Isaiah 8-9

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Isaiah 8 and 9

Isaiah is an odd read when you move straight through it, because it can give you whip lash the way it switches tone.  It goes from threatening death and destruction and occupation of Israel, which I'm pretty sure is mostly talking about the upcoming invasion of Judea during Isaiah's time, to talking about deliverance and forgiveness and God's love with the coming of the Messiah.

The passage "The people in darkness have seen a great light" which is such a lovely whole (really, more of Isaiah should be read in its full context - stop cherry picking verses!), but it is all the more striking for being surrounded by lamentations of our wickedness and God's just revenge upon the whole nation.

It, like reading Peter, have really made me think in the back half of this Lent, about how Jesus came when Judea was invaded, when it was under the thrall of Rome, when everyone was waiting for the next time God would swoop in and save them - choose some thoroughly unlikely prophet and raise an army and/or perform wonders and/or do an elaborate shadow play with the Emperor of Rome in order to save His people and return their freedom.  Like He had before.

And perhaps the fact that God's promise of saving those who have suffered, those who have been in the darkness, is surrounded and seems to (in the mind of this prophet) live comfortably alongside the warnings of invasion and oppression should have been a clue that what we really need deliverance for is a very different kind of problem.

God isn't political.  He's spiritual.  Jesus came to deliver us from the darkness of sin and the cloud of the threat of damnation and the terrible weight and darkness from being trapped in our own ugly messes.

You can be spiritually free even when you're politically oppressed.  It can get you in trouble with the oppressing state (just ask the early Christians), but it's a lesser problem. It's an Earth-problem, not a soul-problem.  Not a heaven-problem.  Not the kind of problem that stops you from trying to fix the world or be closer to God.