We
have been under attack for a decade; our king, Jeconiah, has been playing fast
and loose with his allies, first paying tribute, then not paying tribute . . . First with the Egyptians, then with the
Babylonians . . . It was confusing, to say the least . . . We were in constant
turmoil, we always have been, situated on a prime invasion route between the
north and the south as we were . . . Then the Babylonians bested the Assyrians,
and the deportations began, the first wave ten years ago, and now it was our turn . . .
An
when they come, I am sitting in the gate of the Temple’s outer court, ruling on
disputed matters, using the law of the Lord God Adonai as my guide. Since the time of the judge, this has been
left to us scribes. We are, after all,
scholars, experts in the Law. So it is when I am plying my appointed
profession, practicing my holy calling,
that I hear the ringing of livery and the tramping of feet, slowly approaching
the gate. And a dozen Babylonian
soldiers file into the plaza before the gate and spread out, spears interlocked
in close order. An officer strides
forward and stands before me and says “Are you Josiah, scribe of the Jews?” (I
am named Josiah, after the great King) And I say “I am . . . Have you come to worship
the Lord God Almighty?”
Ignoring
the question, the soldier says “I have orders to take you to the caravan.” And
he leads me away, out of the city of The Lord God—the only city I have ever
known—and to a waiting line of wagons.
It is a long line, and crammed into the wagons I can see many of my
friends and acquaintances. There is the
Chief Priest, my counterpart on the priestly side, and his entire corps of sub-priests. In the wagon they led me towards, I see my assistant, and most of my subordinate
scribes. As a matter of fact, in the
closest wagons, I see the entire hierarchy of the Jerusalem Temple, learned men
all; indeed, in other wagons he could see all the elites of the city, the cognoscenti—the
scholarly and rich, the major land-owners, the landlords of free laborers and
merchants . . ..
And
with a creaking of harness and a groaning of wheels, the caravan begins to
move, and as it does, we see fires bloom like evil sunflowers behind us, all
around the city. A,bove it all, we can
see the Temple, burning fiercely—the heart of our religion, the very dwelling-place
of God, crumbling before our eyes. And
despair, unending, unutterable despair, descended upon us all, because without
a house, without an abode, how could the Lord be among us? How could our God be on earth? And we begin to hear the screams, and smell
the odor of burnt flesh, and after the sounds and smells fade, we can see the glow
of the burning city as we get further and further away.
The
trip to Babylon is like an evil dream, a dream filled with deprivation and
hunger. The wilderness between Judah and
Babylon is rocky and wasted, and wells are few and far between, and many die of
thirst and the elements. But at last, we
came to Babylon, shining city of hanging gardens and the height of Middle Eastern
civilization, but all is lost on us, we are bereft, without hope, cut off from our
homeland and, more important, our God.
As the psalmist wrote: “By the
rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.”
And
over the intervening years, the yearning for our Jerusalem home never went entirely
away, but it did dim, a bit. We in the
first generation had it the worst, of course.
The deportees, like myself, had beem important, the cream of Jerusalem
society—and we are no longer on that level in Babylon. For my part, I went from chief scribe of Judah to day-laborer
on the garden walls. But as time has
passed,, the pain had become a dull ache, always there, but more of a dark,
background rumble. In spite of
ourselves, we are becoming assimilated.
The
Babylonians have never restricted our religion . . . They know, perhaps, that
the free practice of religion goes a long ways towards suppressing revolt. And so tonight, as I walk to the ceremonies at
a neighbors house, I look forward to hearing the evening’s portion of Torah,
but when I get there, there is a young poet, a descendant of the great prophet
Isaiah, who lived nearly two centuries before.
And the verse the poet recites stuns me and all who are present, and
stirs something within us that we had long ago forgotten: hope.
“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 served
her term . . .” And as the news of this new word from God spreads throughout
the exile community, we are comforted
. . . Comforted and reminded of the love and mercy of our God.
