Isaiah is a great poet among the prophets of Israel. Again and again, his oracles read like they want to be sung, and in today’s joyous announcement of God’s Advent, even the desert, the most lifeless place on earth imaginable, sings.
Isaiah sings of the day when the parched, desolate land rejoices, and bodies that were bound by weariness and despair, sing and dance in a glorious procession of life, on the way to the city of God. Listen! The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. Listen and see the dry and desolate wilderness turned into a verdant and fruitful landscape. See the deathly, desperate land transformed with an eruption of lush life. Listen, look, hum along, and sing! Watch as human beings are being transformed: hands strengthened, knees made firm, hearts healed, eyes and ears, limbs and tongues! Every part of the body not yet engaged in praising the Giver of life is strengthened, opened, healed, unbound! Somebody’s wondering, How can this be? Take it in, let it be.
Chuck Campbell taught preaching at Columbia Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, before he went to Duke. In one of his classes, he required students to lead worship and preach at the Open Door Shelter for unhoused people in downtown Atlanta. One day they were gathered for worship in front of the shelter, amid the noise of rush-hour traffic. They sang a song, despite the noise, against the noise, and then Chuck’s lesson plans were interrupted.
I noticed one homeless man waving to me and pointing to himself. I was surprised when I saw him for the man can neither hear nor speak and is normally very reserved. But there he was, eager to do something. He stepped into the middle of the circle, bowed his head in silence, and began to sign a hymn for us. It was beautiful, like a dance… In that moment our notions of ‘abled’ and ‘disabled’ were turned upside down. The rest of us had been shouting to be heard, but the noise was no problem for our friend.[1]
Normally very reserved, the man burst into song with his hands, his arms, his whole body, fully alive in the worship circle that pointed to the beloved community and embodied it.
“Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come and save you.” God is here. God will come. The prophet offers assurance for the present and the future. God will come, and God’s salvation will encompass all of creation. In Isaiah poetry of redemption, the desert becomes a sea of blossoms, and it rejoices with joy and singing; the lame person is able to walk – but they don’t just walk, they leap like a deer; and the speechless person doesn’t just talk, they shout and sing, with hearts and hands and voices. All of creation is over the top with life and joy! Patricia Tull writes,
It’s true that presuming every blind eye will open — whether literally or metaphorically — is a presumptuous mistake. But so is expecting no blind eyes to open.
In faith, however, we do not take a stance of presumption, but of radical openness to the presence and promises of God. We take a stance of hope and expectancy. And hope proceeds not simply from God’s expected reversals, but from the people the prophet seeks to inspire: a small band of exiles who embrace the promise; they push back the chaos and recultivate the burned land; they let hope strengthen their weak hands, they let faith make their feeble knees firm, and in wonder they witness the courage of their once fearful hearts. “This is a reversal we don’t have to wait for,” writes Patricia Tull. “It’s one we can enact every day.”[2]
Isaiah sings and James counsels patience. He does so after pronouncing God’s judgment on greed and exploitation. “Come now, you rich people… listen!” he declares at the beginning of ch. 5.
The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.[3]
James counsels patience—until the coming of the Lord. This patience isn’t stoic acceptance, let alone resignation. It is anticipation. And anticipation inspires action.
On November 30, 1955, the night before the launch of the Montgomery bus boycott, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said,
There comes a time when people get tired. We are here this evening to say to those who have mistreated us so long that we are tired—tired of being segregated and humiliated; tired of being kicked about by the brutal feet of oppression. We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white [siblings] the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved… to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.
It matters greatly who counsels patience, in what context, and to what end. In April 1963, Dr. King responded to a group of ministers who were counseling patience, by writing his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was “well timed” according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait.” … This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” … We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” … There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over … I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.[4]
The white religious leaders in the crosshairs of his Letter were not outliers but reflected the views of majority American society, according to Matt Skinner. One survey from 1964, the year after King penned his “Letter,” found [that] 63% of Americans agreed that “civil rights leaders are trying to push too fast.”[5]
It matters greatly who counsels patience, in what context, and to what end. Again in Montgomery, in 1965, at the end of the march from Selma, Dr. King said,
I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” Somebody’s asking, “How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?” Somebody's asking, “When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?… How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?” I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because “truth crushed to earth will rise again.” How long? Not long, because “no lie can live forever.”[6]
James counsels patience until the coming of the Lord. This patience isn’t stoic acceptance, let alone resignation. It is anticipation. And anticipation inspires action.
The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.
Yes, but the farmer does more than sit around and wait for rain. When James counsels patience, he encourages his audience, he encourages you and me, to be steadfast and determined in following Jesus on the way, in marching with Jesus on the way, in shouting, singing, and dancing with Jesus on the way—and to refuse, with holy stubbornness, to abandon the anticipation of the promised harvest. Frederick Buechner, who died in September at age 96, said it best, as he often did.
To wait for Christ to come in his fullness is not just a passive thing, a pious, prayerful, churchly thing. On the contrary, to wait for Christ to come in his fullness is above all else to act in Christ’s stead as fully as we know how. To wait for Christ is as best we can to be Christ to those who need us to be Christ to them most and to bring them the most we have of Christ’s healing and hope because unless we bring it, it may never be brought at all.[7]
Patience is anticipation, and anticipation inspires action. There have been days when God’s people asked, “How long will it take?” And there will be days when God’s people will ask, “How long until the mourning land will rejoice and sing? How long until the blind eyes will be opened?”
Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, is a patient woman, glowing with holy impatience. After yet another gun control measure had gone to the U.S. Senate to die, she wrote,
I woke up the morning after the Senate vote thinking about Sojourner Truth, one of my role models, a brilliant and indomitable slave woman who could neither read nor write but who was passionate about ending unjust slavery and second-class treatment of women. At the end of one of her antislavery talks in Ohio, a man came up to her and said, “Old woman, do you think that your talk about slavery does any good? Do you suppose people care what you say? Why, I don’t care any more for your talk than I do for the bite of a flea.”
“Perhaps not,” she answered, “but, the Lord willing, I’ll keep you scratching.”
Patience is anticipation, and for Edelman this means,
We must be determined and persistent fleas… Enough fleas biting strategically can make the biggest dog uncomfortable. And if they flick some of us off but even more of us keep coming back with our calls, emails, visits, nonviolent direct action protests, and votes – we’ll win.[8]
We are walking in the light of God. We are marching, singing, dancing in the light of God. Following Jesus on the way to the city of God, we know the one whose coming we await.
[1] Charles L. Campbell, The Word before the Powers: An Ethic of Preaching (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 123-124.
[2] Patricia Tull https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-23-2/commentary-on-isaiah-354-7a-4
[3] James 5:1, 4-6
[4] https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf
[5] Matthew Skinner, When Patience Becomes Complacency https://sojo.net/articles/when-patience-becomes-complacency-why-we-cant-wait
[6] http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/prestapes/mlk_speech.html
[7] https://www.frederickbuechner.com/blog/2021/2/1/weekly-sermon-illustration-waiting-for-christ
[8] https://www.childrensdefense.org/child-watch-columns/health/2013/we-must-never-give-up/