image by Ariel Burger

1. Design a question that you have about this week’s section of Isaiah.

The image of the nurturing mother sits uncomfortably with the image of blood drinking, flesh devouring savages, who nonetheless bring the children of the Israelites home in their arms and on their shoulders. My question is whether Israel is able to see any redemption for their enemies, or if they really desire this kind of a gruesome end.

One possible answer is that in the immediate situation Israel finds herself in, she has no thoughts other than being rescued, and by any means possible. I am reminded of an episode of The Office where a bat is found in the ceiling of the office, and Kelly urges Dwight not to hurt it. That is, until the bat flies straight at her face and she screams, "Kill it!  Kill it!"  

Funny example aside, when we are in a situation where we're being treated unfairly, slandered, psychologically or even physically hurt by others, we are more than happy to see them self-implode. Thankfully we see in this passage not only the nurturing mother of Israel, but the God who desires to draw everyone and everything to them. This is something that we would desire too, often from a distance or in hindsight.

I like this quote from Paul Hanson: "The God encountered here is one we can picture in the streets of our crime infested cities, in nations exploited for the resources they can supply to affluent societies, in wards consigned to persons lost to their delusions. But this is not just a God humanized and thus recognizable in our experiences but a God confident that mercy and justice will prevail, a God assuring servants of humanity 'those who wait for me shall not be put to shame' and certain that one day 'all flesh shall know.'”

— Penny

The passage starts out with the heavens, the earth and the mountains barely able to contain their joyfulness, praise and singing. Zion, by contrast, is disappointed and inconsolable, “The Lord has forsaken me.” My question is this: What do the heavens, the earth and the mountains know that Zion doesn’t?

I don’t know the answer to this but it seems to me that the nursing mother also knows something that the baby doesn’t, that she will always be there. The baby cries inconsolably as if abandoned when hungry, and does not know the steadfast love of the mother. The mother’s love is engraved on her heart, like Zion’s name is engraved on the palm of God’s hand. The people of exile know their own scars, engraved on their backs and on their minds, scars of exile and bondage. Their future can only take the shape of their worst fears as experience becomes precedent. Yahweh is not limited to such a low horizon, and the poet knows this, declaring: “Though you were ruined and made desolate and your land laid waste, now you will be too small for your people,”  Like new wine in old wineskins, the shape of God’s promise doesn’t fit into the old paradigm, nor into people’s broken imagination. 

As I practice my involuntary lenten practice of slowing down as a mail carrier due to my knee injury, I might ask myself something similar: “What do the trees, the birds and the sidewalk know that I don’t?” Would they wonder why this human in the bright yellow jacket is rushing past them every day? Would they wonder why I would not slow down enough to sing or with them or even notice? I read an essay by David Whyte which said in part:

“Ambition takes us toward a horizon that will always recede before our controlling hands. But a calling is a conversation between our physical bodies, our work, our intellect and imaginations, and the new world that is itself the territory we seek.” 

I feel like this is the kind of conversation the people of Israel might have needed with the heavens, the earth and the mountains, the kind of conversation my sore knee wants to make with the trees, the birds, and the sidewalk. Whyte continues: 

“A vocation always includes the specific, heart rending way we will fail at our attempt to live fully. A true vocation always metamorphoses both ambition and failure into compassion and understanding for others.” 

— Eldon

"I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh,
and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine."

Listening to Tim Mackie’s ‘God and Violence’ audio that Paul sent out, and reading our text which includes this vindictive gem from the mouth of ‘God’, got me musing a bit. How do we responsibly read these violent texts in light of Jesus and our own ‘better angels'? Do we insult our own modern spiritual intelligence by taking them too seriously, just because they are part of the Bible? Surely this vindictive statement was not written by the God behind the ‘god image', but by someone from an ancient tribal culture who assumed ‘God’ was tribal and ethnocentric too. Is it better for our own sanity to just leave these sorts of texts out, and somehow read and interpret ‘around them’? Need we remind ourselves, perhaps more than we already do, that Jesus reveals a different God, one more cosmically inclusive and self-giving, one willing to die for one’s enemies, than we normally imagine. What does it mean to read these kinds of ancient texts seriously but not literally? I don’t have a really good answer, but I would like to learn more. 

