The Hard Obedience of Hope: reflections on Isaiah 60
Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes all around, and see; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be carried on the hip. Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and exult…
Whereas you have been forsaken and hated, with no one passing through, I will make you majestic forever, a joy from age to age. - Isaiah 60: 1-5, 15-17
To be honest, I began to cry almost immediately when reading this chapter from the prophet Isaiah. I have been unknowingly desperate for the life these words hold in them. We are in complicated times. Easter—risen life. And Pandemic—daunting death. Perhaps Easter has always been a complicated time for the people of God. What are we to do when our Lord is proclaiming victory, and all around there only appears defeat?
But The Wesley taught me how to rightly view victory. At The Wesley I learned how to live in the victory that smells of defeat.
“Arise, shine! For your light has come…” Isiah 60 begins with arresting force. Arise! Shine! The whole nation of God has been under the looming shadow of exile. Isaiah 60 comes after 39 long chapters of bad news. This season has been like 39 chapters of bad news for many of us—it has been for me. The prophet speaks of what they (we) are living: “Behold, darkness will cover the earth, and deep darkness the peoples.” Yet the command is not muted, it is emphasized: “But the Lord will rise upon you, and His glory will appear upon you…Lift up your eyes round you and see…”
I have to admit, when I read this confronting start to this prophetic word, my soul wretched a little within me. From some pressed down and guarded place, I wanted to scream back at God, You must be mistaken! All around me is only darkness and death. It’s here inside me. This light and life You’re proclaiming over me just can’t be so.
But The Wesley taught me to sit and wrestle with the Word, to wrestle with myself. At The Wesley I learned to be addressed and affronted by Him who pierces soul and marrow. And when we’re through wrestling, we come out blessed.
Back then, the prophet was speaking to the holy city of God, beautiful Zion. Now besieged and desolate, still thick with the smoke of ruins, ground still wet with the blood of defeat. The place of God, the place of God with His people has been defiled. Where life should abound, there is only the thick smell of death. Today, the prophet is speaking to us, the holy people of God, the beautiful Body of Christ. You and me. Now anxious and afflicted, still cowering in make-shift shelters of our own doing, fearing illness and strangers and neighbors and hope. Where life should abound, there is only the stench of our Easter hope rotting away within us, only the sight of death.
And to the people of God, to us, to me, the prophet’s word comes: Arise, shine!
Confession: It is hard to heed to this command, as desperate as I am for it.
But The Wesley taught me to submit myself to the Lordship of Christ. At The Wesley I learned how to be obedient.
It seems odd that I would need to learn obedience when the word washing over me was comfort, reprieve, blessedness.
But The Wesley taught me to know what true blessedness is. At The Wesley I learned how to accept the hard blessedness of Christ.
This chapter is a song sung over a desperate city. She is addressed like a mother. This mother who has seen her children taken away, brutally stripped from her. Where she thought she could keep them safe, where she expected their lives to be beautiful, richly filled with the glory and goodness of God, violence has shattered her dreams, shattered her self. Today, I am that mother. Surely, we the church are that mother. I have had daughters taken from me, stripped from my arms through tears. I have had unborn life stripped from me, a son or daughter violently taken away, my desperate hands completely unable to shelter and protect such a fragile and precious soul. And we have watched helplessly as members of our body have died, from illness and violence and suicide and more. And in the ravaged, dark, hopeless place of our soul, a song begins playing over us. Arise, shine! For your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Imagine hearing this whispered promise, this light piercing through our darkness. Hope! Hope when all seems hopeless.
It is hard to rise when all has been taken from you.
But The Wesley taught me how to follow Christ. At The Wesley I learned to follow Him to the grave and then back out of it again.
Christ our Victor has taught us how to rise when stripped of everything—dignity, skin, life itself. Christ our Redeemer has taught us how to proclaim the falsehood of death, the momentary length of our afflictions, the blessedness of weeping now, poverty now, hunger now, rejection now. And Christ points us to the hope of overwhelming victory—victory which looks like defeat but is really faithful imagination of eternal life.
