A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [66]
Isaiah’s vision of the peaceable kingdom includes bizarre imagery (to us, that is; we considered earlier the images of children playing with snakes and wolves living peacefully with lambs), including pictures of geographical transformation (40:1–5) like this one:
In the 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 nations shall stream to it.
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.
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. (2:2–4, echoed in Mic. 4:1–3)
Obviously, the prophet isn’t predicting a literal tectonic shift in which Jerusalem rises farther above sea level and Mt. Everest sinks, but rather a time when God’s wisdom draws nations up to a higher level of relating, so disputes are settled nonviolently, wisely, peacefully. (John may be echoing this global attraction in 3:14; 8:28; and 12:19, 22.) We find in Isaiah another set of geographical images associated with springs transforming the desert into a garden (32:1–2; 35:6–7; 44:3). John picks up this water image in the conversation between Jesus and the unnamed woman at the well (4:1–42), where a dispute about mountains and a conversation about water give way to a deeper insight: that God is seeking worshipers who come not to the correct mountain, but with the correct spirit.
Similarly, the thirst for physical water (Isa. 55) points to the present availability of living water (echoed in John 7:37–39). Strikingly, Jesus says to the unnamed woman, “The hour is coming, and is now here” (4:23), echoing Jesus’s words elsewhere (Luke 4:21; Mark 1:14) that the long awaited time of the peaceable kingdom has indeed arrived. Just as Isaiah’s poetry is filled with images of war giving way to peace, Jesus makes clear to Pilate that in the kingdom Jesus represents disputes aren’t solved with swords (18:36).
Both Isaiah (1:11–17; 55; 58) and John’s Jesus critique the religious establishment (implied in Jesus’s use of ceremonial water jars for producing wine in 2:6, in the clearing of the temple in 2:13–22, in the interchange with Nicodemus in 3:1–10, in the marginalization of Jerusalem in 4:21, in his healing on the Sabbath in 5:1–8, and in his subversion of a stoning in 8:2–11). And both Isaiah and John work with the rich imagery of a vineyard (Isa. 5:1–7; John 15) and emphasize the role of the Spirit of the Lord (Isa. 11:1–5; 42:1; 61:1; John 14–16). John picks up Isaiah’s theme of joy as well (Isa. 26; 35; 51; 55; 60; John 15:11; 16:22), along with Isaiah’s use of wine imagery (Isa. 25; 55:1; John 2). In Isaiah we see the precursors of Jesus’s powerful shepherd imagery (Isa. 40:11; John 10:1–18; 21:15–17) and childbirth imagery (Isa. 54; John 16:19), and even the precedent for calling God our Father (Isa. 63:16; 64:8).
For Isaiah, the same “day of the Lord” (5:22–30; 9:39; 22:31) that will bring liberation for the oppressed will mean accountability for the oppressors (5:8–23; 10:1–4), a theme that John picks up again and again (5:22–30; 9:39; 12:31). And we can’t forget Isaiah’s striking theme of the Servant of the Lord (Isa. 42; 49; 50; 52), which John employs poignantly as Jesus literally costumes himself in the role of a servant (John 13). Just as Isaiah’s Servant of the Lord liberates and heals through suffering (52:13