleucids, one of the successors to Alexander the Great, and then of the Romans. Correspondingly Cranmer, as Archbishop, was subjected to impediments by Henry, and in the end Queen Mary burned him at the stake. And on my arrival in Japan to take part in the occupation, I was overwhelmed by the war’s utter devastation of that country. Did, and does, deliverance such as Isaiah gloriously prophesied then turn out to be in vain?

Here is where John the Baptist comes in. At first glance the main commonality between our two passages might seem to be the wilderness, through which the returning exiles were to travel and in which John proclaimed his baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. But the wilderness itself is symbolic, of John as the link between the old covenant and the new, which the New Testament writers consistently make clear. Consistent with this, Mark begins his account by quoting from the very passage of Isaiah which we read:

“A voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord...”

John, however, is more than a baptizer. He is also and more the forerunner and proclaimer of the Messiah. To be sure, the kingdom which the Messiah will usher in is not immediately evident, just as the wilderness is not immediately evident as a way of salvation. In fact in the eyes of the world it is hard slog and no kingdom at all. But to those to whom it is given to discern with the eye of faith, all other kingdoms are in vain; only this one is true. Further, it is glorious, in this respect surpassing even what Isaiah looked toward. Thus in Christ Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled and fulfilled abundantly, for us as for all believers. And John the Baptist can be taken as saying, with Isaiah, “Behold your God.”

Faithfully, Fr. Ted