This week, I turn to a biblical text that’s always read at Christmas. Christmas comes at the darkest time of the year in the northern hemisphere. It’s when we gather around the tale of the Incarnation, a Child being born, light shining in the darkness. We light our candles and sing Silent Night. But rarely does Christmas fit the social, political context of Isaiah 9.2-8. The times we’re now living through do fit that ancient context. And so, the text is an ancient witness to a mystic vision that helped community live through a fearful season in its life. It’s a guide for us now—an ancient word, whispering of hope, reaching us now as we live in the midst of this global pandemic, our own fearful and difficult season.
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.”
A long time ago, people found themselves living through a time of great tumult and trouble. The despots in power had no concern whatsoever for the common person. War, disease, and famine swept through the land, causing immense suffering. There was little hope for a better future. Despair was epidemic.
In the midst of all this, Isaiah the prophet had a vision that stood him on his feet again and to strengthen his people with hope.
Just when the night was darkest, Isaiah glimpsed the coming of the dawn. Just when things looked bleakest, Isaiah saw a woman giving birth to a child. Just when hope was nearly lost, Isaiah perceived that history was turning a corner—away from war, disease, and famine, away from tyranny and cruelty and suffering, and toward a new day of cooperation among peoples who had known only animosity—a new day of prosperity for all people not just a few, a new era for a new humanity.
“There will be justice and peace, and righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.”
There is hope, says Isaiah, in the midst of darkness.
The dawn always follows the darkest hour of the night.
Spring always follows winter.
Mothers will not stop birthing babies.
“Seeds,” Jesus said, “buried in the ground, push through the hardest earth and bear the sweetest fruit.”
The zeal of life’s longing for itself means we are never without hope, no matter what presses down upon us.
Last winter a group of us from Davis Community Church sat in a migrant resource center a few hundred yards from the border wall that stands between Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico and Douglas, Arizona. We were there to walk in solidarity with those on both sides of the border who are working for justice and a better way of life.
A Honduran man my son’s age sat across from me as we shared a dinner of rice and beans and tortillas. The cartels had killed his two brothers. “They were coming for me next,” he said. “I had to flee. I came here. I can’t go back. But I can’t go forward either. I don’t know what I will do, but I haven’t given up hope.” He smiled.
“Why?” I asked. I wanted to know what could keep him hopeful in what seemed like such a hopeless situation. What could make him smile when there was nothing to be happy about.
“They thought they could bury us,” he said; “they didn’t know we were seeds.”
It is a common Central American proverb; it is also a memorable summary of the gospel.
Inside every human heart, there is a seed: the seed of life. And in that seed, in every human heart, there is the zeal of God, the Lord of life.
The zeal of God, life’s longing for life, means that a seed buried in the ground, will push through the hardest earth, against the greatest odds, and bear fruit. Life always yearns for life. Mothers always will have babies. Spring always will follow winter. The dawn always will come after the darkest hour of the night.
“The people who walk in darkness always have light,” said Isaiah. But maybe we can’t see the light until we need it most. Maybe a vision like Isaiah’s doesn’t come to us until we’re desperate.
We’re close to desperate now. We’ve known war. Now we know disease— on a scale we’ve never known before. And we might yet know famine and other kinds of suffering we don’t want to know.
You read the news. COVID19 shows no signs of slowing. Fear and anxiety are as pandemic as is the virus. And there’s no question, really, that it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
You probably wish I hadn’t said that. I wish I didn’t have to say that. But not saying that would be to play into the denial that endangers us all.
The President wants people back in church on Easter; he likes the optics. Packed churches would signal that the crisis is over, that we averted disaster, that we are triumphant. The President wants to raise the economy from the dead on Easter. But packed churches, say the experts, will only make matters worse, expose more people, jeopardize more lives. The economy is terribly vulnerable, that’s true, and a vulnerable economy makes people terribly vulnerable. Leaders have to walk a knife edge between protecting people from sickness and protecting the economy from collapse. That’s no easy choice.
Many people are managing this quite well, some are even finding in it a needed change; many of us are cooperating in surprising ways. Lots of us are cooking at home again. We’re slowing down. We’re going for walks. We’re reconnecting in meaningful ways with people we care about. But the kids are home non-stop, people are hoarding toilet paper and hand sanitizer, friends and family members are sheltering in place far from home, there aren’t enough medical supplies, beds, or ventilators, more people are getting sick, more people will die.
This is not the time for irresponsible optimism. This is not the time for naive denials of the dangers we face. We face an emergency unlike any emergency we’ve ever faced.
Rebecca Solnit’s book, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, is Isaianic. She’s a historian and activist, whose modern vision is resonant with the ancient vision of Isaiah, the prophet of God.
To a people who lived in a land of deep darkness, Isaiah said that dawn follows the darkest hour of the night. When things look bleakest, Isaiah says a woman will give birth to a child. When hope is nearly lost, Isaiah says that history will turn a corner—away from war, disease, and famine, away from tyranny and cruelty and suffering and toward a new day of cooperation among peoples, of prosperity for all peoples, the rising of a new, and peaceable humanity.
To us living in a new season of crisis Rebecca Solnit says: “Inside the word emergency is the word emerge; that means that from an emergency new things can come forth.”
There’s Easter in her words. Emergence. New things. Life coming out of death.
But for us, Easter may still be a long way off. We will probably know more of Lent’s suffering and Holy Week’s death than any of us want to know.
We need courage to stay the course, to keep practicing social distancing, to flatten the curve, to save lives.
We need endurance to suffer the challenges ahead, to keep people before policies, and community before capitalism
And we need character, the firmness of resolve not to give in to despair no matter how difficult things may get.
Courage, endurance, and character, all three, sustained by hope.
Hope is not some silly, flimsy pie-in-the-sky optimism. No, no. Hope is that seed placed in our hearts by God; hope is the zeal of life’s longing for life, the inner assurance that life is actually irrepressible, that life always, eventually, breaks through the hard ground of whatever would push us and hold us down.
“I can’t go back. I can’t go forward. I don’t know what I will do.” Those are the words of a young migrant and refugee from Honduras, alone and hungry on the south side of the Wall. “But I haven’t given up hope.” And he smiled.
“Why?” I asked. I needed to know how he could hold on to hope in such a hopeless situation; what could make him smile when there was nothing to be happy about.
“They thought they could bury us,” he said, “they didn’t know we were seeds.”
I believe there’s life in the seed.
We believe there’s hope in the dark.
I believe something new will emerge.
We believe all this even at the darkest hour of the night.