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Hope and Promise
An Overview and Invitation
Does the world have a purpose? Does my life have a purpose? Most of us have asked questions like these at one time or another in our lives. They arise for many reasons. Perhaps the violence and chaos plaguing the planet bring such despair in their wake that we wonder if history has a guiding hand. Or perhaps personal failure and gnawing disappointment with the course of our lives bring us to the very edge of disillusionment. We wonder if the world is really under the control of a good and compassionate God or if it is governed by indifferent and impersonal forces acting without regard for virtue, vice or vision. We wonder if there is a bright and hopeful future before us or only darkness and disappointment.
A bewildering variety of sages, religions and sects offers an equally bewildering variety of religious answers to these and other significant questions. Another group of advisers offers us more secular advice regarding life struggles. They call on us to join a particular political party or social movement. Meaning will be found, they say, in fighting for social justice or an equitable tax policy or protection of the environment. Still others despair of finding answers at all and advise us to bravely accept the reality of the worldâs meaninglessness and try to make the best of it.
The sages, mystics and prophets have offered two principal answers to the question of lifeâs direction and purpose. Some have argued life is an unending cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Just as spring turns to summer and summer to fall and then winter, so our lives ascend, descend and then ascend again. Many ancient societies, in fact, saw the seasons as an important picture of human life itself. A human life is rather like the agricultural cycle. We move through life like a plant, sprouting like a seedling, growing to fruitful maturity and then sinking back into the earth to nurture the next generation. The cycle is repeated over and over again. In some traditions the cycle is a spiral that takes human beings from a lower to higher stateâor vice versa! But in others the world is a closed cycle of birth, death and rebirth with no destination, no purpose but its own perpetuation.
Jews and Christians look at the purpose and direction of life very differently from these sages, mystics and prophets. For them the metaphor is not the endless cycle of death and rebirth, but the journey, the pilgrimage. Life is depicted not as a circle or a spiral but as an arrow. Jews and Christians are not wandering in the wilderness but heading purposefully for the Promised Land. There are certainly birth, death and rebirth, but there is completion to the cycle. The journey finally comes to an end. Godâs mysterious purposes are finally fulfilled. The force that acts upon the world is not indifferent, impersonal and purposeless, but personal, loving and full of purpose. Life is not, as Macbeth declared, âa tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.â Rather,
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness. (Lam 3:22-23)
Judaism and Christianity, in other words, are eschatological. They believe God intends to bring his great work of creation to completion.
Among other things, this means the study of eschatology, or âlast things,â is not important because it gives insider information about the end of the world. The prophecy charts and end-time scenarios more often than not obscure the significance of prophetic texts. The attempts to identify the antichrist or predict the time of Jesusâ return have done little more than provide occasions for mockery and embarrassment. Consider the following:
- Followers of Joachim of Fiore believed that the year 1260 âwas the preÂdetermined date that marked the final early age.â
- The Taborite sect predicted Christ would return in 1420.
- John Napier of Scotland predicted the world would end in 1688.
- Heinrich Alsted of Germany thought the judgment would begin in 1694.
- Others predicted the end would come in 1697, 1714, 1798, 1830, 1847, 1866 and so on.
Jewish mystics were no less enthusiastic in predicting the date of the arrival of the Messiah. And such predictions have not ceased. When I arrived at my office on the first day of my pastoral ministry in Salina, Kansas, a booklet titled 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988 was on my desk. Many Christians have been taken in by such rash predictions. Unfortunately, neither the failure of the predictions nor the words of Jesus seem to dampen the enthusiasm of some folk (see Mk 13:32). For others the bizarre fantasies of such âprophetsâ and mystics lead to cynicism. They avoid books like Daniel and Revelation, claiming to be âpanmillennialistsââbelieving it will all âpan outâ in the end. But neither obsession nor indifference does justice to the eschatological teachings of the Bible.
There is much more to Christian eschatology than mere prediction. Eschatology is not about the end only, but also about the beginning and middle of faith and life as well. Christianity, as suggested, is eschatological to its core. This means, as suggested, that Christians believe the world has a purposeâit is headed somewhere. The Christian faith is about hope. The Christian message is good news. The world is not locked in an endless cycle of death and rebirth or trapped in a death spiral leading to annihilation. Godâs promise is ânew heavens and a new earthâ (Is 65:17; Rev 21:1-4). But this does not mean Godâs future is a remote reality we passively await. For Christians the future spills into the present. Jesus would assert that in a profound sense the kingdom of God was already here. The apostle Paul would insist that we are already raised with Christ (Rom 6) and already âseated . . . with him in the heavenly placesâ (Eph 2:6). The rulers and authorities have already been disarmed and defeated (Col 2). Christians are called to live in light of a victory already secured. They are called, in the words of poet Wendell Berry, to âpractice resurrection.â
Jesus and the Hope of Israel
The Gospel of Mark tells us that after his baptism by John the Baptist and a time of testing in the wilderness, Jesus returned to Galilee to begin his public ministry. Mark says Jesus was âproclaiming the good news of God, and saying, âThe time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good newsââ (Mk 1:14-15). Almost immediately he began teaching in the synagogues, calling disciples, casting out demons and healing the sick. What did Jesus mean by all this? How would his Jewish audience have understood it? How was all this good news for them? To answer these questions we need to explore the situation of the Jewish people in the first century.
