Advent Reflection 3: Isaiah Isaiah 35:1-10 & James 5:7-10

Isaiah 35:1-10
35:1 The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus
35:2 it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the LORD, the majesty of our God.
35:3 Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.
35:4 Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you."
35:5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
35:6 then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert;
35:7 the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.
35:8 A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God's people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.
35:9 No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there.
35:10 And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Comment:
It starts to feel gratuitous, like fanning the flames of a forest fire, the recurrence of hopeful expectation. To make my intervention, this year, at the advent of Advent, is to miss the ups and downs – particularly the downs – of the liturgical year. Even if we are officially at the “beginning” of the year (Year A), liturgical time cycles, repeats, iterates itself. So to be at the beginning is also to be in the middle and even at the end. Into what suffering does this word of hope speak? The texts of the church’s calendar address themselves to two moments: the interpretively constructed moment of the lectionary – now we read Isaiah with Matthew instead of Jeremiah with Luke – and to the singular moment of the reading subject or community. The nature of my intervention cuts me off from the first moment; what of the second? Perhaps the images from nature offer hope to a planet whose finite “resources” are being quickly used up, to a creation who longs for redemption. Perhaps the lack of predatory creatures offers a vision of a world without predatory nation states.

James 5:7-10
5:7 Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.
5:8 You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.
5:9 Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. See, the Judge is standing at the doors!
5:10 As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.

Comment:
Some differences emerge when we get to James. First, the expectation is given a more circumscribed referent: the church. Second, the (equivocal) content of the prophecy is slimed down to its most basic element: “The Lord is near.” Another difference is that the prophecy is not meant to bring an unbounded hope but it is accompanied by an explicit demand: “be patient.” Finally, in another “formalization” of the prophetic message, what a critical idealist might call a “purification of the mythical content,” the prophet is held up as a figure of patience and suffering, not as the bearer of a more important truth.

Advent Reflection 2b: Romans 15:4-13

Romans 15:4-13
15:4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.
15:5 May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus,
15:6 that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
15:7 Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.
15:8 For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs,
15:9 and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, "Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles, and sing praises to your name";
15:10 and again he says, "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people";
15:11 and again, "Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise him";
15:12 and again Isaiah says, "The root of Jesse shall come, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him the Gentiles shall hope."
15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Christian destiny of the messianic prophecy is here given its formal structure. This is the hermeneutical context in which the church is to understand its place in the promise of God – as a grafted branch. Not, it is obvious here, as the sublation of Judaism, but as its supplement. If the church has a share in the promise, it is a share; i.e. that which it shares with Judaism. The shares are different, however. The keyword that distinguishes the Christian share is the one that Paul highlights here: hope. Hope is the crux of this text and hope is unique to Christianity vis-à-vis Judaism. Jews are, if Rosenzweig is correct, without hope. But what is the nature of this hopelessness? Hopelessness stems from a response to a lack – to that which is not-yet. Hope bridges the gap between the now and the not-yet and, in this case, its opposite would be despair. However, hopelessness can also be thought of prior to the lack; in which case the opposite of hope is not despair, but plenitude, a lack of lack, as it were. Jews, as Rosenzweig says, are already in eternity, they already in their liturgical practice – hourly, daily, monthly, yearly – bring eternity into the present. History, so he argues, is a detour that it does not follow. The Church, on the other hand, is not already in eternity, it must attain to it. And hope is what sustains us on this journey.

Jameson and the Present

Partly inspired by a lecture by Fredric Jameson last night, I’m thinking about the status of the present when the future becomes the privileged temporal mode. Jameson’s talk was on the theme of utopia and the presence of the utopian impulse under the regime of global capitalism – which seems to admit no possible outside. His primary example of such a possibility was the genre of “cyber-punk.” I know almost nothing of the genre – except for what I’ve learned from The Matrix – but to him a story such as William Gibson’s Neuromancer seemed to register a utopian possibility, despite a reigning totality. The excess of productive activity on the part of the hackers represented, to him, the presence of another sphere of action, “outside” the matrix. He also referred to the uneven development of globalization: wherein the very existence of another form of life – one that would be called “underdeveloped” – is enough of an opening for something like “hope” for another world.

He failed though, I think, to answer the question posed by the respondent. It had something to do with the ontological status of the present. Is it, he asked, really total, undifferentiated, whole? Or, is it fractured, differentiated, incomplete, as such? This was no doubt a “political” question, but concerned something more like a “political ontology.” Jameson seemed not to be willing to go there (admittedly, it was a public lecture). It got me thinking, about Derrida, for one – clearly a subtext of the respondent’s question – but, behind Derrida, to the theme of much Jewish thinking on messianism.

The privileging of the future in terms of messianic expectation is a form of hope, but it is not simply that. It is not just a matter of a dissatisfaction with the present and a longing for something better; in this sense it is not utopian. It concerns, in Rosenzweig’s terms, the way that the past (Creation) only becomes legible in the present (Revelation) and the present and the past together only attain an ontological completion from the perspective of the future (Redemption), that is apres coup – which is to-come only in a specific sense: as a bringing of eternity into the present by way of human action. This seems to me to be a much more robust critique of the present, a much better “philosophy of history” than a mere subjective or collective longing for something better. And this why thinkers like Derrida and Benjamin have undertaken in different ways, not just a rethinking of history, but a re- or dis-articulation of the temporality that is history’s engine. Agamben is right, therefore, when he says, in Infancy and History, that the “original task of genuine revolution…is never merely to ‘change the world’, but also – and above all – to ‘change time.’ (91)

[Wow, an occasional post. I’m going to become a blogger if I’m not careful.]

