Male Abusers: Hope When It Counts Isaiah 40:1-11

(Lectionary for December 10, 2017, Advent 2)The text for this second Sunday in Advent is so familiar, so clichéd, that it is easy to pass over it quickly with a sentimental smile. Anyone who is a singer, or a lover of all things musical at Christmas, knows this text as the words of the opening solo in Handel’s ubiquitous and beloved oratorio, “Messiah.” The tenor intones the recitative, “Comfort, Ye,” and many sigh with pleasure as the famous music begins its glorious unfolding. We are once again in for a night of splendid musical entertainment, usually performed in comfortably furnished and well heated sanctuaries or concert halls. In other words, we are about as far from the original context of Isaiah’s words as we could possibly be. What for him was a message of hard headed hope for a struggling and fearful group of Babylonian exiles has morphed some 2550 years later into an evening’s delightful diversion.

One of the more difficult and frustrating facts about contemporary reading of the Bible is the almost complete lack of any historical knowledge on the part of the reader. Blank stares often greet questions like: when was this written? or: under what circumstances did Isaiah produce this oracle? As in many instances of Bible use, the answers to these questions are crucial if the passage is to have for us its full impact on the ways in which we appropriate it for our own time. Too often in connection with biblical tets, we know only generally when a text was spoken or written. That is not the case with this text from 2-Isaiah. We may pinpoint his words toward the end of the period of the Babylonian exile of Judah, sometime around 539BCE. Because he in 45:1 names Cyrus the Persian as the “messiah” of YHWH, and because we know from extra-biblical sources that Cyrus expropriated the empire of Babylon then, we can conclude with some confidence that Isaiah wrote/spoke these words in that very year.

After two full generations of exile in the world’s greatest city, suddenly the heirs of those who were driven to Babylon some 60 years before, found that they were free to return to Judah, a place most had only heard about but had never seen. Even those very old among them would have had only the vaguest recollections of the city, and those memories were probably only of the horror of flames and destruction. Surely, those exiles, living in the suburb of  Tel-Aviv by the river Chebar, in the only home the great majority had ever known, imagined that they would remain in that far-flung land for their entire lives. When Isaiah announced that the great YHWH was now speaking directly to “the heart of Jerusalem” by saying that their “time of service” in exile had now ended, that “the people had served their term,” and that YHWH’s “anger had finally abated,” since Israel had “received a double portion” for all its sins” (Is.40:2), hope became real to them perhaps for the first time. Nearly overnight, the horrors of their Babylonian captors had miraculously ended, and the new victors, the Persians, appeared to be very different in their treatment of those who were immigrants in the city.

Instead of being forced to remain in Babylon forever, the Persians announced that all foreigners would be allowed to go back to their homes. And even more than that, the great Persian king would aid their return by offering to pay for it and to help them rebuild their lives upon that return. Little wonder that Isaiah named Cyrus YHWH’s messiah! Cyrus, of course, not being conversant in Hebrew, let alone knowledgeable about the God YHWH, would have laughed at the designation. But for the exiles, he was nothing less than the anointed of their God.

It is essential to know this history to feel the palpable sense of relief, the eruption of joy, that must have swept through the exiled community when these new realities took shape in their midst. Here is genuine hope that can lead to a genuine future in the beloved homeland thought to have been lost forever. When Isaiah goes on to say that “all flesh is grass, all human constancy little more than flowers in the field,” but “the word of our God will stand forever” (Is.40:6-8), he claims that final hope is not actually based even on the wonders of Persian control and their gift of freedom. Final hope is always based in the fact of YHWH’s eternal word of forgiveness and promise. No matter the trouble, no matter the pain and struggle, YHWH will be present in grace and power.

I write this reflection in the midst of an unending series of revelations about the sexual abuse of women by very powerful men, brought about by courageous women who have had enough of the rank misogyny that has led certain men to act in unspeakable ways with their female colleagues, thinking apparently that it is their right to use women in any way they wish. Males have begun to lose their jobs and reputations over this abuse, and well they should. We have hardly seen the end of these revelations, because the male-female imbalance of power is all too real, even in our supposedly enlightened days. I, as a man, have no doubt contributed to these abuses in ways too often unknown to me. I have accepted my rights as a dominant male all my life, and have too little stood up in the face of supposed male prerogatives to treat women in ways demeaning and appalling. As a male clergyperson, I have not done enough to make the way clearer for my female colleagues to occupy their called role as pastors, though my own wife was pastor for over 20 years.

Where is the hope in all this ongoing pain and division? Too many women are in exile from their God-given freedom and equality. And it must readily be admitted that the Bible itself has played no small role in the power differential that exists between men and women in our day. Those who have used the Bible in these ways, namely to reinforce the notion that women are somehow secondary to men, merely “helpmeets” for men, only supporters of their men, have done women a vast disservice, silencing them, relegating them to “certain” roles in society, and finally leading directly to the abuse we now see pouring into the light.

Yet, there are passages in our Bible, even in the texts of 2-Isaiah itself, that could offer a very different notion of what it means to be a male and a female in our world. At Is.46:3-4 we read the following lovely words:

Listen to me, house of Jacob,
all the remnant of the people of Israel, who were borne by me in the belly, carried in my womb,

I am the One even to your old age, even as you gray, I will carry.

I have made, I will bear,
and I will carry and save.

Yes, it turns out the YHWH has a womb, and is thus as much female as male, as Genesis 1:27 said so clearly. If we males could recognize that profound equality, locked into the very God we worship, how could we assume that we are better, more important, more privileged than our female friends, colleagues, lovers? In God, this God, truly we, both male and female, find hope, hope when it counts, hope in the face of agony and pain.