What’s So Deutero About Isaiah?

Sermon preached at Midway Hills Christian Church

October 10, 2004

Isaiah 43: 16-21; Luke 17:11-19

 

          Isaiah is one of the longest prophetic books in the Old Testament.  While its sixty six chapters have common themes and names for God, scholars have noted that not all the chapters come from the same prophet.  There are probably three Isaiah’s.  Isaiah of Jerusalem who wrote chapters 1-39, an anonymous prophet of the Babylonian Exile who wrote chapters 40-55, and another anonymous prophet of post-Exilic Israel who wrote chapters 56-66.

 

Often these Isaiah’s are named:  Isaiah, Deutero-Isaiah, and Trito-Isaiah.  Today, we continue our series on the Hebrew Prophets with a look at Deutero-Isaiah.  This anonymous prophet of the Exile had a message that was different from Isaiah of Jerusalem.  Isaiah of Jerusalem’s ministry occurred before the Babylonian Exile and called Israel to repentance.  Isaiah of Jerusalem saw judgment as the future act of God.

 

Deutero-Isaiah ministered during the Babylonian Exile.  As part of that grieving community, he or she saw judgment as a thing of the past.  The future is the setting for God’s great act of salvation.  Instead of criticism, there is a mood of joy and celebration in the words of this prophet.

 

Deutero-Isaiah models an important prophetic principle:  not only was it the prophet’s role to call people to accountability and announce God’s indictment on their sinfulness; it was also the prophet’s role to bring a message of hope.

 

The closest we have to a call narrative for Deutero-Isaiah is found in chapter 40:  “A voice says, ‘Cry out!’ And I said, “What shall I cry?”  This Isaiah is called to cry comfort to a people in despair.  “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her….”

 

The context of Deutero-Isaiah’s ministry was one of grief and despair.  Israel was grieving a former glory: the loss of the promised land, the temple, the king, even their understanding of God.  Grieving the loss of what had been.  And despairing over their present situation.  Psalm 137 captures that despair:  “By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.  Our captors asked us for songs….How could we sing the Lord’s songs in a foreign land?”

 

But Deutero-Isaiah knew that the Exile could be a place for newness.  When present experience doesn’t fit traditional categories, there is an opportunity for something new to be born.

 

Deutero-Isaiah knew that despairing people do not anticipate or receive newness.  Despair prohibits imagining a new beginning.  The inclination is to simply re-configure the same pieces of the present situation.  In this situation a serious hopefulness needed to be articulated.  Deutero-Isaiah had to imagine that newness for the people and express it in powerful language that re-defined the situation.

 

One Old Testament scholar has said that Deutero-Isaiah “gives Israel the linguistic capacity to confront despair rather than be surrounded by it.”  The way Deutero-Isaiah does this is to re-articulate the old story.  Deutero-Isaiah describes a newness so old, Israel had forgotten it.

 

She reminded Israel that God, the Holy One of Israel, is still the Creator.  God created the world, and God created the people Israel, and God can and will re-create Israel.  Listen to the words from the first part of chapter 43:  “But now, thus says the Lord, the one who created you, O Jacob, the one who formed you, O Israel:  Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.”

 

This re-creation, this new thing that God will do in Israel’s midst is nothing less than salvation—redemption.  It is not a nice feeling.  It cannot be earned or manufactured.  It is a newness humans cannot generate.  God alone gives it.

 

It is the kind of salvation/newness we find in our gospel lesson for today.  One leper out of ten returns to thank Jesus for healing and Jesus says to him, “Get up and go on your way, your faith has made you well.” The greek verb used in this construction is translated elsewhere in the New Testament as salvation.  Ten lepers were healed, but one is saved.  There is nothing this leper did to earn salvation.  It happened because it is God’s nature.

 

Deutero-Isaiah describes Israel’s salvation by taking them back to their roots.  By using powerful and poetic language to describe a newness so old, Israel had forgotten.  That’s what’s so ‘deutero’ about Isaiah.  The word ‘deutero’ comes from greek and latin roots which mean ‘second’ or ‘revised.’  The title “Deuteronomy” for the fifth book in the Old Testament literally means, ‘second law.’  Because in it the Ten Commandments are not only repeated but expanded, or deepened.

 

Deutero-Isaiah reached back into Israel’s memory and pulled up a deep symbol of that community and expressed it in such a way that it gave hope to the present situation. A hope that pulled them toward a new thing God would do in their midst:

 

          I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel….

Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the seas, a path in the mighty water

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. 

I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? 

I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

To give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.

 

Those words of Deutero-Isaiah did penetrate the people’s despair.  They stopped rearranging the pieces of their present situation and trusted in who they have always known God to be:  Creator, Redeemer, the one who makes a way when there seems to be no way.

 

The Exile was the most creative period in Israel’s history.  Most of the Old Testament as we know it was canonized, new theologies were developed out of their experience of loss, their covenant with God was re-imagined, their understanding of themselves and of God changed and grew.

 

 

 

I believe we are in need of that kind of hope here at Midway Hills.  It is not a rearrangement of the present nor is it a resurrection of the past.  It is a newness so old, we have forgotten.  I believe the deep symbol of hope in the memory of this congregation is our experience of God as one who brings shalom.  I hear this deepness especially when members of this church come forward for communion—they literally breathe the word shalom over the bread and the cup.

 

Maybe the places where we have forgotten shalom have to do with trusting in our own efforts to make it a reality.  Maybe we have forgotten shalom by focusing on acts of justice in the larger world at the expense of acts of kindness toward one another.  Maybe we have forgotten shalom by clutching it too tightly—afraid in the midst of our changing circumstances we will not be able to complete this deep rooted mission.

 

I do not think we are in Exile, but I do believe we may be at a place in our journey as a community where our experience does not fit the way we have always done things.  Like the Exile, it can be a disorienting place, a scary place, a place of despair.  But it can also be a place of great opportunity for a new thing to be born.

 

Let us stop trusting in our own power to somehow create a future by simply rearranging pieces of the present.

 

It is time for a serious hopefulness and a radical trust in the God of Shalom that will pull us into a future that will be nothing short of amazing.

 

Those words of hope from Deutero-Isaiah, must be ours as well:

          I am the Lord, your Shalom

I am about to do a new thing, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way for the people whom I have chosen.

So that they might declare my praise.

          So that they might declare my Shalom.