Monday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 431

He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.

He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.

Labor Day is as good a day as any to begin daily readings from the Gospel according to Saint Luke; and today's reading is especially fascinating as it leads off with a reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. 

Saint Luke would have us clearly understand that the Lord's ministry is reopening -- or unrolling -- the prophetic work that had been closed for several hundred years. The Lord is finding his place in the prophetic work and bringing us with him into it. 

We now understand that Isaiah was written by many different authors over a period of several hundred years. The priest Isaiah who ministered in Solomon's ancient temple in Jerusalem was its first author; and he makes a few appearances in the Book. His initial vision, recounted in Isaiah 6, which we often hear as a first reading on Sunday and weekday Masses, sets the tone for the entire work. He also appears to scold the king Ahab and warn him of God's impatience with him. Within that encounter Christians hear the prophecy about the Virgin who will conceive and bear a child, and name him Emmanuel. Beyond those two stories we know little about Isaiah. 

The book ends with King Hezekiah foolishly showing the Babylonian emissaries the dazzling wealth of Jerusalem. They were impressed; so impressed that a century and a half later, their soldiers returned to loot the entire city. 

But the book was not closed with the death of the priest Isaiah. A second author, called Deutero-Isaiah added important words of consolation and reassurance to the Jewish people, who were then migrants in Babylon. Their beloved city had been sacked, their wealth looted, and their homes destroyed. The more useful citizens were taken as slaves and removed to Babylon. Only the poor and useless had remained to inherit the scorched earth. 

But Deutero-Isaiah promised their return to Jerusalem when Cyrus, the Persian emperor, captured Babylon and decapitated its government. After the Battle of Opis, the city of Babylon apparently surrendered without a fight to the Persians. Many of the Jews then returned to their homeland to rebuild Jerusalem. Apparently, Cyrus saw something useful in restoring their capital. Perhaps he wanted Judea as a satellite and buffer nation between Egypt and Persia. 

Finally, upon their return, one or more writers added more to Isaiah. The faith in God remained the same but the religion had to change. Until 1948, the Jews would be a stateless people with an international religion. Ancient rituals had to be adapted to new circumstances; and the old proscriptions, reconsidered. Many gentiles, even eunuchs, would want to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Spirit of Isaiah welcomed them.

After that third phase of its writing, the "open sourced" prophetic book was closed; and it remains without alteration to this day. Those biblical scholars who pore over ancient manuscripts are left with the work of determining the precise wording of the original text, if there ever was one. Some readers will remember the excitement when ancient copies of Isaiah were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. 

Which brings us to today's Gospel and Jesus unrolling -- or reopening -- the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. He did not change the wording, of course, nor add to it, but he reinterpreted it to such an astonishing degree that he practically rewrote it. Certainly, no one had expected that Isaiah's Emmanuel born of a maiden would be a Virgin's son. Nor that the voice crying in the wilderness would be John the Baptist. 

Most remarkably, Jesus (and the Evangelists) recognized his portrayal in the Suffering Servant songs of Deutero-Isaiah. They are perhaps the most important passages of the Old Testament in that they prophesy the suffering of the Messiah. Without that preordained connection to the faith of Abraham, the death of Jesus might appear to be God's wrath upon a false prophet's blasphemous claim to be the Son of God.  The entire meaning of his crucifixion would be lost along with the Lord's insistence that we should take up our crosses and follow in his footsteps. Why would anyone worship an executed man who is proclaimed alive by a gang of nobodies? 

Because the Lord has reopened Isaiah every Christian must study that marvelous book.