When Archbishop Michael Ramsey walked to his enthronement in Canterbury, his biographer described him as bearing “the perplexed look of a lion who had turned vegetarian for philosophical reasons” Ramsey was fond of hard questions, and he always gave himself time to think about the answer by muttering, “ Yes ... yes ...Yes..” It was a way of looking for light in a dark conundrum.
Isaiah was “one acquainted with the night” to quote Robert Frost. He understood human distress, darkness and fearful gloom, and the human spirit, crushed by the weight of darkness. Isaiah is a prophet whose whole view of life, even of a darkened world was, Yes... Yes...Yes. Isaiah also took time to think, to look for light in a dark conundrum. Acquainted with the night, but no stranger to hope either. Hope is a defiant yes to life in the face of and in the presence of darkness. And faith is to trust that light will come as new freedom, fresh growth and emergent new life. Another poet, Robert Browning faced up to the same stark contrast of darkness and light, and the search for hope and faith:
If I stoop into a dark tremendous sea of cloud
it is but for a time: I press God’s lamp
close to my breast: its splendour, soon or late,
will pierce the gloom: I shall emerge some day.
Isaiah 9 is about darkness, the hope for light, and a poem about God's astonishing planned reversals. In this poem of protest and faith-reconfiguration, all the distress, darkness and fearful gloom of Isaiah 8.22 encounter their opposite; gloom is eclipsed by light. Hope takes the courage to look back on despair, to imagine a different future, and then to see the present reality, however dark, transformed by that thread of light racing across the horizon.
Gloom and darkness are real, but behind it all is a deeper reality, a truth even more real. Isaiah tells it as it is, like an existentialist who discovers something more ultimate than personal existence. We either look at the darkness across our world, feel the hopelessness of millions, and weep over all the shattered dreams and blame God for not being there. Or we look with tear filled eyes at that darkness, feel the weight of that hopelessness, shed our tears over all those shattered dreams and hear that past tense made present experience – “those living in the land of the shadow of death, on them light has dawned".
Those words about darkness annd dawn take Christian imagination to another past-tense eclipsing of the gloom, when the darkness of Calvary was eclipsed by the sunrise of resurrection. Darkness is real but it is not the final, last reality in the universe. James Denney wrote of this often: “What is revealed at the cross is redeeming love, and it is revealed as the last reality of the universe, the eternal truth of what God is...you wish to know the final truth about God; here it is, eternal love bearing sin’. No more gloom, ...unto us a child is born.
What follows in verses 3-6 is one of the most astonishing passages in the entire Hebrew Bible. War is reversed, disarmed, and the implements of oppression are shattered beyond repair. Isaiah uses the very images of war to show how God extorts peace from conflict, prises liberty from the iron grip of oppression, and forces the darkness, distress and fearful gloom give way to light, human welfare and shalom. The 'enlarging of nations' in verse 3 is a term for imperial conquest but this time, God's time, it is to be an empire of joy. The increase isn't by plundering the weak but by curtailing the destructiveness of the strong. Yes there is joy, but now it will be rooted in justice. That violent word, ‘shattered’,when applied to a nation, is the word for national humiliation, devastated hopes and destroyed communities. To people in exile, the terminology of ‘shattering’ has a permanently bitter flavour in the nation’s vocabulary. But now it is the yoke that is shattered, the chain gang shackles of POW’s are shattered, the machinery of oppression is smashed beyond repair. War is reversed…for unto us a child is born.
The imagery of fire used in verse 5 is never ambiguous in the context of war. Fire represents the destructive, punitive power of the conqueror. What isn't plundered is torched; home, culture, community, economy all burned, reducing the conquered people to aimless despair. You break hearts and you prevent rebellion. But here is the great reversal. It is the marching boots that trample that are burned, along with the soldiers uniforms…for unto us a child is born.
This is a magnificent poem of defiance; peace defying war; joy defying distress; hope defying fearful gloom. No wonder oppressors imprison poets. No more gloom because God’s hope child is born. A world reversed from darkness to light. And it is not yet finished. The great messianic text of verses 6 and 7 redescribe the world into a new created order. Chaos is ordered by the establishing of justice and righteousness. Isaiah is unafraid to look into darkness, not because he belittles fears and distress, but because this prophet poet knows that no darkness is absolute in a universe created and loved by God. The last reality of the universe is not darkness, distress and fearful gloom...but a child born, a pin-point of light shining with the dazzling holy love of God who will not abandon his creation.
One of the great creation hymns begins, “Thou whose almighty word, chaos and darkness heard and took their flight” I remember being present when that happened at a musical Premiere. James Macmillan’s, Veni Emmanuel, was premiered in Aberdeen in 1992. The Scottish concert solo percussionist, Evelyn Glennie, who is deaf and feels music in the soles of her feet, was the percussionist that evening. The music begins in the harmony of creation and relentlessly descends into the darkness of discord and noise. Out of the discordant noise there is the occasional fragment of a tune that may be familiar. As the vibrations of drums, bells, chimes, cymbals threaten to drown out the music, the vibrations of chaos are subverted by tremors of hope, then there is a fanfare of defiance and the half recognised tune is played in all its glory, O Come O Come Emmanuel. The percussion is now allied with the orchestra, beating back the darkness, hammering out a message of hope until the triumphant noise gives way to the triumph of a slow quietening of the tubular bells to the peace of silence.
Isaiah plays similar music; the darkness distress and fearful gloom of his people are like the noise and discord of a tune gone badly wrong, an orchestra out of control, until his message, muted and fragmented is blazed forth, "No more gloom...the people who walked in darkness...seen a great light...for to us a child is born....and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
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Robert Frost's 'Acquainted with the night' can be read over here.
Veni Emmanuel, composed by James MacMillan, performed by Evelyn Glennie can be heard and seen here
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