Week 20 - Isaiah 54:1-17
Welcome to Isaiah 54. This week we are onto a passage of assurance where restored relationships are the theme. Israel has been given a chance to start over in a big way, to finally shift gears from their aimless wandering that feels so endless. In Isaiah 54 we hear heartening hints that the rubbled road that seems to go nowhere is finally paved over with expansion, reconstruction and celebration.
It’s tempting to draw a distinct line between Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 54. The significance of bringing together the promise of a turnaround in our chapter with the deepest kind of suffering of Isaiah 53 is not to be ignored. Here in this intangible space between catastrophe and what is called “eucatastrophe”, a term first coined by Tolkien (and which comes up in the book Hunting Magic Eels by Richard Beck). Defined it means the “sudden happy turn in a story which pierces us with a joy that brings tears; a sudden glimpse of Truth.” We aren’t always awake enough to catch the light that shines through the splintered ruins, so it’s a helpful way to understand the shift between chapters 53 and 54.
I think the key to this transformation of a people and their spiritual well-being is the Servant from Isaiah 53, one who was disfigured, beaten and easily left for dead. If we lose sight of the Servant, in all of his manifestations whether it’s in the hoped for Messiah for the Jews, or the faithful remnant that continue to rise each morning to pray the Shema or in Jesus who embodied the cruciform love of God, we might never catch a glimpse of that future hope that is breaking into our own sparse places of waste, our Exiles. The memory of the Servant is what changes our dead-ends. He is our beacon, lighting the way from catastrophe to eucatastrophe. I’d like to imagine him emerging from Isaiah 53 with the intent on accompanying us deeper down that road.
- Bev
Reading: Brueggemann pages 150-158
Instead of Questions…
This week, instead of questions, Bev decided to opt for a different way to dialogue with the passage. Inspired by the Hebraic interpretative tradition of “Pesharim”, group interpretive commentary on scripture, she invited us into this way to reflect and comment on scripture. Bev wrote, “It has engaged my imagination and curiosity in a way the commentaries don’t always do which gave me the idea that maybe we can do this together, like the ancients did. All I hope for is that you be inspired, personally and textually, as in, please re-write your verse however the creative spirit leads. We are not writing a commentary and hopefully this won’t feel like an academic exercise. It might even be fun. In the end who knows what kind revelatory subtleties will emerge within the passage as we read it together.”
We at Watershed were each assigned a verse to paraphrase. In this week’s presentation, you’ll find Isaiah 54:1-17 in words paraphrased for today.
Click here for brief transcript of our discussion
permission pending from Kreina Haviv
