The Audacity of Hope

On a cold New England Night, the impossible happened. Two people left for dead, one this summer and one last week, rose from their respective political graves. Over the summer the question facing John McCain wasn’t whether he could ride an early victory to the Republican nomination, but whether his campaign could manage enough cash to survive the summer. The one-time frontrunner had become an afterthought, crushed by a conservative wave of enthusiasm for a Northeastern governor, a 9/11-made mayor, a lawyer-turned-actor-turned Senator-turned actor-turned candidate again, and another boy from Hope.

Hillary Clinton’s problems were more recent in timing and focused in scope. National polls had favored Clinton by almost thirty points in the summer and pundits had begun planning her coronation to the Democratic nomination. But then Barack Obama happened, and after Obama won the Iowa Caucuses last week, polls in New Hampshire had Obama with a 10-point lead on Tuesday – the day of the primary. It was so bad for Clinton that the machine-like Hillary almost cried during a lunch at a New Hampshire diner. On Tuesday afternoon, pundits and prognosticators weren’t speculating about Bill’s role in a second Clinton administration, but whether Hillary’s campaign was finished less than two weeks into the nominating process.

But just a few hours later, the experts were singing a whole different tune. The Washington Post declared Hillary, “The Comeback Kid”, the same title her husband earned after rallying in New Hampshire 16 years earlier, after she defeated Obama by almost eight thousand votes.[1] At the same time Hillary was announcing she was back, McCain supporters were chanting that the Mac was back after he defeated Mitt Romney by more than thirteen thousand votes. A beaming McCain told his chanting throng, “We sure showed ‘em what a comeback looked like.”[2]

But as improbable as McCain and Clinton’s new status were to conceive, their new prominent political standings pale in comparison with the new things declared in the 42^nd chapter of Isaiah. This chapter is one of the controversial servant passages in Isaiah – in which Christians have tended to identify God’s servant as Jesus while others have insisted the servant is Cyrus, the Persian King, still others the people, and still others the most prominent cultural savior of the day. While the identity of the servant is a matter of great significance, even more important is what Isaiah announces the servant will accomplish.

The prophet’s good news is that God’s servant will not rest until the whole earth is covered with justice. The word justice is mentioned three times in the first four verses of this passage alone, when the servant’s purpose is put forth. Verse 1: God’s spirit has been put on the servant so he will bring justice to the nations. Verse3: The servant will faithfully bring forth justice in that he will not make his voice heard in the street or break a bruised reed or quench a dimly burning wick. Verse 4: The servant will not grow faint or be crushed until justice has been established in the earth. The message is striking: God’s servant will not rest until justice is the way of this whole wide world. And God will not execute justice in the traditional way – through violence and raw force. With neither sharp swords nor smart bombs will justice come forth. A candle on the cusp of being snuffed out will survive the servant’s work, and a bruised reed - a plant that can easily be broken - will also not be crushed by this servant. This servant cares for the weak and the vulnerable to the highest degree.

The word justice can and has sometimes served as a catch-all term used to justify whatever a person or a particular group wants. A person’s definition of justice often depends on their particular social and economic location. The definitions of justice we might hear in South Atlanta are probably a little different that those we would hear in Buckhead and different than those we might hear in Baghdad. Some Christian ethicists have tended to roughly define justice as a state where each person gets what they are due. But the definition Isaiah is using is not a catch-all term that anyone can manipulate and it goes far beyond the vague notion of justice as getting your due. Justice in this case is not getting what you deserve, but according to Walter Brueggeman, who used to teach Old Testament a few miles away in Decatur, God’s justice as revealed through the law of Moses and in the pronouncement of the God’s prophets is a complete reordering of society so that the most weak and the most vulnerable among us can live with dignity.[3]

We desperately crave this divine justice. And here’s the thing: Universal justice means this justice with dignity isn’t coming only to Jerusalem but stretches all the way to Jonesboro Road and everywhere in between. We will see this day of the Lord when men and women don’t have to degrade themselves by selling their bodies just to pay the rent. When children half my age aren’t being recruited to peddle poison and push drugs. When God’s children of all ages won’t ever again have to choose between broccoli and blood pressure medicine.

Isaiah won’t let us simply wait on this day of the Lord. God speaks through the prophet to tell the people that it is through Israel that God will bring forth this justice. It is through Israel, a people who have been conquered and are living in exile. There might not be a more powerless group of people on the planet! Justice will come through the agency of the people who follow and pledge allegiance to the one true God, Yahweh, the God of Isaac and Abraham and Jacob and Ruth and Naomi and Isaiah and Jeremiah. The vocation of those, both then and now, who pledge allegiance to the God revealed in the Scriptures, is to bring forth justice, to “open the eyes that are blind, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon.” Our vocation, the divine calling that each of us has received from the God of Israel, is as a body of believers, to bring forth justice, to release our brothers and sisters from captivity and blindness in whatever forms they exist.