— Lyle

Not sure if the passage is so much odd as curious. After a couple of readings of these verses, what drew my attention was how interchangeable the metaphor of “protective, faithful, loving mother” was. One who will never forget or abandon. This is coming on the heels of Israel's lament and felt experience of neglect.

This warm domestic image evokes more than one question. Have the children been duped by their subjectivity? Is their understanding of being forgotten really due to their own forgetting? Throughout Isaiah, the prophet calls out God’s chosen as being the wayward ones, flying the covenantal coop without regard for faithfulness of Yahweh.

Through the eyes of developmental theory these ‘prodigals’ are like most children. In fact, it’s considered a normal and healthy process to leave home in order to separate and individuate. But the questions continue. How do we discern the difference between the needed act of individuation and open unhealthy rebellion?

Maybe the real question is how do we navigate these choppy relational waters beyond the psychological? How do we receive this promise of God as faithful protective mother through the eyes of conscious agency? How do we become adult children who embrace a faith that has moved beyond infantilism? How do we honour our imprint that is found on God’s palm in a way that expresses both freedom and fidelity?

It seems there’s a clue to all these questions in the extension of the metaphor. Verse 18 talks about a homecoming of prodigal proportions and it keeps building through the rest of the passage. The acute sense of being barren throughout the endless wandering years is put to an end. According to Isaiah in vs. 22, the “Sovereign Lord says that our children will be brought home,” more than we ever imagined, to the point that the tent needs widening.

Reading this I want to say that Yahweh has invited us to take part in the mothering and fathering, to engage with the spirit and the Father to help birth the covenant. What better way for a parent to show pride and respect in their children than to trust them with their vision for the restoration and healing. I know for myself, when I am stuck in the withering state of neurosis and compulsion it leaves me feeling helpless and self-absorbed, like a passive sulking child who believes she has nothing to offer. Contrast that to following the spirit’s movement towards engagement with God and others in the spirit of honesty and vulnerability. I am still a child, but now involved and part of the party that is celebrating universal love and trust. 

The lament has changed its tune. The road of exile that was once so lonely is now humming with hope, a shared purpose and an ever, deepening love between Mother and Child. Reciprocal, dignified and true.

— Bev 

2. Can you remember a time when words of faith felt hollow to you during a time of anxiety and doubt? 

My brother phoned me the other day in a very demoralized and hopeless feeling after learning about the cancer treatments that lie ahead of him. I was lost for words and silence filled the moment as I didn't know what to say. I remembered a thought I had decided on during a similar time for me, and said to him, “This  doesn't have to define you but it's okay to allow it to form you". Silence was the response and I was not sure how he would take it as you never know how people will take these one liners. Then he said yea that's right I like that. I heard hope in his voice once again.

— Wade

3. Write a lament about feeling forgotten by God. What would God say in response?

“What does it mean to disagree for the sake of the other ?” Rabbi Ariel Burger 

I have been musing on this quote for the past week or so ever since I listened to  Rabbi Burger on the On Being podcast. As a conflict avoider I have trouble with disagreements but when I start to see disagreements as a way to greater clarity I can see their value. 

This got me thinking about how God often acts as someone who disagrees with me in my life. God acts as an Other because God always has a different perspective on my life and my reality than I do. When I am mired in my subjectivity and feel that God has forsaken or forgotten me, it helps for me to tell God this. Inevitably I will hear a word of consolation come back to me, usually in the same day. 

When I went for my walk on Sunday I was asking God for a word related to why I was feeling in a bit of a funk of late and what to do about it. As I passed the Mabuhay Baptist church on Wellington St I heard the word resurrection. It was as if God was saying to me, “You have forgotten the resurrection. No matter what you are going through, remember the resurrection. “

I kept on walking and by the time I was home I had already forgotten the word that I had heard. It was only when I was talking to Linda about something else that the word came back to me and I realized I had been addressed and not forgotten. This ties in with the word I heard as I read the text for tonight : ... the one who hopes in me (Yahweh) won’t  be ashamed.”  vs 23. This doesn’t mean I won’t go through hard times or struggle with my compulsions and anxieties. But it does mean that in the long run the universe bends towards resurrection and those who hope in God will be answered. 

