In That Day
In that day you will
say,
“I will praise you, O
LORD.
Although you were
angry with me,
your anger has turned
away
and you have
comforted me…”
Isaiah 12:1
The reader
of this verse naturally asks, “What day? What is this ‘day’ the of which the
prophet speaks?” And: “Who is the
‘me’? To whom is the prophecy
addressed?” The answers, as one would
expect, are in the text proceeding, in chapter 11. There, Isaiah prophesies of “a shoot from the
stump of Jesse,” on whom the Spirit of God will rest. The “shoot” or “Branch” will judge justly,
slaying the wicked and delivering the poor.
The prophecy is aimed at a community, at Israel; the “me” is the whole
nation. But the promise is not for
Israel only. The whole creation will be
redeemed:
The wolf will live
with the lamb,
the leopard will lie
down with the goat,
the calf and the lion
and the yearling together;
and a little child
will lead them…
They will neither
harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be
full of the knowledge of the LORD
as waters cover the
sea.
In that day, the Root
of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples…
Isaiah 11: 6, 9,10
The
“shoot,” the “Branch,” and the “Root” of Jesse are taken by Jews as titles for
the messiah to come, and by Christians as titles of Jesus. The “Day,” then, is the eschatological day of
salvation.
In the
biblical worldview, history is moving toward an end, the “Day of the
Lord.” History is not just a random sequence
of events, not just one damn thing after another. Nor is it an endless repetition of
reincarnation or cosmic cycles. The
Bible teaches that God will intervene to bring about justice and shalom. Therefore, hope has always been a crucial
virtue for biblical people. The Day of
the Lord has not yet come, so it is a fundamental feature of our lives as
believers that we hope for it.
It is
important to see that this forward-looking, hopeful stance toward God’s work in
the future predates the New Testament doctrine of resurrection. Christians are sometimes troubled by the lack
of explicit Old Testament teaching about an afterlife. They have been taught that the whole Bible is
God’s book, so they expect Christian doctrine to appear everywhere. And Christian preachers often feed this
expectation by finding prophecies of the messiah all over the Old Testament—and
by reading Christian doctrines, such as the doctrine of the resurrection, into
Bible passages that say nothing of them.
The fact of the matter is that the Old Testament is ambiguous when it
comes to the idea of a personal afterlife.
The notions of individual resurrection and a personal afterlife gained
widespread popularity among Jews in the Hellenistic period, roughly 300 BC and
after. In Jesus’ day, resurrection was a
matter of theological debate. The
Sadducees, stickers for the actual words of the Torah, denied resurrection. The Pharisees believed in it. Jesus, for all his conflict with Pharisees on
other matters, sided with them emphatically.
My point is
not to question the doctrine of resurrection.
Jesus’ teaching settles the question for Christians. The point is that hope was fundamental to
Israel’s religion even before belief in resurrection.
Christians,
when thinking about hope, often start with resurrection. It is entirely appropriate that we do so. Jesus’ resurrection is at the heart of
Christian preaching. Without the hope of
resurrection, Paul says, Christians deserve to be pitied.
But
Christian thinking about hope must not stop with resurrection. We must be especially careful not to reduce
hope to a purely individual matter.
Christianity is not just “Jesus and me, a love story.” Hope was an integral part of the biblical
mindset before belief in individual, personal afterlife.
Israel
hoped—and therefore Christians should hope—for “that day.” Jesus preached repentance because the “kingdom
of God” was near. Jesus’ term, “kingdom
of God” (or “kingdom of heaven”), was rooted in Old Testament promises of the
Day. In Jesus’ ministry the kingdom of
God was actually breaking into the world.
When Jesus preached to Palestinian peasants, time was bending; the
future Day was present now to those who believed.
(By Jesus’
“ministry” I mean to include his teaching, his miracles, his deliberate
gathering of disciples in anticipation of a death he openly predicted, his
crucifixion, and his resurrection. New
Testament theologians often speak of his “ministry” in this inclusive way.)
What do we
hope for, when we hope for “that day”?
First, social justice: a lifting up of the poor and punishment for
powerful and rich people who have oppressed them. This theme echoes in Mary’s prophecy about
her son (Luke 1:52-54) and in Jesus’ own preaching (Luke 3:16-21). It almost goes without saying that the “day”
will be a time of righteousness; as Paul says, the kingdom of God is
righteousness, peace, and joy in the Spirit.
Isaiah’s
prophecy widens our perspective. “That
day” will bring an earth restored; or better, an earth renewed: “a new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1). Isaiah envisions predators living in harmony
with erstwhile prey, and children playing with wild creatures. Shalom between people will parallel shalom in
the creation.
A
mind-boggling vision, to say the least!
Would a leopard be a leopard if it weren’t a carnivore? Isn’t meat-eating essential to the form of
leopard? Isaiah’s prophecy presses on
our imagination. How could these things
be?
For many
people, it is just as difficult to conceive of human beings living in peace
with each other. Isn’t egocentricity
essential to our being? We maintain
ourselves as selves by excluding the other.
A superficial “peace” can be made by military force, so long as the
superior power holds the lesser powers down.
But can there be real shalom?
I am
stressing the “weirdness” of Isaiah’s prophecy to emphasize the thoroughgoing
nature of biblical hope. Biblical hope
looks forward to “that Day.” It is, to
use Jonathan Lear’s term, a “radical” hope.
We hardly know how to express it.
We cling to it even in dark times, when the earth seems broken by
pollution and society torn by hate.
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