Not too long ago my friend Ben and I were having one of those discussions you have when you’re in graduate school and have too much time on your hands. One afternoon we were despairing at all the problems we saw, particularly in our classmates. One after another with problems too many to count and seemingly too big to solve, wonderful people devoured by their personal and societal demons. He looked at me, his eyes full of severity and passion, and said it – “There’s just not enough band-aids to go around.” As much as we both might have wanted to, we were powerless to spring these people from their debilitating captivity. Or so we thought.

Ben and I were operating with the framework of former things in mind, but in this text God speaks through Isaiah of wondrous new things. The new thing that God is declaring to the prophet beforehand is that this universal dignity will be come to pass. The servant, whose purpose is to bring forth universal justice, will succeed. Justice and dignity will ring from Mesopotamia to Metropolitan Avenue. The people, whose vocation is to open the eyes that are blind and bring out prisoners of dungeons, will succeed. The dignity that will be brought into being through the people who declare their allegiance to the one God of Israel is guaranteed to succeed. Talk about the audacity of hope.

Its success is not dependent on the financial or political capabilities of the people. Its success does not rest on the abilities of people to organize grassroots and community support. Its success is ultimately not dependent on the people’s gifts and resources. The people’s work for justice will succeed not because of the people’ strength but because of the strength of God. God - the Lord who created the heavens, the Lord who spread out the earth, the Lord who gives breath to the people, has guaranteed this success. God has called the people in righteousness with the express purpose of giving sight to the blind and liberating the prisoners. God would not use us to accomplish a task that cannot be accomplished. And if God can create the earth from chaos and sustain our lives at every second of every minute of every day, then we know, that even when this task looks impossible, God can accomplish it.

One of the most hopeless situations imaginable must have been Africans living under apartheid in South Africa. For years the white majority had violated, tortured and subjected the Africans to all kinds of oppression and relief appeared nowhere in sight. Desmond Tutu knew and had experienced many of the horrors. He had been thrown in jail for trying to end this horrible system.

Jim Wallis, who many of you know as the editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine, tells the story of hearing Tutu preach in Cape Town one night during the movement. As Tutu stepped up to the preach, you couldn’t help but notice that hundreds of police had surrounded the church and even more surrounded the back walls of the church, prepared to take notes and record Tutu’s sermon. Tutu pointed his finger at the police trying to intimidate him and the crowd, and then told the truth. “You are powerful. You are very powerful, but you are not gods and I serve a God that cannot be mocked. So since, you’ve already lost, I invite you today to come and join the winning side.”[4]

The power of injustice is pretty small really when compared to the power of God. The injustice that is all around us is no different than the injustice the prophet Isaiah saw all around him. In chapter 41, immediately preceding our text, God speaks through the prophet and challenges all the people about the Gods they are serving. The kings, the alliances, the riches and the hosts of other Gods that the people are putting their trust in. The final verse of chapter 41 puts it this way: “No, they are all a delusion; their works are nothing, their images are an empty wind.”

The idols that bring forth injustice today are making the same claims for ultimacy that those idols did. Selfishness and violence and insecurity that give us the drugs and the despair, the homelessness and the helplessness are no less powerful than the perceived power of those policemen staring down Tutu. But while they too are full of power, they also aren’t gods. And we serve a God that won’t be mocked and a God who won’t rest until every idol is defeated and who won’t quit until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

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[1] Balz, Dan. “With Echoes of Clinton ’92, Another Comeback Kid”, The Washington Post. Jan. 9, 2008, A8.

[2] McCain, John. “Remarks by John McCain on New Hampshire Primary Victory”, Jan. 8, 2008. http://www.johnmccain.com.

[3] Brueggeman, Walter. Isaiah 40-66: Westminster Bible Companion. 42.

[4] Wallis, Jim. God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get it.

Isaiah 42:1-9

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations. ²
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street; ³a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice. ⁴
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching. ⁵Thus says God, the Lord,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it: ⁶
I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,^*
a light to the nations, ⁷ to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness. ⁸
I am the Lord, that is my name;
my glory I give to no other,
nor my praise to idols. ⁹
See, the former things have come to pass,
and new things I now declare; before they spring forth,
I tell you of them.