Isaiah

SInce late November the Old Testament readings assigned for the Daily Offices have been from Isaiah. (You can find the relevant parts of the lectionary, which assigns the readings, on pages 936-48 of the Book of Common Prayer.) If you were following the lectionary, you started at the beginning of the first chapter and went all the way into the last chapter, chapter sixty-six.

Isaiah is a beast of a book. It is, on the one hand, incredibly moving and powerful. The Christian tradition has called it the fifth gospel and many of its most moving passages are well known to all lovers of Handel's Messiah. On the other hand, it is a multi-layered text, the bulk of it in poetic form, and it rarely seems to track a theme or story for more than a page.

If there was ever a biblical book that requires but than handsomely rewards effort, it is Isaiah. Over the last few months, as I've been doing Morning Prayer, I've kept the one volume HarperCollins Bible Commentary close by. On the mornings when I have a few extra minutes, I've read the commentary to help orient me through my traversal of the text. It taught me to stay alert to themes that appear throughout the text like Fear Not!, Learn Righteousness! and Hurry to do right and then Wait for the Lord! Slowly, the text took on more shape for me.

I don't expect to ever get to the bottom of Isaiah, but I know that I can always trust its insight. The book knows much more about the ways of God than I do, and so I plan to sit happily at its feet all the days of my life. Like Romans, the Gospel of John, the Psalter and several other texts of the scriptures, Isaiah is beyond and human mastery. Reading Isaiah faithfully brings us to the very limits of the human experience of God.

Join me this Sunday as I share some reflections on the text assigned from Isaiah, chapter forty nine.