Christian Wiman and Jacqueline Vayntrub discuss justice, prayer and action, and getting God's attention in Isaiah 58:9b-14. The text is appointed for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 16, in Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Restorer of the Path (Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost)
Voiceover Voice:
That’s what righteousness is, right? It’s speech that is backed by action. It’s not empty words.
Helena Martin:
This is Chapter, Verse, and Season: a lectionary podcast from Yale Bible Study. Join us each week as two Yale Divinity School professors look at an upcoming text from the Revised Common Lectionary.
This episode, we have Jacqueline Vayntrub, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible, and Christian Wiman, Professor of the Practice of Religion and Literature. They’re discussing Isaiah chapter 58:9-14, which is appointed for Track 2 of the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 16, for Year C.
The text is read for you by Mike Macalintal, Liturgical Minister and Chapel Communications Manager of Marquand Chapel here at Yale Divinity School.
Mike Macalintal:
Isaiah 58:9-14.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you continually
and satisfy your needs in parched places
and make your bones strong,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water
whose waters never fail.
Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.
If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath,
from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests or pursuing your own affairs;
then you shall take delight in the Lord,
and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Christian Wiman:
So this poem is really interesting. It’s about the self-righteousness, if I read it correctly, of a certain kind of religiosity. It makes me think of Margaret Atwood’s saying, “Be careful about praying for justice because you might actually get it.” And, I think that that’s sort of what the prophet is saying here. “Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they asked me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God.” We take a lot of delight in fulfilling certain requirements. And yet, we don’t do the actual tasks of justice. Is that your reading, Jackie?
Jacqueline Vayntrub:
You know, what’s really interesting here is I think that there’s a lot of work that’s being done in this poem on what fasting is supposed to be about. Because the way in which fasting is presented in a lot of the biblical texts is that it’s like a physical, emotional response to a disaster that’s dramatized, right? It’s like you’re putting your body in a false or a synthetic state of grief in order to draw attention to you as a downtrodden, falling apart body, when that’s not actually what’s going on with you. You’re actually just sort of like a vaccine, right? In the sense that it’s simulating an immune response, or like fasting is trying to get attention of the deity for the kinds of things the deity would pay attention to: which is the decay of the body, an emergency situation, someone who is whose body is humbled and brought low, right? That God would pay attention to that in order to get the deity’s attention.
But here it’s really interesting because why do we fast? This is people fast and see. Why do we fast? But you, God, don’t see? Why humble ourselves but you do not notice? And it’s, well, because while you’re fasting, while trying to get my attention to fix an injustice, you’re not doing the same. You are not trying to fix injustices yourself. You are not being like a god.
Christian Wiman:
Yeah, it makes me think of a lot of these prophetic texts are about visionary experience and the kind of knowledge that comes out of visionary experiences. There is a poem by Richard Wilbur called “Teresa” where the last stanza she’s had her mystical experience and doesn’t know how to trust what follows. And, and she says,
“the truth came soon and plain:
visions were true which quickened her to run
God’s barefoot errands in the rocks of Spain
beneath its beating sun,
and lock the O of ecstasy within
the tempered continence of discipline.”
And so with ecstasy, those moments are proven from God, proven to be real and truthful when they lead to right action. When they’re translated into action in the world. And I see this poem as—just like you’re saying—as God saying that, that that’s precisely what’s not happening for these people.
Jacqueline Vayntrub:
You know, what’s really interesting is how I think the word righteousness becomes moralized and made, like sort of religious. When “righteousness” in the Hebrew really refers to a kind of uprightness or correct behavior. But it’s not even correct behavior. It’s behaving in a way that is faithful to what is promised, right? So, God makes promises to his people that he is supposed to uphold. And people also, depending on their position in society and their means, also have a responsibility towards people in their community, right? So it’s like these nested hierarchies.
Christian Wiman:
Hmm. I think you’re referring to verse eight: “Thy righteousness shall go before thee.” The reward is perhaps not what people are praying for. The reward is simply the glory of the Lord. You know, it’s not a practical reward. It’s the presence of God that they’re promised.
