Isaiah 35:1-10
Third Sunday of Advent: December 12, 2010
We’re waiting…we’re waiting for what’s hoped for, what we deeply long for for this world. We read the visions of the prophets, and we all probably have our own visions – our own ways of expressing what must lie out there somewhere as a possibility. And we wait for it – long for it. At the same time last week we talked about how it is an active waiting…there is much to do while we wait. There are some swords we can beat into plowshares. There are some ways we can recognize our power over others and find a way to disabuse ourselves of the power so we can be reconciled to those we hurt. There are some ways we can, even in our vulnerability, take risks so we can be reconciled to the perceived enemies in our lives.
This week we read in Isaiah a vision of what it would look like if we were reconciled with creation…with our environment. This is a beautiful poem about what he and the people longed for creation: that the desert would blossom abundantly, it would rejoice with joy and singing, burning sands would become pools of water, water would spring in the dry wilderness. It is another vision for which we – right along with our faith ancestors living in the time of Isaiah – wait. Actively wait – but still – it hadn’t happened then, and it hasn’t happened yet. We wait.
The third week into Advent I can’t help but ask, Can we really wait? Can we live with ourselves, figuratively and literally, in the meantime. In some ways, each day, the answer to the literal question is “no, we can’t live with ourselves.” People are dying because of war, people are dying because of powerful systems that produce and maintain poverty, and people are dying because of the many ways we have destroyed the environment so far.
I also think the figurative answer to that question might be “no”. I wonder if any of us can be spiritually whole if the natural world around us is hurting so much. We are not able to live with ourselves without feeling broken, guilty, responsible…all of those things that wear us down over time. We may be alive, but we are spiritually deadened in some way when we watch what’s happening to our planet.
It was not completely different 3000 years ago. They weren’t using terms like ozone holes, bio-diversity and eco-justice, but they understood creation was not whole. The vision of Isaiah Janet just read is a response to what was really happening at the time. The destruction of the land and the environment was laid out just a few chapters before ours.
“The earth dries up and withers…The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt.”
They knew a reality that we know – even if the pollutants are different and we disagree about the causes and science of nature. We have a very different understanding from Isaiah of why we are where we are today environmentally. Most of us don’t see it as a direct infliction of destruction by God as punishment for the peoples’ failures – we see it scientifically, logically. It is the obvious outcome of human actions over time – not divine punishment. But even though our understandings are different in this regard, I think in the end we can relate to the sadness in Isaiah’s description of the earth. I think the people were dying literally and figuratively because all was not well with creation. I suspect waiting for things to get better also felt frustrating to them, to put it mildly.
I’ve heard many of you lament with Isaiah-like passion the state of our environment and the effects our actions as people and countries are having on our surroundings. There is much sadness about global warming, and the waning of species, and environmental toxins. There is fear and urgency – there is, at times, hopelessness. And at times, even for the most practical, scientific folks, it feels like nothing short of a direct divine intervention – a miracle – will turn it all around. We can relate to the sadness people felt over the natural world because it is our sadness today.
But just as we can relate to the sadness of ecological breakdown without sharing the worldview of the people in Isaiah’s time, I think we can share the hope he offers in our passage this morning as well, even though our understanding of how creation works is a far cry from Isaiah’s. The Hebrew worldview, and that of Christianity until the scientific revolution for that matter, assumed that nature is alive, filled with soul or spirit. They believed humans interact with this spirit in nature, and nature is responsive to God as a community of living creatures who relate to God in their own right.
There are many examples in the bible where God is seen as taking profound pleasure in the work of creation, and creation in turn responds to God with praise. God rejoices in the world that God creates, and the planets, mountains, brooks, animals and plants return this rejoicing in their relations to God.
By the same token, the people believed this relationship between God and nature, between God and creatures, is not in isolation from humankind. In fact humankind is just one part of the larger creation. When there is healing among people there is healing in all of creation, and vice versa. Conversely when creation is destroyed in some way, humankind is a part of that by definition. When the land is dry, people suffer. When the air is polluted, people suffer. When humans are careless with resources, people suffer.
For Isaiah and other authors of our scriptures, injustice to people equals injustice to the earth. These connections were a given. If you want the earth to flourish, seek justice for your neighbors. If you want your neighbors to flourish, seek healing and restoration for nature. He makes that connection explicit in today’s passage: He says that the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the lame will leap like deer, and the tongue of the speechless will sing for joy…because waters shall break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. He links them – because nature is restored, people will flourish.
