1. Where have you seen this pattern in Isaiah (up to now and as we continue through third Isaiah)?  

I wonder if the experience of Germany opening its doors to so many refugees is somehow an example of what Crossan is saying? 

Germany did the ideal - they welcomed the refugee, they extended their tent pegs. What went wrong? Was there still systemic injustice that the newcomers faced? What are the extreme right reacting too? Now Europe (and Germany) have responded in the opposite way by closing their doors almost completely to the refugee crisis, a subversion. 

In my own life, I often hear the serpent whispering in my ear, "did God really say...?" With my conservative faith upbringing, there seemed to be much clearer, black and white, yes and no answers to this question. Now the ideal seems much more complex. What did God really mean? Contemplative practices seem to help me to listen and see better.

— Jen

The obvious answer is: Yes! I have seen this pattern in Isaiah at almost every turn. In fact, it is this very pendulum that has kept some of us on the dizzying roller coaster ride of how to trust the capricious God we find in the exile. So much so that it has caused us to wonder whether we should shut this crazy carnival down early.

But as I’ve started to read into and about Third Isaiah, I am personally relieved that we have decided to carry on. Not because it has turned a sharp corner into sunbeams and butterflies. The back and forth between judgement and mercy is still very much present. 

So what is it that will re-fuel the scrum and the desire to keep engaging? For me it is helpful to see that Isaiah is very much a cautionary tale, not just for the initial hearers but for me and for community as well. Caution backed by love and the spirit of Torah.

Crossan seems to be implying that this dialectic is, on the one hand, so predictable and yet here we are, left in a state of vertigo that is perplexing. Oddly there is something assuring about his insight, like when we discover a set of patterns that have always unconsciously determined our choices and actions. This new interpretive tool can be liberating or at least clarifying.

Our biblical and spiritual imaginations are invited to move beyond the well-trodden path of Cartesian certainty. We are asked to join hands with the prophet and the psalmist and head into this wild rambling tumble-weed landscape where God and even ourselves, as soulful participants, are beyond category and description. We, like our God images, are made up of complicated intentions and motivations. Always morphing, we are surprised, often disappointed and sometimes inspired by what is unveiled within us as a historical human species. I think it’s good to see that, especially in the company of the spirit and within community.

The Highway in Isaiah is one of Tears as well as one of Hope and Homecoming. Along the way we have found the unknowable Yahweh to be a shape-shifting creature, leaving us stricken with awe and dread, both consoled and abandoned. Trustable byways end up dead-ends and roads less travelled open up into stunning vistas. There’s a reason maps in the Middle Ages would be inscribed with the friendly warning: “Thar be Dragons”. The way through and onward is definitely mysterious and compelling and often dark. The story that keeps unravelling is one that keeps us on our toes, as we never seem to arrive at a safe, secure conventional place to find our moral and existential footing or stake our theological and spiritual claims.

Who are we and Who is this God we chase after? One day it’s all about form and function, adjusting our worldview and intentions to what is expected from the reliable and predictable codes of standards and traditions. The next day we embrace the new. All we see or care about is the “could be”, the “what if”. Our hearts and minds are fired up by innovative Kingdom promises, radical visions of equality, compassionate inclusion beyond ideology and the courage to make our actions match the wisdom of Jesus’s love. 

I know I can easily fall for edgy sounding ideals only to appropriate them for my ego. I confess that I can get an amygdala boost when imbibing provocative rhetoric which fools me into thinking I’m part of some special outlier club. When I realize that all this is performance and externally driven based on my need to run from death and escape the banality of aging, I see that I am ultimately taking part in a subversion of the Kingdom of God. Abba and his son, Jesus’s vision of justice and mercy can only flourish when there is a willingness to die to the false self and desire to transcend my own urgency towards individualism.

It’s a swing that can feel so disorienting and if we don’t have our feet planted in something beyond our ego, our idealism or subjective experience, we can be hit with a severe case of cynicism or inflation. That’s what seems to be happening for our poor exiles who have finally made it into what they hoped would be the Promised Land. I was surprised to read that Third Isaiah is all about dispute and in-fighting. Their release from Exile only pulled them into a cess-pool of constant disagreement over who owned the vision, how to build it and how to maintain it. As a cautionary tale these last ten chapters can feel sobering as we too often try to make God’s vision into our own image. My hope for this last leg of Isaiah is that I will hear in these passages a discerning judgement call on my propensity to run ahead of God and also hear a clear clarion call to step into trusting God for my future as well as the future of Watershed. May God plant in me a curious openness to the mysteries along the way and a resiliency to keep to the path inspired by a loving devotion to God’s enduring covenant.

