Isaiah 21 – An
oracle on the fall of Babylon in 710. Elam is the name for the ancient
inhabitants of the high plateau from whence the Persians originated and the
Medes had been vassals of Cyrus before the capture of Babylon.
The Edomites, conquered by the Assyrians as well, turn to
Isaiah for help. And the Arabs too will need help from the “stress of battle”
(15).
Isaiah 22 – An
oracle against the Valley of Hinnom, SW of Jerusalem, in 705 when the allies of
Hezekiah won an early victory against Sennacherib. They rejoice too soon. The
defenses they mount are futile. They have “no thought for the Maker, no eyes
for him who shaped everything long ago” (21:11). Yahweh wants you to weep and
mourn for your unfaithfulness, but you are rejoicing because of the pride you
have drawn from a shallow victory.
Isaiah called Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, as Yahweh’s servant.
“I place the key of the House of David on his shoulder; should he open, no one
shall close, should he close, no one shall open” (22:21-22). He is seen as a
fore-shadowing of the Messiah, but in the end he and his family will sink into
oblivion.
From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through
Quakerism
Part 22
The goal of Christ’s saving work in us was to bring us out
of “the fall” – the futility, alienation, and sin that ordinary life (life
without faith) entailed. This fallenness was not some exotic state. It was the state of our ordinary lives
when we tried to find our way without God. But salvation was more than
about just our personal lives; there was a corporate dimension to salvation too
– the creation of a kingdom-like order at least among those gathered into
Christ – and an eternal dimension – the traditional vision of a heavenly state
one could enter into after this life.
The part I identified with most in the beginning of my journey was the
personal, experiential dimension, the sense I had as I began to see the gospel
in the way I have described, that the futility, confusion, and meaninglessness
of my life was something faith could overcome.
The first and most exciting part of the salvation I felt
open to me in the earliest days of my conversion or convincement was the simple joy I felt at finally being able
to see what I had been blind to about Christ – being able to know what it
meant to have Christ “dwell in [my] heart through faith” as Paul had said, to
begin “to have the power to comprehend .
. . the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ
that surpasses knowledge, . . .
(Eph. 17-19). To this day it is one of the chief joys I have
as a Christian. But it was more than this. It was a journey, a way of walking
in the light and power of Christ, hearing his voice, experiencing the good that
flowed from obedience to him in all the little things that made up my life.
No sudden outward miracles attended my convincement, unless
you count as I do the deep and invisible miracle convincement was itself. My
outward life was not suddenly different, but inwardly everything was changed. I
saw differently.
When I spoke to my friend of what was happening in me, I
found myself using an image from a movie I knew and loved—the 1962 classic The Miracle Worker with Anne Bancroft
and Patty Duke. The movie, based on a play by William Gibson, was about the
young Helen Keller, a woman whose victory over blindness and deafness made her
a celebrity in the early years of the twentieth century. The story is about the breakthrough that made it possible for her to
learn human language and have access to all that language brings—knowledge of
the world, ordered thought, and communication—everything that makes human
beings what they are. Helen’s teacher, Annie Sullivan, teaches her a
tactile alphabet that makes it possible for Helen to learn words and language.
Helen quickly learns the fingered alphabet and mimics the movement of her
teacher’s fingers to get items she knows and wants—her D-O-L-L, her
M-O-T-H-E-R, the sweet C-A-K-E she loves. She enjoys playing the finger game
and gets to be quite good at it. But the concept behind the game—the thing her
teacher really wants her to get—the idea that everything can be named and that
these words can make learning and communication with other human beings
possible for her—this is something Helen cannot seem to grasp. For months Miss
Sullivan labors to get the idea across with no success. But finally, as she is
about to give up, Helen has a moment of grace at the water pump outside her
parents’ home. Forced to refill a pitcher of water she has intentionally dumped
on her teacher, Helen holds the pitcher under the spout while Miss Sullivan
pumps the water and spells the word W-A-T-E-R into her palm. Again and again,
she pumps and spells. Finally it
happens. Something in that moment at the pump—its intensity—its repetition—or
its evocation of a primitive memory Helen has of a time when she still could
see and hear and knew what water was—something, some grace sparks a light in
Helen’s mind and she “sees” what her teacher has been trying to open to her.
This is exactly what I felt was happening to me. I was
seeing a landscape I had never really seen before, a landscape I had stumbled around in for years and knew in a
superficial way but not in a way I’d been able to make sense of. The words
that were penetrating my darkness and opening my spiritual condition to me were
words I had toyed with for years, words of Christian faith—the light of Christ,
the cross, resurrection, the “Word”, the seed. But the words were more than
just words. They were a set of contexts, a whole spiritual vocabulary rooted in
the biblical story of Christ.
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