Today, the word washes over me like a song, hard to hear because it requires me to use hopeful vision and faithful imagination that I have let grow weak from fear of disappointment. But I awaken to the promise, the command, to rise, shine, for it is not my own light or glory which will be reviving me. Our Light has come in the flesh and blood—the now risen flesh and blood of Jesus! The Glory of the Lord has appeared upon us; where can we hide from His presence? We are enlightened, not with sentimentalities or slogans to face the wretched death around us but enlightened in flames of tongue—Pentecost—where suddenly we have words to speak to darkness and death. Words like blessed, victorious, abundance. Words like salvation and praise.
Isn’t it astounding that what The Lord gives to His exiled and long-suffering people thousands of years ago, what He gives to you and to me today are words? That after 400 years of silence, utter depravity, The Lord sends Word made flesh. Isn’t it astounding that in one Word everything changes? Darkness vanquished. Death overcome! Sadness and suffering undone. Hope undisappointed. Hope fulfilled. Life!
The Word He brings to His people then and the Word He brings now is one which empowers us to lift our eyes and see. The Word is light, a simple yet complete reckoning of dark hopelessness. The words are ones which allow us to see our children gathered together and returning to us. They are words which clear the smoke away to see beauty being planted and adorned all around us. The glory of all the riches of the world draped over our ravaged places. Covering us with beauty and glory and esteem. Where we have been “forsaken and hated,” the Lord gives us balming words, “I will make you an everlasting pride, a joy from generation to generation.”
And when fear creeps in, fear of allowing ourselves to be made whole again by His grace, fear of consenting to His redemption in our lives and bodies, for our weakness wonders if we’d have the strength to survive another blow, The Lord offers us words of reprieve: “Violence will no longer be heard again in your land, nor devastation within your borders; but you will call your walls salvation, and your gates praise.”
We bear the wounds of our mortality and vulnerability and past in our flesh. In our bodies. My body, like beautiful Zion, smolders from within, ravaged and desolate. We have no other place to carry our death but in our flesh. So, when I read these prophetic words, having just suffered such tragic loss, loss borne within my own flesh and body, I can hardly believe them.
But The Wesley taught me to trust in the Lord. At The Wesley I learned to relinquish my own abilities or understanding and to get caught up in the life of the Word.
To believe that I, even I, will call my walls salvation. That even I will call my gates praise. That life will be gathered to me, and life will pass through me once more.
The Wesley taught me to see and believe and live in a blessed not-yet-reality. A backwards, complicated, not-understandable victory.
To do that, I must arise and shine, trusting the reality of eternity is truer than the reality of the death around me. I must arise and shine, trusting that, even now, my children are being gathered to me, as He is gathering all of us, His children, to Himself. I must arise and shine, refusing to allow the feeling of defeat or the appearance of darkness to hinder me, for He Himself is beckoning onward. To live this unimaginable reality, I must follow Him past what seems like the end, even to death, to arise with Him reborn and revived. I must accept anew His breath of life blown over me, His Word speaking order over dark chaos, His stillness in a world of turmoil and commotion.
Thankfully, The Wesley taught me how to do this. How to arise, and shine. At The Wesley I learned that my light has come and His glory had risen upon me. I learned this light wouldn’t stop the darkness from being around me but would see me and know me in the midst of it. I learned His glory risen upon me is not some magic spell keeping bad things from happening but that, oftentimes, right in the midst of the bad things is where we are called blessed. I learned that The Lord is wholly opposed to violence and that the life of the world to come is unimaginable to us mostly because of this. I learned how to hold fast to unfulfilled yet sure-as-the-dawn hope—that there will be no more tears or pain or sorrow or death. I learned I can sing songs of victory—assured, and overwhelming victory—through tears and heartache and brokenness. And that when I feel stripped as bare as I can be, He is there. At The Wesley I learned it is important, perhaps even more important, to celebrate Easter during a pandemic. Because Christ's victory is not threatened or dampened by this plague. If we submit to it, perhaps we can learn it’s in times such as these that we most need to learn to proclaim Christ crucified, dead, and risen. And at The Wesley I learned that if I am buried with Christ, surely I, even I, will arise.
Amen.
Kaiti Rees Lammert is an alumna of the Louisiana Tech University Wesley Foundation where she served as a member and then Associate Director for 9 years. She currently serves as a youth pastor at FUMC Hallsville. Kaiti is married to Michael Lammert and mother to Lily! She is bold, kind, and obviously filled with the Holy Spirit. We cherish the moments she spent at the Wesley Foundation and we are excited to see the work the Lord continues to do in her life!