Tag: beloved

Speaking Delight

(c) Katherine E. Brown

On account of Zion, I will not be silent.
On account of Jerusalem, I will not be still —
Until as brightness her righteousness goes out,
And her salvation burns as flame.

Isaiah 62:1 (my transl.); see Isaiah 62:1-5 NRSVUE

The lectionary repeats every three years, so I am again looking at this Isaiah text. Again pondering silence and speech, naming and re-naming, brightness and sight. Again wondering if and how there might be any news in this text so old. I’ve written on it already. Why write on it again? Why keep speaking the need to speak? Is anyone even listening, or are we all tired of the same old summons to righteousness, said as if we’ve made no forward motion in the last 70 years?

The lectionary repeats every three years, and sometimes the ancient text and the current calendar seem so in sync that that synchronicity itself speaks. This section from the prophet Isaiah is assigned for Sunday, the eve of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, this year also the eve of the presidential inauguration. The concurrence of these two observances has its own awkward synchronicity. One looks back at the man who called the nation to ‘Stride Towards Freedom’ — urging us forward towards making real the ideals we ostensibly espouse. The other inducts into office the man who calls for greatness ‘again,’ said with a backward glance, towards some imagined former, now-lost, luster. Each attitude in its way acknowledges that where we are as a people is not where we are meant to be; they hold this conviction in common with each other. So too Isaiah, the prophet who looks back to look forward, modeling the insight that reiteration may be, after all, part of the point.

The oracle that begins in 62:1 is not beginning from scratch, after all. The last section of the prophetic book, Isaiah 56-66, is replete with call-backs to what had come before, renewing and extending God’s promises to God’s people. Not because life had been static since the promises first were proclaimed but because the proclamation had not yet been fully realized: life had lurched forward, and twisted sideways, and shifted again, and still there was more road ahead.

Time it was that God had declared that the time for silence was past — that time had come to to cry out like a warrior, like a woman in labor — that God was birthing something new in and for God’s people, turning ‘darkness into light’ (Isa 42:10-16). The context for those promises was war, exile, inestimable loss. God’s people had cried out their conviction of forsakenness — and God had reassured that the LORD had not forsaken, that God was returning to embrace, that Daughter Zion should again be a rejoicing bride (Isa 49:14-18; 54:6-8).

Fifty or 100 years on, some of those promises had been realized: official exile had ended; deportees had returned to the land of their origin; Jerusalem had been rebuilt. Yet not all returned. The rebuilt city was less than the remembered old. The rough places had not been made all plain nor the crooked straight; God’s glory had not yet shone so universally bright that all flesh rejoiced in seeing it together (Isa 40:3-5).

Creation’s joy may have burst forth at the anticipation of return, but some 70 years on, its song seemed too soon over (Isa 55:12-13). God’s people were divided. They quarreled. They had to be reminded yet again, to keep justice and do righteousness, that God’s salvation was drawing near, that God’s righteousness being revealed (Isa 56:1). The time for silence was long, long past (Isa 42:13-14). The time to cry out is not yet over (Isa 62:1). Words are required again, and still, until righteousness shines bright and salvation flames. God does not cut short God’s bringing-forth any more than a laboring woman stops her labor short of birth. The only way to go is forward. Not because progress has not been made but because it has not yet been fully realized.

Life lurches forward, and twists sideways, and slouches ahead again, and still there is more road ahead. We look back to get our bearings, align ourselves with the marks, and adjust our way. Until God’s promise is realized fully and completely: salvation aflame and righteousness shining bright and all flesh — all — rejoicing in present glory and bridal delight.

A skim coat of glory

photograph (c) Katherine E. Brown

“And now, thus says the LORD, the one who is creating you, Jacob, the one who is forming you, Israel.

You shall not fear, for I redeemed you; I called you by your name. You are mine.”

Isaiah 43:1 (my translation); Isaiah 43:1-7 NRSVUE

I’m sitting up late Friday night and glance at the window, get up to move closer and look more carefully. Did I see some movement in the air? Has snow begun? I peer through the windowpane towards the porch light of the house opposite. No snow. Not yet. Perhaps the quiver I saw was a trick of my eyes, or my imagination, or even just my desire. Wanting snow.

We are due for snow. More snow, I should say: we already had a good fall this week, over six inches, the first good cover we’ve had in a while. My own snow yearning feels silly to me. Still, I dearly want it to come, longing not so much for added inches as for seeing the air quivering with snow magic, the shining of it coming down to cover the ground. It’s the sight of it that makes my heart leap. Becoming made visible.

That’s what it is. It’s not just the way the world is changed by the covering white: the shapes of things softened and mounded under the snow; surfaces smoothed; the colors of things not snow-covered altered by being set against such whiteness. It’s the way the transformation itself is visible in time. I can watch the flakes flurry and dance in swirling descent, can see them set the first skim-coat of white on the ground, lay successive layers on the first. Brightness falls through the air, makes earth shine with light rich and strange, and this wonder unfolds in the right time for my own eyes’ perceiving.

That’s what I long for: to be able to see re-creation occurring, to watch and marvel at its grace. Who wouldn’t want to be see glory coming? To tremble at its awful weight and to find rest in its wondrous love. To know — bone-deep — that the wheel of time is turning on towards redemption. That the years are not waste. That the losses are not the end.

‘And now, thus says the LORD — .’ God God-self speaking. God speaking to those who had passed through waters, had walked through fires [Isa 43:2]. God speaking even to those who had lost homes and livelihoods and loved ones to flood or flame, to war or exile. Name it Babylon or Gaza, Helene or Palisades, or the quotidian inequities still inadequately redressed. God speaks in these contexts. God speaks to us.

‘And now, thus says the LORD, the one who is creating you, Jacob, the one who is forming you, Israel — .’ Scanning the Hebrew, I recognize the participles, re-read the text as creation on-going, as formation unfolding. Jacob-Israel. Me-us. Becoming created and fully formed even as already we are called by name, already we are redeemed. The paradox of this juxtaposition: our redemption complete; our re-creation coming yet to be.

Oh, there’s a web of connections here! God who declares the LORD his name, who gives his glory (‘kabod’) to no other [Isaiah 42:8], calls being-created-Jacob, being-formed-Israel, ‘precious’ and ‘honored’ (‘kabod-ed’) and ‘beloved’ [Isaiah 43:4]. God speaks of and to ‘all who are called by my name’ [Isa 43:7] — a call-back to v.1, where God calls us by our names. Now, v.7, we hear that to call us by our own names is also to call us of-God’s. ‘To my glory (that word again, kabod) I created them, I formed them (more call-back to v.1), also I made them.’

A web of connections to unspool. But maybe for tonight, I’ll go back to verse 1. To the promise of that paradox. That already we are redeemed even as we are coming yet to be. That God’s own glory is bound up in our becoming, and that as the LORD will not give God’s glory to any other, neither will the LORD give us up to any other end but God’s own. I may pray to see the aim more clearly in my context, but meanwhile there is the promise of the text to ponder, and in its heart to rededicate myself, notwithstanding all that I cannot see.

Paul comes upstairs, goes to pull the window shade. ‘Oh!’ he says, ‘It’s snowing!’ For this, I scramble out of bed and hurry to the window. I lean near and look out and up to the streetlight, and in its brightness, I can see it! Fine stuff shifting down, each pinpoint mote distinct. The air moves and shines and already there is a fresh skim coat of glory on the ground.

Becoming made visible.