Chris Skilton | April 13, 2010
This evening I want to invite us to reflect on “The Isaiah Community”, not in the first instance on ourselves, but on the community that began to cohere around the prophet who ministered in Jerusalem in the eighth century before the birth of Christ. Speculation continues about the origin, development and transmission of the material that has been collected together in the book we know as “Isaiah”. However you will know that it relates to, even if it does not all emanate from, at least three different periods of Israel’s history. These are, from Jerusalem in the eight century BC when the city was faced with the real threat of being over-run by the powerful Assyrian army; from the life of the exiles of Jerusalem who were taken to Babylon in the sixth century when the city was destroyed and from some less determinate period when some of the exiles had returned and Jerusalem was being rebuilt, albeit in a rather desultory fashion.
The material has been gathered together because some themes recur and weave in and out of these chapters from different periods of history. Even if the only members of an “Isaiah community” are those who spoke, wrote, edited and collated these words there is still something of a community spread over a couple of hundred years. In the light of the discussions that will take place after our worship this evening about the shape and direction of this current ‘Isaiah community’, I want to suggest some pointers that may be helpful and relevant from our forbears. Firstly, they all had a profound understanding of their present context. Each part of the material shows a deep interest in the political, social, moral, theological and economic issues of the day. That’s true whether it was the political policies of King Hezekiah, the religious thought systems of Babylon or the dejected economic state of life after the return from exile. The ‘Isaiah’ material is marked by a careful discernment and insight into the current state of play in these societies. An important element of the credibility for the message that was spoken was the manifest time and care that had gone into getting under the skin of contemporary society. Herein then is the first challenge for this community – to know this world well. Many here will come with the skills, insights and different perspectives to enable the community to do just that. Everyone here will have some of the experiences of living, working and having their being in South London. This is invaluable raw material to share in coming to understand the issues, joys and needs of this society.
Then the original community had undertaken a passionate rediscovery of the roots and identity of that society. It was conscious of its calling to draw people back tot he inheritance of how and why they had been shaped (and to note how that in itself developed from the more exclusive eighth century world to the potentially more inclusive sixth century society). Those roots were especially to be found in an identity that was shaped and formed in covenant relationship with Yahweh – the God who gave them their identity, purpose and common cause. The issues of the day were not simply economic or moral ones but profoundly theological ones. The relationship was focussed in the covenant between Yahweh and his people – which bound them inextricably together and which whilst rooted in he past had much to say about their covenant living in the present. It was loyalty to the covenant which was the touchstone of many of society’s ills. A “new Labour” take on the message of the prophet might be described as ‘tough on covenant unfaithfulness; tough on the causes of covenant unfaithfulness”! It is in this relationship that the qualities of justice, righteousness, faithfulness and loving kindness are to be understood. So justice (the word which translates the Hebrew mishpat) means impartial; arbitration, equitable treatment or an adherence to an ideal of what is right – but is focussed on the highest values of a right relationship with Yahweh, with other people and indeed with the whole created order. Recognising this will inform our own understanding of what justice might look like in an Isaiah community today.
And thirdly, the Isaiah community embraced a poetic evocation of God’s new society. The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann in his book “Hopeful Imagination” expresses this well. In writing about Second Isaiah (and Ezekiel and Jeremiah) he says, “the poets not only discerned the new actions of God that others did not discern, but they wrought the new actions of God by the power of their imagination, their tongues, their words. New poetic imagination evoked new realities in the community”. He goes on to suggest that “they present for Israel a new reading of historical reality that is really there in the public process, but it is not fully present until brought to imaginative speech..they articulate a vision which captures the imagination and evokes and empowers and inspires forward”. This seems to me to describe well the power of the poetry of Isaiah which is not simply about dreaming of future possibilities but imagining and then declaring the future. Here is a challenge to us to day, to take the fruits of that poetic imagining offered to us in Isaiah to empower and inspire us to see the reality not only declared but brought into being – however that vision of justice and righteousness under Yahweh is to be enacted.
