Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
18^th of January 2026

Isaiah 49:1-7

A little learning is a dangerous thing, said eighteenth-century poet Alexander Pope. I am not completely sure that is true, but over the past few years, I have found that a little learning is depressing. As you know, my first degrees were in history and law, which means that I have spent much of the past few years watching the world and saying, ‘No! Don’t do that! It ended incredibly badly in the 1930s,’ or ‘No! Don’t do that! We signed up to international treaties and created international bodies after World War Two for good reasons.’

I am not sure that it is a comfort to turn from today’s so-called ‘strong men’ leaders and the current destruction of the rule of law to the prophecies of the three prophets we call Isaiah. Walter Bruggemann describes the theme of the Book of Isaiah as ‘Jerusalem lost and Jerusalem restored’. According to the Book of Isaiah, God’s purposes for all creation can be seen in the fate of Jerusalem. God demands of Jerusalem that it practice justice and righteousness, and that its citizens show neighbourliness to everyone in the community. Because the city fails to do this, because it disobeys God, it brings down punishment upon itself.

The prophecies of First Isaiah, from chapter 1 to chapter 39, warn Jerusalem’s inhabitants that God’s justice demands a penalty for their greed and exploitation of the marginalised. These warnings end with the word of the Lord spoken by the first Prophet Isaiah to King Hezekiah: ‘Days are coming when all that is in your house and that which your ancestors have stored up until this day shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left, says the Lord. Some of your own sons who are born to you shall be taken away; they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.’ (Isaiah 39:6-7) We do not see this happening in the Book of Isaiah, although we read about it in the Books of Jeremiah and Lamentations. There is a gap between chapters 39 and 40 of the Book, between the prophecies of First and Second Isaiah, where the Exile happens. The next thing we read after the warning to Hezekiah is Second Isaiah foretelling the end of the Babylonian Exile: ‘Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.’ (Isaiah 40:1-2) The Exile has happened, Jerusalem has been punished for its sins, and now God promises restoration.

It is in the writings of Second Isaiah, promising homecoming to the exiles, that we find the four Servant Songs which the early followers of Jesus read as prophecies of the Christ event. In last week’s reading, the Servant was described as the one who would ‘not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench.’ (Isaiah 42:2-4) This week, we hear from the Servant directly: ‘The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me.’ The Servant is to be a weapon in God’s hands, a sharp sword and a polished arrow. But the Servant confesses failure: ‘I have laboured in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.’ Isaiah describes the Servant as one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers. Of course, the early church saw in this despised Servant a forerunner of Jesus, the Messiah who had been executed by Rome in the most shameful way possible, on a cross.

In response to the Servant’s confession of failure, the Lord increases the Servant’s commission: ‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel,’ God says, ‘I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’ Last week, I described the belief of the first Jewish followers of Jesus that God had always intended the creation of an inclusive Israel gathered from all the nations of the world. Just as Jesus told his followers to make disciples of all the world, so the Lord names the Servant as a light to the Gentiles; the concept of an inclusive Israel was already present in the Hebrew Scriptures centuries before Jesus of Nazareth was born.

The Book of Isaiah makes it clear that there is new life for Jerusalem beyond the punishment for its injustice. God’s final word for the city is not destruction but a new mandate; it is to be the means by which God’s salvation reaches beyond Jerusalem, beyond Israel, even beyond the Babylonian and Persian empires. God’s intended salvation is what one commentator I read this week calls ‘an order of compassionate justice’ upon which the wholeness of the universe depends. It is no surprise that the first followers of Jesus saw this mission personified in Jesus; in the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus reads from the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth to inaugurate his ministry: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ (Luke 4:18-19, quoting from Isaiah 61.)

In the crucifixion, we Christians see the Servant being deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers. Because of the resurrection, we believe that kings have stood to honour the Servant and princes have prostrated themselves before him. But while Jesus’ life echoes Isaiah’s theme of Jerusalem lost and Jerusalem restored, we, and the whole world, are still caught between the two. We live between chapters 39 and 40, between First Isaiah’s warnings of judgement and Second Isaiah’s reassurance that Jerusalem has served its term. The world today is still filled with injustice; in many cases, the exact same injustice that First Isaiah condemned. ‘Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land!’ says Isaiah, ‘Woe to those who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, to make widows their spoil and to plunder orphans!’ (Isaiah 5:8 and 10:1-2) Isaiah knew about the rise of plutocrats and the perversion of the rule of law thousands of years ago. He also knew that the cities, nations, and peoples that allow such things to happen brought down punishment upon themselves. As I said at the beginning of this Reflection, I am not sure that this is comforting for us. We know that injustice inevitably brings retribution; we also know how many innocents were killed when Jerusalem fell in the sixth century B.C.E.

But no matter the violence and injustice that we read in our newspapers or see on our screens, no matter how often we cry out to politicians, ‘No! Don’t do that!’ we are not in exactly the same place as the first of the Prophets Isaiah. In the words of the baptismal service, for us Jesus Christ has come, has lived, has suffered; for us he endured the agony of Gethsemane and the darkness of Calvary; for us he uttered the cry, It is accomplished! For us he triumphed over death; for us he prays at God’s right hand; all this for us, even before we were born. Salvation, God’s order of compassionate justice, has reached the ends of the earth, right down to the bottom of Australia. In Jesus, God has not only made God’s intentions for the world clear, God has also entered the world and lived among us. We know that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Even when, like the Servant, we feel that we have laboured in vain, and spent our strength for nothing and vanity, we can simultaneously say with the Servant, surely my cause is with the Lord, and my reward with my God.

Despite all the world’s danger and chaos, we who follow the Lamb of God know that we live in communion with the Creator, whose intention for the creation is justice and peace. As we take comfort in that relationship, so we also join with God in working for the day when the heavens will sing for joy, the earth exult, and the mountains break forth into singing, because God’s will is finally done on earth as in heaven. This is our calling as it is our prayer, now as throughout history.