Jacqueline Vayntrub:
Exactly. I mean, presence, I think, is actually the perfect way of thinking about it because the word “glory” in Hebrew, kavod: it’s physical, it’s weightiness, it’s heaviness-weightiness, in its physical presence. So, this idea, in an earlier reading of Isaiah 6 of the throne room being filled up by the garment of God, right? God’s glory is, really, God’s full embodied presence that is the reward here, right? Because God’s embodied presence is what allows life to sustain itself. It’s where life and the creative capacity comes from.
Christian Wiman:
And to repair itself, we ended verse 12 with “shall build the old waste places. And thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths”—I’m reading the King James Version—“The repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in.”
Jacqueline Vayntrub:
Yeah, this reminds me, I mean, I think about climate change. And I think about the prophetic call today to protect our world. Ancient ruins shall be rebuilt. In the ancient world, many ancient cities were rebuilt after having been destroyed. Babylon was plundered by the Assyrians at least three times. And every time the city seemed to rise up more splendid than before. And the idea here is that the world can return from a disaster. There is always that possibility of hope that the world can return from a disaster. But one cannot sit around and just wait for it to happen.
Christian Wiman:
Yeah, exactly. I think that’s why that Margaret Atwood quote comes to my mind. I can’t remember what the exact quote is but “be careful about praying for justice because you might actually get some.” Because I think we toss around notions of social justice and even pray for it. And a lot of churches I’ve been in, we have prayers for social justice. And if that’s not being translated into action, it’s meaningless. It’s essentially the same thing that’s going on in this poem.
Jacqueline Vayntrub:
And it’s actually the difference. I think that the prophetic discourse in really engaging with this question of is speech just words or is it efficacious in the world? What is the difference between a true prophet and a false prophet? And it’s not just, did the thing happen or not, right? Because it’s not all predictive.
We talk a lot about speaking truth to power, right? But it’s about how speech is backed by action. That’s what, that’s what straightforwardness or righteousness is, right? It’s speech that is backed by action. It’s not empty words that are just performed for some sort of personal gain or whatever.
Christian Wiman:
Yeah. I wonder what you think of—I mean, this poem presupposes God’s justice, the passage from Isaiah. And of course that’s a real question that a lot of people have is: what does God’s justice mean? And there’s a poem by Anne Carson called “God’s Justice.” I’ll read it to you:
“In the beginning there were days set aside for various tasks.
On the day He was to create justice
God got involved in making a dragonfly
and lost track of time.
It was about two inches long
and with turquoise dots all down its back like Lauren Bacall.
God watched it bend its tiny wire elbows
as it set about cleaning the transparent case of its head.
The eye globes mounted on the case
rotated this way and that
as it polished every angle.
Inside of the case
which was glassy black like the windows of a downtown bank
God could see the machinery humming
and He watched the hum
travel all the way down turquoise dots to the end of the tail
and breathe off as light.
Its black wings vibrated in and out.”
It’s a wonderful, ironic, piercing poem. It’s actually from a sequence called “The Book of Isaiah.” And so she’s re-imagining Isaiah, these contemporary poems. And in this one, God gets distracted by the beauty of the earth, by his creative capacities and he forgets to make this thing called justice. And we’re kind of screwed ever since. Or, is it that the beauty of the world is the justice? It contains the justice that we’re looking for. I think the poem has that possibility as well.
Helena Martin:
Thanks for listening. And thank you, Professors Vayntrub and Wiman, for being back with us to talk about Isaiah this week.
Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you’re listening, and visit our website: YaleBibleStudy.org.
Chapter, Verse, and Season is a production of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. It’s produced by: Creator and Managing Editor, Joel Baden; Production Manager, Kelly Morrissey; Associate Producer, Aidan Stoddart; and I’m your Host and Executive Producer, Helena Martin. Caity Stuart did the transcript for this episode, and our theme music is by Calvin Linderman.
We’ll be back with another conversation from Chapter, Verse, and Season.
Book of the Bible:
Isaiah
Subjects:
Isaiah
Guests
Text
New Revised Standard Version Bible
Copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Credits
Host and Executive Producer: Helena Martin
Production Manager: Kelly Morrissey
Creator and Managing Editor: Joel Baden
Assistant Producer: Aidan Stoddart
Music: Calvin Linderman
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