Wednesday 13th, February 2008
Like a pent-up stream02/13/2008 06:45 AM Nora Clarke Faith
On the living room loveseat
I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever;
with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations.
I declare that your steadfast love is established forever;
Your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens. -- Ps. 89:1-2.
See, the Lord's hand is not too short to save; nor is his ear too dull to hear.
Rather, your iniquities have been barriers between you and your God,
and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. . .
Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands at a distance;
for truth stumbles in the public square, and uprightness cannot enter.
Truth is lacking, and whoever turns from evil is despoiled. . . .
The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice.
He saw that there was no one, and was appalled that there was no one to intervene;
so his own arm brought him victory, and his righteousness upheld him.
He put on righteousness like a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his hiead;
he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped himself in fury as in a mantle.
According to their deeds, so will he repay; wrath to his adversaries, requital to his enemies;
to the coastlands he willl render requital.
So those in the west shall fear the name of the Lord, and those in the east, his glory;
for he willl come like a pent-up stream that the wind of the Lord drives on. -- Is. 59:1-2,14-19.
Of course, the first thing I must comment on is the phrase "your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens." According to Jewish cosmology, the heavens were a solid layer above the air so it made sense to compare God's faithfulness to their firmness.
It is Lent, and it is a time for coming to terms with our sin, both individual and corporate. The times of which Isaiah speaks herald times of great political and social upheaval. When the system is that corrupt, certainly violence will break out like a disease. I think we have to take the words of this Old Testament prophet in their context and reinterpret them from a Christ-like point of view. After all, Jesus came to fulfill the law and the prophets and to perfect the people's understanding of the holiness that lay in them -- Jesus represents a picture of God evolved more on the trajectory of love and peace than does the God frequently portrayed by the Jewish prophets. But then, a prophet in those days was in many ways like an editorial writer, a giver of needed social commentary. The prophets threatened God's vengeance because they knew that all things come of God and because they believed in the hope of a better world after the necessary tumult. In so doing, they tended to attribute to God the tumult itself. I don't think that's the best interpretation. In the New Testament, especially with Romans, we are very cognizant of humanity's ability to choose good and evil; from the early days of the Church Fathers, we know that choosing good could be as costly as giving your life for the new faith. Isaiah speaks of a time that is so evil that whoever turned from evil met further evil. Certainly, we have seen that in the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. Certainly, in the Bolshevik revolution we saw much injustice thrown aside, but it did not end in an idyllic world. And I don't think we should attirbute to God's vengeance the social upheaval that comes from corruption and disempowerment of the justice system within a society. Rather, we should work our best, even making deep personal sacrifices, to see that the justice system of a society remains free from corruption. We should remember that the best justice system we know of sticks with personal accountability and we should restrict vengeance to that, lest there be an all-out revolution "like a pent-up stream that the wind of the Lord drives on."
This page has been accessed 9 times.
?OpenAgent&66E4EA40987D73F7852573EE0040970E)
-