NOTES for Isa 60:1-22

A majestic picture opens before us: we see Jerusalem triumphant, having become a center of attraction for all nations. This was hardly what those who listened to the prophetic words by the rivers of Babylon dreamed of. They must have had simple and understandable dreams of liberation and a return to their native land; it may even be that some of them regarded the people's calling by the Lord as an unbearable burden.

But the One who calls people to serve Him also gives them strength for that service. And so, behind the events of the earthly history of a small Near Eastern people, we can discern the outlines of the deep course of history whose meaning the Lord reveals to us. We see that the exiled Israelites must return to the Promised Land not only for the sake of their own practical interests, but first of all in order to continue on that land to stand before God and to keep His Covenant. Then Jerusalem will become a lamp illuminating for all nations the way to the Lord.

A time will come when God will dwell with humanity forever, when there will be no poverty or violence, and when the Lord's eternal light will shine in the holy city. The builders of half-ruined Jerusalem had little reason for such hopes. Humanly speaking, the persecuted first Christians could have had no cause for joy when Saint John wrote his inspired Apocalypse, filled with images from the chapter we read today. Life is hard for many people today as well: some are confined to bed by a painful illness; others have never lived in peacetime and have known the sound of automatic gunfire and bombing since childhood. Those who live in relative comfort also manage to fall constantly into despondency and depression. Yet both then and now the Spirit awakens in the prophets this dream—or rather, this knowledge—that God will conquer evil and dwell with us.

For Isaiah of Babylon, the future of Jerusalem and of the Jewish people itself was connected only with God's presence, which he calls "glory," as many before him had called this presence. He understood that the natural history of his people, flowing along in its own course like the history of all other nations, ended after Jerusalem was defeated by the Babylonian army in 587 BC.

The Babylonian exile should have been the end of Jewish history, just as the Babylonian invasion became the end of the history of many other peoples who lived nearby. And if this did not happen, it was only because of a special plan and purpose of God, who decided to preserve His people so that they might carry out a special task assigned by God Himself.

Isaiah understands that the entire post-exilic history of his people is a continually ongoing miracle. And a miracle is possible only with the direct presence of God and His direct intervention in the events taking place, especially since the task set by God is altogether impossible by human strength. The matter is nothing less than the coming of the Messiah and the establishment of the messianic Kingdom. Here only readiness depends on the human being: readiness to see, to hear, to meet. But even this requires a special action of God: He Himself prepares a person for the meeting with the Messiah whom He has sent. And the whole world comes to Jerusalem not to see monuments from former times, but to see the living God and His Kingdom. Not all of the prophet's contemporaries understood this. For many, the very fact of returning to the land of their fathers was the completion of the journey and a deserved reward. But Isaiah understands that this is not the completion, but only a stage on the Way, the Way that leads to the Kingdom.

The prophet Isaiah says that darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness all peoples, while the Lord will shine over Israel. Honestly, one feels like pitying the unfortunate peoples who will find themselves in darkness. But our perennial pity for the humiliated and insulted will not help us understand the biblical text. The point here is not that the unkind God of Israel has begrudged light to all the "outsider" nations. Nor is it an energy crisis, because there cannot fail to be enough of the Lord's light for everyone. The problem is one thing: people who can receive His light or refuse to receive it. It depends only on their will whether darkness will cover the earth, the darkness of not knowing and not accepting God. And even when all these peoples have already found themselves in darkness, the Lord leaves them a chance. All these nations can come to Jerusalem. Even though they did not let God into their life, He is ready to open the gates of His city to them.

Describing the Jerusalem opened to him in a vision, Isaiah speaks of it in such a way that at times it is not easy to understand what city and what reality he means. A sun that does not set, a moon that does not hide, God's light fully illuminating what appears to be an earthly city: what is this? Heaven or earth? The easiest answer would be: heaven. But would such an answer be correct? Does the very division of the world into "heavenly" and "earthly" correspond to God's design?

Let us remember the first day of creation: there is not yet any division into "earthly" and "heavenly" there. It will appear later, on the second day. On the first day there is only one division: between light and darkness. And there is the world, permeated by God's light, the light of His presence. Yes, of course, later this unity, this wholeness of the created order, was broken. And this happened even before the fall of man, already on the second day of creation.

God never regarded such a state of affairs as the norm. The restoration of the wholeness of creation entered God's plan from the very moment of its division. And man was to play his role in solving this task. Of course, the fall changed much. After the fall, what became urgent for man was not so much the restoration of the wholeness of creation as the overcoming of the consequences of the catastrophe that distorted and perverted his own life. But in sending the Messiah into the world, God has both tasks in view.

The Messiah must bring the Kingdom of God into the world, and at the same time open to man the possibility, by sharing in the life of this Kingdom, of restoring the wholeness and fullness of his own life. And the Kingdom includes not only "heaven," but also "earth." It does not presuppose a splitting of the created order. The world must again become whole, as on the first day of creation. Whole, and transfigured. This is how Isaiah sees Jerusalem. It is revealed to him as part of that Kingdom to which the prophet bore witness. The Kingdom where the new heaven meets the new earth.