Nevertheless, the time of darkness and despair will not go on forever. The land of Zebulun and Naphtali will be humbled, but there will be a time in the future when Galilee of the Gentiles, which lies along the road that runs between the Jordan and the sea, will be filled with glory. The people who walked in darkness will see a great light. For those who live in a land of deep darkness a light will shine. You will enlarge the nation of Israel, and its people will rejoice. They will rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest and like warriors dividing the plunder. For you will break the yoke of their slavery and lift the heavy burden from their shoulders. You will break the oppressor’s rod, just as you did when you destroyed the army of Midian. The boots of the warrior and the uniforms bloodstained by war will all be burned. They will be fuel for the fire. For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His government and its peace will never end. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David for all eternity. The passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven’s armies will make this happen – Isaiah 9:1-7, the New Living Translation
German educator Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster suggests that the deepest meaning of the Incarnation becomes clear if we listen to the cries of newspaper vendors calling out the latest news, which, he argues, is hardly new but rather ‘age old and constantly repeated: the cold or hot war of everyone against everyone else.’ Each year at Advent we light a peace candle and echo the song of the angels, ‘peace on earth.’ But just beyond our voices we hear the cacophony of un-peace. Violence. Hate. Gunfire. Bombs. The insatiable capacity of people to war with one another over matters large and small. With misguided zeal, people strive to free themselves from the threat of perceived enemies and are willing to employ violence to do so. It is hard to believe things can improve. Turn on the news and you will see evidence of this war everywhere. It seems our times are dark and growing darker each day.
If there is any consolation, it may be that this feeling is not new. It is, as Foerster says, ‘age old.’ Isaiah, centuries before Christ, wrote of a people walking in deep darkness. These were the people of Northeast Israel (Zebulun and Naphtali), who had fallen to the Assyrian Empire. Their land was the staging point for both the invasion of the Northern kingdom of Israel and the deportation of her people. These people knew well the sound of warriors’ boots and the sight of uniforms stained in blood. They felt the oppressors’ rod and the yoke of slavery. They knew injustice as we know only in our worst nightmares.
But Isaiah had comfort to speak even to such as these. For the people who walked in darkness, Isaiah proclaimed, would see a great light. Glorious things would happen. What would this entail? Well, for starters, Isaiah states that Israel would be enlarged. No doubt his initial readers took this to mean a literal expansion of Israel’s territory; having lost much of it (the entire Northern Kingdom) to the Assyrians, they would get it back, and then some. Perhaps Israel would be as great as when David ruled, or encompass all the land once described to Moses (Numbers 34). Understandable, but wrong. The key to understanding Isaiah’s words is to ask: what is Israel, that she should be enlarged? Israel is God’s people, called to be his peculiar treasures, to live in God’s light and show others his glory. His instrument by which he would win all peoples to himself and bring restoration to the world. Israel is a light to the nations, the people through whom God would bring about the day when, as Isaiah will later say, every knee will bow, and every tongue confess Yahweh’s lordship (45:3). This is what is meant by ‘Israel enlarged;’ God had not, despite appearances, abandoned his promise. Israel would fulfill her role. The nations would be included, and the world restored. Her light would expand to the ends of the earth.
Isaiah imagines the day when the people who walk in darkness will rejoice like harvesters at the harvest, like warriors dividing plunder. Harvesters rejoice at harvest because it signals the end of a season during which any number of things might have gone wrong. Now the harvest will sustain the community through the coming winter. Warriors (careful: don’t abuse the metaphor and think God is calling his people to violence) rejoice when dividing plunder, not so much for plunder’s sake, but because war is over, and they can return to a life of peace. Yes, Isaiah insists to his audience, you will rejoice, for the yoke of slavery will be lifted, the oppressors rod will be broken.
But how, the people ask?
