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The readings today at St. Matthew\u2019s (and every other) Episcopal church were Isaiah 65:17-25<\/a> and Luke 21:5-19<\/a>.<\/p>\n What an interesting pairing.<\/p>\n Isaiah\u2019s words<\/strong> are all about the future bliss of Jerusalem where pretty much everything that can go right does and everything that can go wrong doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n There will be no more weeping or cries of distress; no more infant mortality\u00a0but longevity for all; freedom from enemy attacks and hostile takeovers; descendants will be blessed, and before they even have a chance to speak, God will hear them and act.<\/p>\n In fact, Jerusalem\u2019s future will be nothing less than a return to Eden\u00a0where<\/strong>\u00a0wolf and lamb, lion and ox, will be at peace, but the \u201cserpent\u201d (who tempted Eve in the original Garden of Eden) will pose no threat: he will\u00a0be consigned\u00a0to eating dust from the outset.<\/p>\n Thus spoke \u201cDeutero-Isaiah,\u201d the anonymous exilic\/postexilic prophet, who envisioned a glorious future for Jerusalem. In v. 25 he echoes the words of the 8th century prophet Isaiah in 11:6-9, where the promise of the animal harmony was to have been a mark of the Davidic monarchy. Now, many years later, the role of the line of David is not so certain.<\/p>\n Still, the hope for Jerusalem\u2019s glorious future remains intact, although no longer tied to\u00a0monarchical rhetoric\u2014now it is about a renewal of creation itself (v. 17), a new Eden.<\/p>\n But\u00a0this future vision is not realized.<\/p>\n Jerusalem will labor under the yoke of foreign kings, first Persian, then Greek, and then finally Roman, at whose hands the Temple is destroyed and Jerusalem\u2019s habitants are either killed or scatter.<\/p>\n We must remember that Old Testament prophecies do not always come about<\/strong>, not because they are failed predictions, but because they are not primarily hard-and-fast predictions at all. They are\u00a0\u201cconditional promises,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 visions of the ideal, of what God desires, of what can be, not of what will invariably be.<\/p>\n Which brings us to Jesus\u2019s words<\/strong> concerning the destruction of the Temple\u00a0in Luke 21.\u00a0(Yes, I believe these \u201cend-of-the-world\u201d speeches in the Gospels pertain to the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70\u2014feel free to disagree.)<\/p>\n Jesus\u2019s vision for Jerusalem\u2019s future couldn\u2019t be more different from Deutero-Isaiah\u2019s. Jesus describes the impending destruction\u00a0of Jerusalem<\/strong>.\u00a0In classic prophetic exaggerated (yet still realistic) language, Jesus speaks of wars and insurrections, nations\u00a0and kingdoms rising up against each other, earthquakes, famines, plagues, heavenly portents. And Jesus promises persecution, death, and hatred\u00a0for his listeners.<\/p>\n Deutero-Isaiah\u2019s future vision of Jerusalem was bliss, paradise, a new Creation. Jesus\u2019s reality was, \u201c. . . the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down\u201d (v. 6).<\/p>\n I know how this tension is typically handled in Christian theology: Isaiah wasn\u2019t wrong at all. <\/em>His words were\u00a0intended, if not consciously by him then by God who inspired\u00a0the prophet, to refer to a different sort of \u201cfulfillment\u201d that can only come with Jesus. [Whew. Crisis avoided. The Bible really\u00a0does<\/em> speak with one voice.]\n<\/p>\n I have no trouble with saying that Isaiah 65\u00a0came to be interpreted\u00a0<\/em>as \u201cultimately\u201d fulfilled in Christ. But try telling that to the postexilic Jews.\u00a0More important, to make the case that\u00a0Isaiah 65 is\u00a0actually<\/em>\u00a0about\u00a0the collapse of Jerusalem and the Temple in order to make way for Jesus simply sidesteps the tenor of Israel\u2019s theology, which was very much centered on glory of Jerusalem and of the Temple.<\/p>\n As with most things we see in the New Testament, the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple is a \u201csurprise ending\u201d to Israel\u2019s story.<\/p>\n Sometimes things look one way\u2014glorious, hopeful, surely a certain and true blessing of God.\u00a0And keep in mind that Deutero-Isaiah and the other postexilic Jews had every right to lay claim to such a\u00a0hopeful future<\/em>: Jerusalem was God\u2019s city and the Temple was\u00a0God\u2019s house, and thus would\u00a0surely\u00a0triumph.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n To think\u00a0otherwise would be to charge\u00a0God with unfaithfulness to God\u2019s promises; to accuse God of sleeping, lying, forgetting, or just not able to come through.<\/p>\n And yet Jerusalem and the Temple were razed and the people scattered or were massacred.<\/p>\n Even when we think we know what God will do\u2014what God\u00a0must<\/em> do\u2014we never actually really\u00a0<\/em>know. And in the meantime, we dance between joy and despair in this life of faith, where we are always learning to try to trust God rather than trusting in what we think God is doing or must do.<\/p>\n This blog was first posted in November 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n ***In\u00a0The Bible Tells Me So<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(HarperOne, 2014), I deal a lot more with the messiness of the Bible and how that reflects our own spiritual journeys. In The Sin of Certainty<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(HarperOne, 2016) I spend a lot of time talking about how needing to be certain about what God is up to cripples faith rather than supports it.***<\/p>\n<\/div>\nI would rather look at this tension the way I heard it in church today, as a dance between despair and joy in the life of faith<\/strong>.<\/h2>\n