— Bev

2. Do you experience this same tension in your own life? (the radical ideal of the way of Jesus subverted by the practicality of living in our civilization)?

Coming home from Tai Chi today, I passed a church with this message on its sign: "Faith is being sure about what God has promised and certain about the future". I wondered if they had ever read Isaiah, or in fact, ever reflected on what has happened in history or their own lifetime. I am not certain about the future, but I do desire to trust in a God who loves all creation and will not abandon it, as Moltmann says. 

I think that has been the overriding rhythm running through the Isaiah text. Even when the God figure is ranting and promising violence, he ends with declarations of love. This hot/cold pattern must be a rhetorical devise to wake up the people and turn them back to the life giving ways of God. It's not a technique I'm particularly fond of, but it seems to be a common one in many cultures. In our own culture, justice is often punitive (prison for example) and global threats are most often met by aggression. We haven't learned restorative justice too well, only in small pockets, but I am convinced that it is the way of Christ.

—Penny

I wonder if the dialectic between nonviolent distributive justice and violent retributive justice is the process we humans go through as we get excited by a vision and then get disappointed in the accomplishment of the vision and want to see justice done on the people we see who stand in our way. I know I have been through this cycle a number of times at Cornerstone/Watershed. I get excited about an inclusive vision which I am sure is from God but then other people see things differently. In my bitter disappointment I can respond angrily and violently. Third Isaiah seems to reflect a similar process as two different visions for the new Judaism surface and the conflict between these sides is bitter. 

I think we see the face of God most clearly in Jesus and his self-giving on the cross. Jesus is not violent but takes upon himself the violence of those who oppose him. This is the ideal and the true face of God. I remember reading once about learning to interpret scripture through the lens of Christ, especially Christ on the cross. That is where we see God most clearly. 

Because scripture is a human book, it reflects the laments and disappointment and desire for evil to be done on somebody else that comes when our cherished goals are thwarted. So I see the swing between violence and non-violence to be more reflective of the human condition and the humans writing the Bible. I am hoping that the God I see in Jesus - the non-violent, self-giving God - reveals the clearest picture of God. 

— Cal

I am not sure of the difference between dialectic and a paradox, but they sure seem alike to me. Once a good friend of mine told me that I was a walking, talking paradox. What she meant was as she observed my life’s story, it seemed that I swung between being a saint and a sinner, equally measured. I have been: a drunk and a mentor, a dropout and a scholar, sensitive yet a boor, a success a failure, and she could go on. 

Considering this theme, I published an article in a New Age Journal called “Catch Me If You Can.” In that essay, I tried to locate when and where my dialect swing began. The fountainhead of my paradoxical character and behaviour developed after a childhood fall down the stairs. The spacial up and down of this event took root symbolically and literally in my brain; it resulted in the habit of oscillating between extremes, especially when I feel insecure.  

The dialectal theme popped into a dream I had the other night. As happens with many dreams, it dribbled out my ear in the morning - only partially recalled. I was asked to interview a visiting scholar at the college I was attending. The subject’s name was Dr. Gauche. Once I looked up how to spell this word, following my several attempts like goash, gosh, etc., I came upon the proper spelling “gauche.” Exploring the linguistic stretch of this word, I discovered synonyms such as: awkward, bumbling, inelegant, inept, and oafish. This description nailed my dream character. Dr. Gauche was a fraud, a pretentious pretender, who cloaked himself in academic accomplishment. My dream persona interviewed the esteemed scholar in all kinds of settings, never in privacy, always within the hearing of students and other faculty.

Since Dr. Gauche was a visiting scholar, I was expected to develop a highly flattering analysis of his skills. We started the interview poorly. I didn’t know how to record his comments or summarize what he said. He could see the poorly written notes that I was taking. He critically suggested that I tape him and write the review afterward. He was trying to make a fool out of me in public and display his superiority. 