I really see this as the same dynamic that Israel is going through with Yahweh. Israel complains and Yahweh responds in a way that invites Israel to reframe how it is seeing its reality. Yahweh disagrees with Israel for the sake of Israel, to bring them to greater clarity and deeper understanding. 

— Cal

"I am in paperwork hell between a new house insurance document and the new store lease. My brain is full to the brim. God you feel so far away. Are you even here?

I get an order for a long time customer and I am excited to see him. I deliver the flowers and we have a nice visit. I go to my car and I see a parking ticket. God why? Are you punishing me for something? I was feeling at the end of my rope and then this. I don't think you care about the daily goings on of my life. "

My response from God was through community: 

Lydia sent me a picture of her dad with flowers she picked up.  I had a good ski and talk with Wade and did some meditation on Sunday. They sang a song in French at the beginning with the phrase: "Jesus Christ inner light do not let darkness speak to me. Jesus Christ inner light let me welcome your love.”

— Mel

This week I noticed that I was feeling quite anxious. I think it stemmed from reflections for the recent Sunday, in trying to acknowledge ways I’ve behaved in  community over the years, often with fear or mistrust. Is that who I am? You can write yourself off (God forgetting you), without needing anyone else to do it for you. On one of my walks, I had a little ‘talk’ with God. 

“WTF? How could you have allowed these difficult things to happen? Why couldn’t you have guided me in better ways? etc…” (Anger isn’t typical for me, but seemed appropriate for some reason)

I don’t know if it was the intent of this verse, but it stood out for me

18”Lift up your eyes all around and see,” along with the words, ‘keep turning the page’.  

The verse helped me to look up, to take my eyes off ‘the problem’; instead I saw the faces of community around me and thought of the encouragement that I’d received during just this week alone. There was also something about stepping into the present. I don’t think I could have ‘turned’ on my own, I thought of these others as angels sent during a time of testing (this week it was Eldon and Carolin). I felt more myself again. 

Reflecting back, I think God has been there, within and beyond community, patiently pointing the way home over the years. A lifelong journey I think. Maybe you could call it reparenting, but towards developmental growth regardless. It changed my spirits and left me feeling very grateful.

— Verda

I usually end up doing my answers on Wednesday lunch. Today before lunch I had a difficult meeting at work. After that I didn’t know if I was in the right space to answer. But then it occurred to me that maybe Isaiah could answer me. So this is my stab at question #3. 

God I know you called me to where I work. But lately I feel like why bother. There is so much reorganizing and churning but it all feels like rearranging chairs on the Titanic. It still comes down to too much work and not enough people to do it.  I’ve been saying this for so long and nothing seems to change. As a team we have come up with ways to manage this, but the new reorganizing seems to be eroding this. I know I’d rather be actively engaged for my last year, instead of waiting it out. But it’s hard to be engaged when the work is so quickly undermined. And I know it’s only work and not the centre of my life. But how do I bring myself to work when it seems like shifting sands?

The calendar above my desk shows a field of wild daisies in the mountains on a sunny summer day. I can almost imagine the breeze on my face, smell the grass, feel the sun. I am lying in a field of daisies looking up at slowly sprawling clouds. And then I find myself thinking that I bring myself to work for the people I work with. The work itself is the medium. It’s the relationships and the solidarity that counts. Sure the work needs to be incarnated; that’s how solidarity is expressed. I can’t just “phone it in”.  Just like Jesus was really human, not just pretending to be. But if I’m called to solidarity, if God has solidarity with me and us, then frustrations can be weathered. God with me, these storms are weathered in God’s hands. 

This problem isn’t new, and I will struggle again with this. And I’ve heard the gist of this answer before.  But today, after this specific discouraging meeting, the specific image of the mountains breaking out in song or the image of being inscribed like a tattoo on God’s palms, connected me again to a hope that incarnates this world but is informed by the Next World. “My ways are not your ways” can be a reset, a guiding star to help me keep showing up. Not a formula. A daily nourishment, in specific circumstances. 

— Linda

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