Advent/Isaiah

I’ve been thinking about Isaiah these past few days, as have many Christians. It is hard to escape Isaiah during Advent. Luke quotes Isaiah 40: 3-5 in his description of John’s mission of baptism (Lk. 3: 4-6; also Matthew 3: 3), preparing the way for Christ. The libretto of Handel’s Messiah begins, Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, a reference to Isaiah 40:1. In all, verses from Isaiah account for 15 of the 53 biblical references in Messiah. That God had given Isaiah a vision of Jesus 700 years in advance seems quite clear to the Christian community. Isaiah’s description of God’s servant (see principally Isa. 52:13-53:12) is referenced nearly three dozen times by all four gospel writers, Luke in Acts, Paul in his letters to the Romans and Corinthians, the letter to Hebrews, letters by Peter and John, and John’s Revelation.

Yet visions are often conflicting and therefore difficult to understand. Isaiah’s visions run the gamut. Luke’s gospel records an event in which Jesus reads an Isaiah prophesy of good news to the poor, release of captives, sight to the blind and the year of the Lord’s favor, proclaiming it to be fulfilled in that instant (Lk. 4:16-21, Isa. 61:1-2a). How then was it to be good news to the poor that the servant leader Jesus would be mocked, rejected, tortured, condemned and killed as Isaiah envisioned in Chapter 53? Whence is the glory of Zion envisioned by Isaiah’s Chapter 60? I get confused.

When that happens it helps me to turn to Jeremiah who lived through the destruction of Jerusalem and exile about a century after Isaiah. His vision was pretty clear. “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts…they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” (Jer. 31: 31-34) It seems to me God sent God’s Son to do just that…and perhaps a lot more.

Jesus said to his disciple Thomas, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also.” (Jn. 14: 6-7a).