When the conversation turned from the content rather than the form, my dream interviewer came into his own. He started interrogating the assumptions, presuppositions and methods of Dr. Gauche. As we spoke, the esteemed doctor became exposed. The character of my dream persona, the interviewer, displayed an authenticity and genuine love of learning, which put our visiting scholar in his place. The interrogation of Dr. Gauche was polite, respectful yet honest and accurate. I did not personalize my critique, nor did I seek to build my self-image, rather out of love for the truth, I picked apart the gaps in his argument, all the while acknowledging where the doctor was heading. Surprisingly, Dr. Gauche felt built up by this type of analysis and discussion. So too did the onlookers who asked me where they could go to learn this sort of respectful yet truthful dialogue. I suggested that they only had to honour and love their studies and rely on one another to enhance their individual ideas and interpretations. I invited them to scrum among themselves. 

So what is the dialectic that this dream exposes? It told me that there are two inquirers in me. One a pompous, proud, pretentious self-seeker, using education as a mode of self-aggrandizement; the other is a lover of knowledge whose main desire is to submit to his subject matter and to do so with all his heart, mind and soul. He seems to be learning in a worshipful manner, using knowledge to glorify the creator and build up others in the process. This dream-like most dreams exaggerates, shows the extremes that are rarely coordinated but nonetheless worth observing. 

What I learned from Dr. Gauche was that inferiority can swiftly turn into compensatory arrogance. I realized that I ought not to give authority to my inferiority. Otherwise, I will become despicable and genuinely inferior. On the other hand - my dream persona, the interviewer, taught me that the importance of learning is to point away from myself to the focus of attention and beyond that to the Creator-Teacher. Paul’s prayer for all learners fits the bill and mellows the dialectic swings: Father, may they clearly know Your will and achieve the height and depth of spiritual wisdom and understanding. (Colossians 1:9) 

— Paul

A question has surfaced for me from the book I’m reading by Ilia Delio which looks at the long-view of evolution, seeing there a profound force within Creation towards wholeness. Developmental growth seems to move towards wholeness … and only a suffering love makes this possible. The contemplative path seems to reveal this same movement towards unity as well (holding the paradoxes, unification with God and others). Are we seeing broad developmental movements in Isaiah, with all the familiar wrestlings, towards deeper unity?

“Christian life is an evolution in love, living the beatitudes of poverty, peace, charity, and humility in ways that challenge what is separate, creating new unities; the deep connective tissue of oneness while not let us rest with separateness.  … We struggle to evolve through the pains of resistance because we are imprisoned by our fears. As long as we remain in the old temple with old laws and old rituals, we are old wine that has lost its flavour. … What is the new wine in an evolving universe? It is the new spirit of catholicity, of wholemaking, that emerged in the life of Jesus - the dynamism of liberating love.” Ilia Delio in The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution and the Power of Love 

— Verda

This question makes me think of “transcend and include”. This term was made popular by philosopher and writer Ken Wilber whom a lot of us studied in the ‘90’s. The phrase refers to when you shift your perspective from binary and adversarial to one of integrating what is true about conflicting views while letting go of the negative aspects. In this way you stand in a different place thereby transcending the previous conflict. In some ways Jesus’ “love your enemy” and his “midrash” on that in Sermon on the Mount was talking about this. It’s not an easy thing to do and I think you only find the energy to do this when you’ve been exhausted by the futility of constant infighting. And often we don’t get to this place; it’s an “end of the rope” place to find oneself in. And in my experience I needed the Spirit to empower me to move from “I want to want to” to actually start to move in that direction. 

What I like about this approach is that it doesn’t collapse the tension in an argument. You don’t have to give up what you value; you just have to be open to what the other side values as well. And you need to be honest about the negative aspects of both sides. 

This doesn’t necessarily resolve a conflict but it does allow a way out of being defined by a conflict. When we had a conflict in our community years ago it seemed very much like what we are seeing in 3rd Isaiah. A clash between different ways of understanding the vision moving forward. We needed to include the value for covenant discipleship but let go of the anger that came from deep disappointment of realizing the vision wasn’t shared. We also needed to value everyone’s desire to flourish spiritually in the way they saw best while letting go of the unhealthy dynamics that had developed. In the end I think the Spirit allowed us to let them go in peace. I’m not sure how they would tell the story but I know we wish them well. I don’t think the conflict was resolved but I still hope we can someday consider each other friends at some level. But what I do know is that we were released from being defined by that conflict which opened us up to a new future. 

— Linda

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