Six hundred years before the ministry of Jesus began, the Babylonians had destroyed the city of Jerusalem, leveled Solomonâs temple and carried away the people into exile (see 2 Kings 25:1-17). Although the Persian king Cyrus eventually permitted Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild their temple, they were still under the control of a mighty empire (see Ezra 1). The Greeks of Alexander the Great followed the Persians. And following a brief period of relative freedom under their own kings, precipitated by the successful Maccabean revolt against their Greek rulers, the Jews found themselves once more at the mercy of an empire: Rome. Although Cyrus permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, it must have seemed to many in Israel that the exile had never really ended.
This was particularly galling because of the high expectations generated by their prophets. Isaiah 35 had predicted that at the end of the exile Godâs people would experience the flowering of the desert preceding the arrival of God himself. Exiles from distant pagan lands would joyfully journey to Jerusalem. The âeyes of the blindâ would be opened. The âears of the deafâ would be unstopped. The lame and broken would join the return journey to the land whole and free. The brutal wasteland would flow with water and flourish with lush grasses. Godâs exiled people would return to the land
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrowing and sighing shall flee away. (Is 35:10)
The reality of the return from the exile was something else entirely.
The prophet Haggai bluntly confronts the disappointments of the returnees in his brief and poignant prophecy. âConsider how you have fared,â he declares. âYou have sown much, and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holesâ (Hag 1:5-6). Although the people had returned to the land, the temple was still in ruins, the walls of the city were rubble and they were barely surviving in a hostile environment (see Neh 1â2). Only a small percentage of the exiles had returned to the city, and the ones there were disheartened and frustrated. This was hardly what Isaiah had led them to expect! Over the years the situation of Godâs people did not greatly improve.
By the time of Jesus the disappointment was painfully obvious. Some still lived in hope of Godâs intervention, perhaps through his âanointed one,â his Messiah. Others formed communities of protest in the desert to escape the compromises of their rulers as well as the hated Romans. Still others called for opposition to the Romans and anyone who sympathized with them, bloodying their knives to foment rebellion. Some sought solace in the community, the Scriptures and the traditions of the elders. Others simply gave up on God and the âhope of Israelâ (Jer 14:8; Acts 28:20). Perhaps we hear their voices in the words of the âscoffersâ: âWhere is the promise of his coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creationâ (2 Pet 3:3-4). Palestine at the time of Jesus was a swamp of hostility, depression, indifference and hope as Jesus began to proclaim the good news.
According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus began his synagogue teaching in his hometown of Nazareth. He appears to have laid out his program in Luke 4:16-30. He began by quoting from Isaiah 61:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me;
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lordâs favor. (Lk 4:18-19)
So far as Jesus was concerned, Isaiahâs hopes were not dead. However deep their disappointment at their continuing oppression, Jesus insisted there was good news. Not only that, he insisted, âToday this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearingâ (Lk 4:21). The promises of Isaiah, so long delayed and frustrated, were coming to fruition. The sermon did not end well for Jesus. Enraged at his presumptuousness, they drove him out of town. It was hardly an auspicious beginning!
Nevertheless, in Nazareth Jesus had launched his program. To a great extent it was Isaiahâs program. I believe Jesus took his cues from the book of Isaiah and framed his ministry around the bookâs hopes and expectations. Even his death reflects that of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. Why was Isaiah so important to Jesus? I would suggest that Isaiahâs importance was found in that, while he certainly prophesied national renewal, he seemed to go far beyond the requirements of rebuilt temple, restored walls and renewed institutions. He looked not only to the fulfillment of Israelâs future but to the fulfillment of Godâs intention for the whole of creation. Isaiahâs message contains a strikingly transcendent element. Two passages are key: Isaiah 65:17-25 and 25:6-9. Did these striking prophecies refer only to a national revival for Israel, or does the prophet have something more in mind? And what do these ancient words have to do with hopes of first-century Jews or, for that matter, with people living in the twenty-first century?
Isaiah and the Restoration of All Things
Imagine you are one of those discouraged postexilic Jews eking out a living in a devastated city or desolate countryside. You live in rubble. Your neighbors are hostile. You fret over the future of your children and perhaps doubt the very survival of your community. You are part of a tiny and defeated people, living at the edge of a vast, powerful and violent empire. You have heard tales of what your God did in the past to call a people to himself out of slavery and humiliation. Will he do so again, you wonder, or was your God defeated by the gods of Babylon and now humbled before the gods of Persia? How would you hear these words?
I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people. (Is 65:17-19)
There is no question you would hear this as good news. Perhaps your heart would beat a little faster and your dormant hopes would stir. You see before you a restored city, fruitful fields and happy children playing in prosperous villages. You see peace, prosperity and securityâwhat every human being, every human family, longs for.
But then Isaiah says something startling:
No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime. (Is 65:20)
This could just be a fancy way of speaking of the security and health of the community. But it raises your eyebrows a bit. And then the prophet makes another startling proclamation:
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpentâits food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
says the LORD. (Is 65:25)
For wolves and lambs to feed together and lions to eat straw like an ox, something dramatic would need to happen. Predators and prey do not normally get along, to say the least. Once again you could take this as rather high-flung prophet talkâexaggeration for the sake of effect. But perhaps you would wonder just what it could mean.
If Isaiah 65 raised your eyebrows, Isaiah 25 would cause your jaw to drop. The passage promises...
