With Missio we have been going through Isaiah. In conclusion we were each given a chapter to look at in more detail and then present back to the group.
I had chapter 42. Somewhat well known.
It was an interesting exercise for a number of reasons. Besides leaving it quite late, it forced me to go check out some commentaries. This is not something I do often. And to be honest they are ridiculously inaccessible. Where is this magic place people learn to use them? I am not uneducated, stupid or slow (although slightly lazy at times) but everything I found was unappealing lists of words/exegeses with no flow or integration into the passage itself, no clearly established background information etc. I have just done another search and have to eat my words as my first result found something quite straightforward. What I am saying however is that studying the Bible in a technical way is not the easiest thing in the world – although rewarding as you do tend to discover things you otherwise wouldn’t have.
Anyway. I have come to the conclusion that Isaiah 42 is about a new thing, a new way, an alternative. Isaiah itself is the story of Jesus before the story of Jesus. And as much as full of war and conflict and despair as it is… like the image of a woman in childbirth the violence (so different from the assumed natural violence/response of humanity to anything that interferes with our own way) brings forth something new. And that something new is quite remarkable.
In Jesus we are presented with the opportunity to join in with this new thing. The Messiah that didn’t make sense to Israel the counter-cultural one, the carpenter the absent warrior.
And when I was thinking about this, it made me wonder what would happen if I were to present myself more consciously with the option of considering an alternative when I am presented with situations that life throws at me.
And somehow things seemed a little more concrete. If only momentarily.
How beautiful on the mountains
are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings,
who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
“Your God reigns!”Isaiah 52:7
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And I must be crazy to even think of wiping the dust off your feet
But still, you put me on your stool and you clean my filthy heels
And you deserve nothing less than my whole submission to your grace
-Isobelle McCallum
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So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.T.S Eliot
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image – by my new favourite artist Craigie Aitchison