Most of us don’t see nature and the environment as having a relationship to the divine in the same way humans do. We don’t imagine songs being sung to God by the hills or roaring seas. We don’t think of trees clapping in exultation of their creator God. We also often pit human flourishing against environmental flourishing. Robert Pollin is one author who articulates this unfortunate reality. He wrote in an article in The Nation:
“[T]he aims of environmental sustainability and social justice are seen as equally worthy, yet painfully and unavoidably in conflict. Tree huggers and spotted owls are pitted against loggers and hard hats. Fighting global warming is seen to inevitably worsen global poverty and vice versa.”
But the worldview of Isaiah might be a way to see things differently today – seeing creation as having a relationship with the divine much as we see our own relationship to God may help us past our need to treat creation as the means to our ends. Humans and nature are not diametrically opposed – we are interconnected in every way. The earth ceases to rejoice when people are driven from their land into refugee camps which are over populated and under served. The global atmosphere of competition over cooperation means the earth’s resources are hoarded or used indiscriminately. Water is stolen from Mexico to water lawns in Arizona. Energy is used to further production without counting the cost of environmental degradation.
Prophetic thought knits together the injustice of humans toward one another and the devastation of the earth. It also lays out a vision of redemptive hope in which a human conversion to justice renews the earth and restores harmony between humans, nature, and God. Isaiah calls this the Holy Way that will appear in the midst of our torn and broken world.
For Jews, the Holy way is the Torah – the covenant – the way to shalom/restoration. They see God breaking in to the world time and time again to remind them of their covenant – of their promises in response to God’s. For us, we see in Jesus an embodiment of that covenantal way. What we share is the belief that the road to shalom is a return to the way of the covenant – and at the heart of that covenant is living in such a way that all of creation flourishes. All: not just humans and not just non-humans.
From the biblical point of view, when humans break their covenant with God and with one another by social injustice and war, the covenant between God, humanity, and nature is broken. War and violence in society and the polluted, barren, hostile face of nature are both expressions of this violation of the covenant.
But this is not the end of the prophetic vision. When humanity mends its ways with God, the covenant of creation is restored and renewed. Restoration of just relations between peoples restores peace to society and also heals nature. Just, peaceful societies, where people are not enslaved and where violence has been overcome also blossom forth in a peaceful, harmonious, and fruitful land.
But this still brings us back to the nagging Advent question: Can we wait? Isaiah says the Holy Way will appear in the wilderness, but we don’t always see it – or even if we see it, it seems the rest of the world is hell-bent on destruction – on silencing the joyous songs of the waters and hills. Isaiah paints a nice picture, but in the meantime it feels like we are retreating from, not advancing toward, that picture. Many people these days think we are past the point of no return. That the waiting should have been over years ago; we should have acted in much more dramatic ways then we have up to this point, and now, the doomsday sayers tell us, we are waiting, but only for our own inevitable, complete destruction.
I don’t believe all is lost…that’s my faith. It’s not blind or naïve. I, like Isaiah, see the world for what it is and mourn over the brokenness, and will likely do so all my life in some ways. But we type “A” folks, people used to being able to affect our own futures and people who like to take control sometimes see Advent waiting as waiting for perfection and short of that, nothing is okay. I’m not sure that’s what Isaiah’s visions were about – perfection. They were about glimpses of what’s possible here and now…that’s what made them hopeful.
Perfection wasn’t what Jesus’ life was about either. He healed and taught and brought people into his ministry in the middle of a world that was likely as far from perfect as ours. And his life didn’t make everything perfect, even though he was the one the early Christians believed they were waiting for. But his ministry did cause the lame people he met to leap with joy – it made the fruits of the earth produce more wine than anyone thought possible. His ministry brought the realm of God near for all those he met, even as much of the world stayed the same.
The beauty – the joy – is that when we choose the Holy Way, even if it doesn’t bring perfection, we get to hear God singing in creation, we get to see moments of water in the desert, people healed, weak becoming strong. What we wait for actually comes all the time around us, just as Jesus entered a broken world and made God’s realm – Isaiah’s visions – real all around him. Of course we want perfection, of course we long for a world where none suffer and creation is completely restored to its original beauty – we would be crazy not to want this. But we can’t wait for such a world any more than we can wait for complete destruction without living faithfully in the meantime.
Faithful living does pull the Realm of God closer, it does lift the veil on a world where creation bursts forth in song and provides for humans as humans provide for it. And faithful living means seeking justice for both humankind and the creation in which we reside. When we ensure the rivers of our world continue to sing, the people who live near them will rejoice in their abundance of health and good food. When we give people enough to eat, the land around them will praise God for freedom from exploitation. “The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy – because waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.” Amen.
