The Historical Situation: The middle section of the book of the prophet Isaiah, chapters 40-55, is set in the period when the Jews were being permitted to return home from their exile in Babylon. Historically, a new emperor, the pagan Cyrus of Persia, had overthrown the Babylonians and ordered the release of the Jewish captives. Isaiah sees this in a cosmic context, and, in verses 41:1 through 42:9, he describes two "trials" in the court of heaven that vindicate the sovereignty of Israel's Lord. Cyrus is described as the Lord's instrument in his plan to free the Jews. Furthermore, all other gods, including the gods of the Babylonians, to whom some exiles were attracted, are convicted of impotence and stupidity. The second trial ends with today's Lectionary passage, the selection of Israel as the Lord's servant*, and the assignment of a mission to the servant.
A Theological Summary: The passage raises these questions:
- What is the servant's relationship to the Lord? (The Lord chooses the servant, upholds him, is pleased with him, gives the servant his spirit, forms the servant.)
- What is the servant to accomplish? (Establish justice on the earth, open the eyes of the blind, release prisoners and those in darkness.)
- How is the servant to behave? (Not crying out, not shouting, not making his voice heard, not breaking the bruised reed or quenching the smoldering wick; these are images of gentleness and patient understanding in the servant's dealings with those to whom he is sent.)
- What is the scope of the servant's mission? Wider than merely to the people of Israel. This is the meaning of "coastlands" and of "a light for the nations."
Proclaiming It One Way: I recommend that the lector try to evoke one or both of two mysteries here. In the first place, Israel is being challenged to reach outside itself, and to become God's instrument in a mission to other peoples. This was not a welcome development. However, it's a logical consequence of what has gone before. If Israel's Lord is the only "real" god, then the Lord is God over the pagan worshipers of other gods, and the Jews, willing or not, are the only people qualified to show the pagans this truth. In your proclamation, this calls for an emphasis on the "mission" aspects, on "nations," "the earth," "coastlands," and "the people."
Proclaiming It Another Way: Secondly, since this is the feast of the first public manifestation of the mission of the adult Jesus, the lector might try to "get into Jesus' head" as he grappled with this passage in his own heart. Don't assume that Jesus knew the future in detail, and always had a clear career-path in mind. After all, he indisputably submitted to John's baptism. Ask how Jesus "found himself" in this Scripture passage. You might proclaim it as if you were Jesus reading it aloud to himself and mulling it over as he prepares to go public.
First Reading, optional in year B: Isaiah 55:1-11
The Historical Situation: In the sixth century B.C.E., the people of Judah spent a couple of generations in exile in Babylon. They were allowed to return, finally, but the rebuilding of Jerusalem and their shattered lives there was disappointingly slow. This passage comes from a part of Isaiah written in this depressed period.
Proclaiming It: Isaiah was sure that the exile and the slowness of the recovery from it were punishment for the people's sins. Nor does he doubt God's mercy. To bolster the people's confidence, he prophesies in a set of inspirational images:
- Good food and drink are coming for the hungry. As lector, make this banquet sound as delicious as the fare in those ubiquitous commercials for The Olive Garden restaurants.
- Just as their ancestor David earned an international reputation, this people is destined to be influential among other nations, leading them, too, to worship God. (This is quite unprecedented, contradicting Israel's normal clannish, isolationist view of the world. It foreshadows Jesus' revolutionary openness to non-Jews and the universal mission imperative that Jesus will give.) In these sentences, the lector should slow down and emphasize the statement: "So shall you summon a nation you knew not, and nations that knew you not shall run to you." (We Gentile Christians are that alien nation. It would be nice to be able to recognize ourselves in your voicing of this prophecy.)
- You are not to rule out these possibilities just because you know you've been wicked. The prophet would have said "Let the scoundrel forsake his ways" with special emphasis because the scoundrel had no hope that he could or should; he felt doomed.
- This new spiritual richness is really possible because God does not think like we do. Where we are vengeful and unforgiving, God is astonishingly merciful. (The prophets were always correcting the people's tendency to fashion God in their own ungenerous image.)
- This will all happen because God says so! The last two verses form a single, seventy-word sentence that must be proclaimed with care. Where you should pause, slow down, and punch out each word with special emphasis is the climactic phrase
So shall my word be
.
The Theological Background: Remember the setting here. Your proclamation will be better if you walk a mile in Peter's sandals first by reading all of Acts, Chapter 10. You'll see what a big change Peter had to go through before he could speak to this group. Both Peter the Jewish Christian, with his typical contempt for Gentiles, and Cornelius, a Gentile distantly respectful of Jews, needed simultaneous supernatural visions to prepare them for this meeting. So for Peter the big revelation is the same as one of the themes of the Isaiah passage, above, "God shows no partiality, and accepts whoever is God-fearing and acts uprightly."
Proclaiming It: For Peter, it wasn't meditation on Isaiah 42 that proved this. It was his relationship with Jesus, and his meditation on Jesus' life, from his baptism through his resurrection. So proclaim this like Peter delivered it originally, with the conviction of one who has had the "Aha!" experience, who finally sees it all clearly.
Second Reading, optional in year B: 1 John 5:1-9
The Historical and Theological Background: We know this about communities for whom this letter was written: Some members had taught false doctrine, then left the communities. But the effects of their teaching remained. So this letter addresses the true divinity and true humanity of Jesus, knowledge of the will of God, the necessity to love one's neighbor, the redemptive value of Jesus' death, and related issues of faith and morals.
Proclaiming It: Every time I've written about how to proclaim a passage from 1 John, I've emphasized reading it s-l-o-w-l-y. That holds today. It would also help to break the reading with pauses well placed after discrete thoughts, almost sentence by sentence. Read it to yourself often, so you know where the logical breaks are. Don't be surprised to find this a daunting passage to proclaim; The writer was a poetic mystic, and his every paragraph is packed with meanings that you could fruitfully plumb for years.
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* Scholars have called this and three similar passages from this section of Isaiah the Songs of the Suffering Servant. They're about a mysterious figure, who sometimes speaks in the first person, and whom God sometimes addresses. Sometimes the Servant is described as a prophet, sometimes as one whose suffering brings about a benefit for the people. In the original author's mind, the servant was probably a figure for the people of Israel, or for a faithful remnant within the people. The gospels clearly show that Jesus, and the early church, saw aspects of Jesus' own life and mission foreshadowed in the Servant Songs, and the church refers to all of them throughout the liturgical year. Today's is the first Servant Song. The second, Isaiah 49:1-6, we proclaim on the feast of the birth of John the Baptist. On Passion Sunday, we proclaim the third, Isaiah 50:4-7, and on Good Friday, the fourth, Isaiah 52:13-53:12.
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Last modified: Sun Jan 1 11:32:12 CST 2008
