- Isaiah 35: 1-10
This chapter is a hinge chapter; either it belongs to the previous thirty-four chapters or it is a bridge to a later addition of the final Book of Isaiah. It retains the intensity found throughout the Book of Isaiah. There is nothing subtle or nuanced in this text. The writer’s descriptions of current events are stark, dire and spare no one. But the expressions of hope supersede every human aspiration. The landscape around Jerusalem is full of extremes contrasts. The wilderness is bleak, but where there is water there is lush, astounding beauty. Isaiah first appeals to our natural longings for beauty in nature as he imagines the time when “the desert shall rejoice and blossom.” Then he turns to our longing to be free of fear as he imagines people with courage and confidence. Next he imagines a time of healing for human afflictions: the deaf, lame, blind and dumb will be restored. Then he returns to nature as he foresees the unexpected appearance of water and its miraculous impact on the desert. When he imagines a new highway, cutting straight and level through rough terrain, he is imaging a radical change in topography to lift human aspirations. He mingles the longing for a return to the days of peace and tranquility in Jerusalem, which the people of his time desperately wanted, with a more universal human journey– a journey of the spirit– which anyone can join. The road of this spiritual journey is the love and practice of God’s ways; even a fool can follow that!
- Psalm 146: 4-9
The psalmist extrapolates from the normal human desire for good government, which in that time and place was solely dependent on the monarch, with trust in One who is truly trustworthy. Adopting God’s obsession with those on the margins puts us on a way that brings benefits to them, to all society and to ourselves. This way of living “sustains” us. (Robert Alter notes that this is one of only two times the same Hebrew word for “sustain” is used in the Psalter; the other is 147, [The Book of Psalms, p. 504])
- James 5: 7-10
The writer of James offers some practical advise to those who are engaged in God’s ways and the longing for a time when God’s ways are the norm.: “You also must be patient.”
- Matthew 11: 2-11
The relationship between John the Baptizer and Jesus is complicated. Attracting large crowds and the attention of even non-biblical, contemporary writers, John is recognized as someone clearly engaged in the same work and impact of the great prophets in the past. As depicted in Matthew, John is the one whose powerful proclamation prepared the way for Jesus. Once John is imprisoned, he gets word that the impact of Jesus is exactly what the scriptures had depicted and dreamed. Jesus is as great as any of the prophets, and he is “more than a prophet.”
Biblical hope was forged in the tragedies of God’s people over a thousand years of slavery, deliverance, war, repeated conquests and the continuous failure of human leaders. This strange kind of hope is hard won. The great prophets appeared in times of great extremes, good times and bad times. Their call always was to return to seeking and putting into practice God’s ways, which fall under one grand sign– justice! Into this word, “justice,” they poured the highest human expectations for personal and social well being. Even in the bleakest times, they insisted that pursuing God’s justice was the only way to preserve everything they valued most, even life itself. They called for patience and trust, For followers of Jesus as the Messiah, “the hopes and fears of all the years” culminate in his life and his fate.
Christians too easily imagine that the appearance of Jesus and the gospel about him is somehow something new. Would the human imagination have been prepared for him had not the prophets discovered the value of the pursuit of God’s justice, even in the bleakest situations, over many centuries? Rather than viewing the Hebrew scriptures as a scaffolding, which can be taken down once the edifice of the Christian scriptures is erected, it might be more accurate to view them as the foundation, which established the footprint and the rock bed without which the next phase of building would not have been possible. Postmodern writers insist that any expression of “new” human experience is based on what has preceded. Jacques Derrida insisted that human imagination relies on texts that precede any individual consciousness for shaping and expression. Especially toward the end of his life, the focus of his work became more intense as he considered the never-ending human quest for ideal justice; the quest is made only more intense for Derrida because it has never achieved any complete fulfillment. Deeply inspired by Derrida’s non-biblical, non-Messianic messianism, John Caputo wrote a passionate interpretation of Derrida’s work. In The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida Caputo wrote:
“This now, the Messiah’s now, belongs to messianic time and is not the now of ordinary time; the messianic time now does not maintain the maintenant of temps ordinare but breaks it open, and opens it up to what is coming, which is the very structure of messianic time. So when the Messiah says, ‘today,’ now, he means ‘Now, if only you heed me, or if you are willing to listen to my voice.’ The messianic ‘today’ means if you will begin, now, to respond to the call for the Messiah not with hollow words, but with virtue.” “That call for doing justice is also signaled by the setting of the Messiah’s appearance– among beggars, among the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, those who demand justice now….” (p. 80)
Biblical hope is hard won through many centuries of dire circumstances, which, at the time, surely seemed overwhelming. Biblical justice exceeds any human achievement. John the Baptizer gives voice to all the voices that have gone before him, culminating in the Christian gospels in the “Word made flesh.”
Anyone who has ever looked Hope in the face
will never forget it
He will search for it wherever he goes.
Octavio Paz
All is hopeless unless someone responds to the “call” of the Messiah.