Isaiah answers, ‘You will break the oppressor’s rod just as you did when you destroyed the army of Midian.’ The reference is the victory of Gideon over the Midianites (Judges 6-7). Gideon defeated them in a most unusual way: God demanded he lose the thousands of troops he had amassed, whittling them down to a force of 300, and then, had him attack the vastly superior forces, not with weapons, but with the sound of shofars and the rattling of jars, together with shouts to the glory of God. The Midianites became so filled with terror that they ran away attacking each other, giving Israel a victory without ever having to draw swords. This is Isaiah’s first clue that the means by which Israel, and the world, will be delivered, is not what normally comes to mind: it will not come about in the usual fashion, with swords and human effort. It will be God’s victory, and it will come about in a new and strange way. The ‘boots of the warrior’ and the ‘uniforms stained with blood’ will not be needed. They will be burned as fuel for the fire. The great light that shall shine on those walking in darkness will bring about their fortunes without need for a battle.
How can this be? Isn’t a battle necessary to make peace? Is peace not achieved through the use of force? Do we not need to fight for it with all the zeal we can muster? Do we not need our own bloody coats and tramping boots? How can darkness be fought in the absence of such measures? To this, Isaiah can only offer what God has told him: For a child is born to us; a son is given. Which sounds crazier than what happened with Gideon, doesn’t it? How can the birth of a child deliver the world from darkness? How can a child rule a government whose peace knows no end?
Well, Isaiah says, this will be no ordinary child. His names will be ‘Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’ Somehow, in ways Isaiah’s audience (or Isaiah for that matter) couldn’t have understood, the child to be born would bear the power of God, even deserve the names of God, in fact, be God, and God, of course, can do anything. In this we begin to see how it can be that people who walk in darkness will be lifted into light without need for a battle; for it will not be the zeal (or ‘passionate commitment,’ as the NLT puts it) of men and women that will deliver them from evil. It will be the zeal of the Lord. God will, in this child to be born, enlarge the nation. God will, in this child to be born, break the yoke and rod. What we cannot do, God can. It will not be our zeal that saves us, but God’s.
And this, you see, is why peace is so elusive in our world. For in our attempts to make a better world, we rely on our own efforts. We rely on our power, we take matters into our own hands, rather than trusting things to God’s hands. We forget that the promised victory of peace, the dawn of light to those in darkness, will not be won by conventional means, neither by the sword nor the arguably less bloody weapons of our culture wars. We forget that the victory will not be won by us at all, but rather by the zeal of the Lord of heaven’s armies. We forget that it will only be when we embrace his way that we can even taste the promise of a better world.
Not so long ago, I saw a woman on TV who clearly forgot this. She was decked out in a T-shirt professing her Christian faith, telling a reporter that it was perfectly acceptable for her side of the political divide to encourage the deaths of those on the other, because, you see, ‘we are at war! We have to fight for our rights! God wants us to!’ No, he most certainly does not. He wants us to be still. To trust and know that he is God. Yes, he wants our prayers and witness, our truth-telling and sacrifice. But not our violence or bellicosity. It will be his zeal, and not ours, that will one day fill this world with light.
I suppose I can understand the thinking of those who believe that the only way to fight the darkness is to fight themselves; to rely on their zeal to save the world. This idea of waiting on the Lord to take care of things seems, to many, naïve. Or worse, dangerous. Waiting on God instead of taking matters into your own hands, that just might get you killed or at least result in the loss of cherished rights and privileges. And honestly, there is truth in that. It sounds more realistic, more practical, to strike back at our enemies, if not first, to at least give it all we’ve got, to fight on the world’s terms. I can only say that God calls us to fight on His. He calls us to, like Gideon, trust in ridiculous strategies, believing in the possibility of a peaceable victory. He calls us to throw our boots and uniforms, our instruments of war and vengeance, into the fire, and to believe the darkness will, in a stunningly new way, meet its defeat. He calls us to believe that the zeal of the Lord will bring this about.
And it will. How do I know? For unto us, a child has been born. Unto us, a son has been given. The vision of Isaiah has already come to pass. We can now stand, with old Zechariah over the crib of his newborn son John, the one who would prepare the way for the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, and sing his song, believing that the tender mercy of our God has broken upon us (Luke 1:78). That his light is shining on those who sit in darkness. And that he will guide our feet in the way of peace.
We can know, as Jurgen Moltmann once said, that ‘the liberator is already present and his power is already among us,’ and that ‘we can follow him, even today, making something visible of the peace, liberty, and righteousness of the Kingdom that he will complete.’ And complete it he will, for he is zealous for it, and nothing will ever stop the zeal of the Lord.
Under Christ’s Mercy,
Brent