Isaiah 35:1-10
The original context of this week’s OT reading would appear to be the exile of God’s people in Babylon; the prophet promises that God will save his people and bring them home. I notice that the images are all sharp contrasts - a desert and blooming flowers (verse 1), strength and weakness (verse 3), blindness and sight, deafness and hearing (verses 5-6), dry land and rivers (verses 6-7), joy and sorrow (verse 10). The prophet’s message: God’s coming makes that kind of radical difference.
I believe the imagery of verses 1-2 alludes to an actual phenomenon that occurs in arid places: certain flowers can grow there, they’re dormant when it’s dry and then they bloom aggressively when it rains. In fact, to me this entire reading works best when read hyperbolically rather than literally. In verse 3, the prophet says that when God shows up, those with bad knees are going to want to pour on the extra effort to make the trip home. Then in verses 5-6, I hear the prophet saying that for those who haven’t anything much to see or hear or talk or sing about in awhile, all of a sudden it will be like their eyes and ears and mouths have been unplugged. (I’m reminded of the Hold Steady concert I went to this past summer – the guitar sound was so full and loud that it just washed over me, and I heard more than I had in a long time.) Of course, the gospels see these verses somewhat differently - see below.
I have to say that a big, wide highway that nobody can miss, devoid of wildlife (verses 8-9), is unfortunately not a happy image in my mind as it conjures the smell of asphalt and diesel exhaust for me. Maybe a better way to think about it is a continuous stream of people – God’s people returning home with their freedom papers in hand, singing and celebrating all the way, so that predators human and otherwise stay far away. Now that’s a pretty picture.
Matthew 11:2-11
John the Baptist again figures heavily in the Gospel text this week. It begins with Matthew telling us that John was in prison (the historian Josephus corroborates this detail – see last week’s post). Matthew says John heard about Jesus’ activity and sent some of his disciples to find out if Jesus was indeed the “one who is to come” – i.e., the Messiah. Incidentally, it appears to me that the seams in Matthew’s story are showing a bit here, since supposedly John already recognized Jesus as the “more powerful one to come” back in 3:13. The relationship between John and Jesus is a little ambiguous, and all four gospels go to some pains to try to explain it, especially the question of why Jesus got baptized by John.
Anyway, Jesus answers the question posed by John’s disciples by pointing out what he’s been doing (verses 4-6) – the idea is that these actions are the very ones described in various passages in Isaiah – see especially today’s OT lesson as well as 61:1. Jesus’ point: he is bringing God’s reign to the world! I especially like verse 6: all we have to do to be blessed by the Kingdom is not resist it.
What are verses 7-11 getting at? Jesus is saying that John wasn’t somebody who got blown this way and that by trends, nor was he as powerful person like Herod (the guy in the soft robes and palace who had put him in prison); rather, he was a genuine prophet in the OT tradition who was driven only by the need to say what God had given him to say. In that sense, John is kind of a midwife of the Kingdom, confirming that Jesus is the fulfillment of Jewish eschatological hopes and helping to bring about the transition to God’s reign. Final note: Jesus’ reference to “the least” in verse 11, as well as John being in prison and Jesus’ references in verse 5 call to my mind the “sheep and goats” passage in Matthew 25.
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