Advent Reflection 2: Isaiah 11:1-10 (Messianism: between Judaism and Christianty)

Isaiah 11:1-10
11:1 A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
11:2 The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
11:3 His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear;
11:4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
11:5 Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
11:6 The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.
11:7 The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
11:8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.
11:9 They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
11:10 On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

Comment:
Here we are presented with messianic prophecy; messianism in one of its earliest forms. The full scope of the “messianic idea” will not come into view, Gershom Scholem tells us, until it is extended through the reflections of the rabbis and, even more importantly, the historical or “acute” messianisms, the popular messianic movements, that have punctuated the history of Judaism. Of course the problem with acute messianisms – and Christianity can be counted among them – is that its idea becomes subsumed in its figure: messianism, as it were, is abolished in the Messiah – Bar Kokba, Sabbatai Zvi, Jesus. In order for messianism to survive beyond the Messiah it must render each messianic figure, each messianic movement provisional or void. The moment the messianic idea becomes an acute messianism, all bets are off. It is for this reason that Scholem ends his reflections on the messianic idea with a calculation: the “cost of messianism” to the Jewish people. The tremendous richness of the idea has been subsidized by a refusal on the part of Jews to enter history (e.g. in the form of politicized messianic movements – Scholem has his version of Zionism in mind). By virtue of a certain kind of sublimation – a redirection of libidinal/messianic energy – the messianic idea comes to us in all of its intellectual and theoretical splendor.

The text from Isaiah arrives here (in the lectionary) in this moment (Advent) in the mode of a determinate expectation, not the indeterminate hope that conditioned its first announcement. There is a certain telos in view here. In its lectionary form, this prophecy is not merely messianic, but Christological. (Although the Gospel reading that this text supplements (Matt 3:1-12) is not yet Christological [perhaps proto-Christological], it too is still anticipatory: it is the story of John the Baptist’s preparation for the coming of the Messiah Jesus.) This is the Christian destiny of the messianic idea, it has allowed the Messiah to subsume messianism; and it had to for the sake of its own emergence and survival. I am not questioning the legitimacy of this move, but one potential (and often actual) consequence that results when we return, after the Messianic arrival, to a text like Isaiah’s is that the prophetic-predictive moment is privileged over the prophetic-political; the figure that is announced is given a greater importance than the messianic vocation. Thus, the figure who is the “shoot from the stump of Jesse” is given precedence over the task of judging with justice. If in Judaism the figure of the Messiah gives way to a universal human calling – such that the Messiah as an individual merely demonstrates or symbolically enacts what is the task of the messianic community, and ultimately the whole of creation – then in Christianity the messianic task gives way to its singular incarnation – the Christ. The messianic vocation does not thereby disappear in Christianity, it simply becomes refracted. The messianic community – the Church – is still subject to the demands of justice. Refraction does not diminish the demand, in fact it may even increase it such that the messianic community will do “greater works than” those of the Messiah (John 14:12).

Advent Reflection 1: Isaiah 2:1-5 and Romans 13:11-14

My reflections have been interrupted by the AAR meeting and time away -- I plan to post the paper I read at the conference (on Agamben's messianism), but I may be reading a version of the same paper at another conference, in which case I will hold off a little longer. In the meantime, Advent...

Isaiah 2:1-5
2:1 The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2:2 In days to come the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.
2:3 Many peoples shall come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths." For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
2:4 He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
2:5 O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!

Romans 13:11-14
13:11 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers;
13:12 the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light;
13:13 let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.
13:14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Comment:
I want to read these texts together. Firstly, because they arrive together in the lectionary – not without someone else’s interpretive decision, of course; but also, because I don’t know what to do with the Isaiah text. I don’t know how to read today, as sacred, as normative, a text which celebrates a particularity, a place with such geo-graphical, -political, -theological significance and antagonism. My intuition is that the place of which this text speaks needs to be read in light of the time of which it speaks.

The text from Isaiah speaks of both place and time, but first of all of place. It is here to which the nations will stream, not for the establishment of a statist project, not out of a desire to force the coming of the kingdom by way of some prophetic blueprint (and thereby becoming what Rosenzweig calls a “tyrant of the Kingdom”), but for a justice that exceeds these orders; not to perform military service or to build “fences,” but to unlearn war.

The time of which the passage speaks is a time of the future, in “days to come.” That is, not now. The time is not ripe for such a place. I want to read Paul’s text along with this one, not because of a tacit superscessionism, but because, in Romans we get an intensification of the temporal dimension, and an effacement of the spatial. The time is no longer merely to-come, as salvation is, but it is now that the text summons us to. Not because the time has arrived for learning justice and unlearning war, but because we need to work, to wake in order to make it so. There is not promise so much as exigency, but it is also promise –; exigency without promise is messianic tyranny; promise without exigency is the neutralization of the messianic.