Advent 5

The First Friday of Advent, December 5, 2008

Isaiah 3:8-15

Happy the righteous man!  All goes well with him, for such men enjoy the fruit of their actions.  Woe betide the wicked!  with him all goes ill, for he reaps the reward that he has earned. 

Oh, really, Isaiah? 

Those who believe the Bible is literal, an encyclopedia of facts, not a work of divine literature with all the literary devices of hyperbole, irony, paradox, will go through contortions trying to “prove” that good people are always happy and that bad people always suffer. 

Be we know this just isn’t always true.   

I have a precious friend, just weeks away from ordination to the priesthood, whose oldest son took his life a decade ago.  A year and a half later a disgruntled worker beat her husband to death and repeatedly raped her.  She is a good, kind woman who suffered great evil. 

The people in power at Enron, on the other hand, managed to deceive the workers, the stock market and the world, as the company crumbled.  The executives sold their stock ahead of the collapse, and managed to salvage great wealth for themselves while lesser mortals lost their jobs, their income, their homes, and their retirement. 

This Isaiah passage is wishful thinking, hyperbole, exaggeration, perhaps. Or is it possible that Isaiah writes with an eye on Christ, believing that when the Promised One comes, the good person will forget her/his troubles in the joy of the Word made flesh; and the wicked will cast away all her/his evil gains for the joy of being in the Light? 

In a few weeks the Word will come.  The Light will be among us as a child.  Watch.  Wait.  See what happens in your heart.  See what happens to the aching world.