The original Isaiah community focused not just on one of the past, present and future but on all three in creative tension for the potential good life of the people they addressed. So too for us: to attend only to the present is to be a social observer – which is interesting; to focus exclusively on the past is to veer towards fundamentalism, which is dangerous and to gaze only into the future is to be an idealist – which may be irrelevant. God guard us from being only interesting or dangerous or irrelevant when following the example of the first Isaiah community we have the resources and the potential to make a difference today.
The material has been gathered together because some themes recur and weave in and out of these chapters from different periods of history. Even if the only members of an “Isaiah community” are those who spoke, wrote, edited and collated these words there is still something of a community spread over a couple of hundred years. In the light of the discussions that will take place after our worship this evening about the shape and direction of this current ‘Isaiah community’, I want to suggest some pointers that may be helpful and relevant from our forbears. Firstly, they all had a profound understanding of their present context. Each part of the material shows a deep interest in the political, social, moral, theological and economic issues of the day. That’s true whether it was the political policies of King Hezekiah, the religious thought systems of Babylon or the dejected economic state of life after the return from exile. The ‘Isaiah’ material is marked by a careful discernment and insight into the current state of play in these societies. An important element of the credibility for the message that was spoken was the manifest time and care that had gone into getting under the skin of contemporary society. Herein then is the first challenge for this community – to know this world well. Many here will come with the skills, insights and different perspectives to enable the community to do just that. Everyone here will have some of the experiences of living, working and having their being in South London. This is invaluable raw material to share in coming to understand the issues, joys and needs of this society.
Then the original community had undertaken a passionate rediscovery of the roots and identity of that society. It was conscious of its calling to draw people back tot he inheritance of how and why they had been shaped (and to note how that in itself developed from the more exclusive eighth century world to the potentially more inclusive sixth century society). Those roots were especially to be found in an identity that was shaped and formed in covenant relationship with Yahweh – the God who gave them their identity, purpose and common cause. The issues of the day were not simply economic or moral ones but profoundly theological ones. The relationship was focussed in the covenant between Yahweh and his people – which bound them inextricably together and which whilst rooted in he past had much to say about their covenant living in the present. It was loyalty to the covenant which was the touchstone of many of society’s ills. A “new Labour” take on the message of the prophet might be described as ‘tough on covenant unfaithfulness; tough on the causes of covenant unfaithfulness”! It is in this relationship that the qualities of justice, righteousness, faithfulness and loving kindness are to be understood. So justice (the word which translates the Hebrew mishpat) means impartial; arbitration, equitable treatment or an adherence to an ideal of what is right – but is focussed on the highest values of a right relationship with Yahweh, with other people and indeed with the whole created order. Recognising this will inform our own understanding of what justice might look like in an Isaiah community today.
And thirdly, the Isaiah community embraced a poetic evocation of God’s new society. The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann in his book “Hopeful Imagination” expresses this well. In writing about Second Isaiah (and Ezekiel and Jeremiah) he says, “the poets not only discerned the new actions of God that others did not discern, but they wrought the new actions of God by the power of their imagination, their tongues, their words. New poetic imagination evoked new realities in the community”. He goes on to suggest that “they present for Israel a new reading of historical reality that is really there in the public process, but it is not fully present until brought to imaginative speech..they articulate a vision which captures the imagination and evokes and empowers and inspires forward”. This seems to me to describe well the power of the poetry of Isaiah which is not simply about dreaming of future possibilities but imagining and then declaring the future. Here is a challenge to us to day, to take the fruits of that poetic imagining offered to us in Isaiah to empower and inspire us to see the reality not only declared but brought into being – however that vision of justice and righteousness under Yahweh is to be enacted.
The original Isaiah community focused not just on one of the past, present and future but on all three in creative tension for the potential good life of the people they addressed. So too for us: to attend only to the present is to be a social observer – which is interesting; to focus exclusively on the past is to veer towards fundamentalism, which is dangerous and to gaze only into the future is to be an idealist – which may be irrelevant. God guard us from being only interesting or dangerous or irrelevant when following the example of the first Isaiah community we have the resources and the potential to make a difference today.