The Dream of the 1st
Century Scribe
People
flit like a ghosts through the rubble . . . Children cry because they have
little to eat . . . The market is barren, only a little bug-ridden flour and
moldy bread to be had, and that at grossly
overinflated prices . . . Neighbors gouging neighbors, it’s what the market can
bear, even if we cannot. I am one of those fluttering spirits, moving from place
to place, visiting old haunts, looking for friends, acquaintances, anyone to give comfort.
The
Romans moved out in the night, leaving a skeleton crew of burly centurions,
more to be visible, more to remind us of their power and presence than keep the
peace. As if the smoking ruins don’t
speak enough of their power, and they
certainly look unconcerned with the peace . . . Jerusalem is a wreck, its
denizens no more able to mount a resistance than cats and dogs who clog the
gutters after a rain.
The
Romans crushed the Jewish revolution handily, after letting it fester and
congeal for five years before, although it had been building for decades before
that. But almost overnight, their fabled
army came through, burning and looting and raping the fight right out of us,
leaving us hungry and tired and hopeless, our future bleak and uncertain.
Not
that there is anything certain about life
outside the city . . . The
countryside is divided, with neighbors fearing neighbors, squabbling over what
to do. The price of oil—olive oil, that
is—is unreasonably high, once again the result of supply and demand. Furthermore,
Emperor Nero died last year, and there is unrest in Rome. Four men have been
acclaimed emperor, only to be assassinated, one by one. Now Vespasian, the very
general who took Jerusalem, has been crowned. Talk about uncertainty.
And,
as I stumble down a dark, rubble-strewn alley, I begin to hear chanting somewhere
ahead. A synagogue, I tell myself, and continue
in that direction. The sound grows first stronger, then weaker, and I have to
backtrack some, but eventually I arrive outside a house that’s relatively intact,
and I hear the chanting from within. I peer
into its candle-lit interior, and as my eyes adjust to the light, I begin to
make out the shapes of people, sitting on rows of crude benches, perhaps twenty-five
or thirty of people in all. One of them glances
behind as the door shuts and scoots over with a smile, making room for me on
the end.
Glancing
around, the first thing I see is that the congregation, if that’s what you can
call it, is made up of both men and
women; I drop my jaw in amazement.
Further, I can see that it is mostly slaves and free laborers—kitchen
workers, maids, stable boys—with nary a purple robe in sight. As I take this
all in, a woman comes to the fore, and begins to speak, and now I know that I’m definitely not in a synagogue. In fact,
I am suddenly very uncomfortable: what are these people doing, men and women sitting
shoulder to shoulder? And letting a
woman say anything, much less come to
the fore, in a position of leadership, makes me downright angry.
I
am just about to stomp out of there, perhaps to go and report them to whatever Jewish
authority that’s left, when I hear what she is reading from the scroll in her
hands: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” And I’m thinking “Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ? What news could possibly be good news
regarding him? I myself saw
him crucified, forty years ago, a toddler sitting on my father’s shoulder,
and he was dead, dead, dead.” And now I know
what this place is, who these people are . . . They are people of the Way, follower
of an executed Jew, and I sit there in that ruined house, scowling and waiting
to hear what could possibly be this good
news. It will just give me more
fodder when I turn them in to the San Hedrin.
If I can find out where they’re holed up, that is.
“As
it is written in the prophets, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who
will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare
the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”
And as a scribe, I know she is quoting first from Malachi—the part about
the messenger who’ll prepare the way—and then Isaiah, the part about the voice
crying in the wilderness. And I can see that
the author is associating these times with those of the deportation, and we all know that after the comfort was predicted, it came about, that the Lord
God rescued the faithful remnants from Babylon and restored them to the rubble
of a conquered Jerusalem. Now she has me interested . . .
And
I can tell others in the congregation are as well . . . They begin to stir, to
utter “hallelujahs” and “amens” and suddenly, as if blinders are removed, I can
see what this reading is all about, what this “good news” is all about: it is
about the same thing that second Isaiah’s was:
hope. Somehow, the life and
teachings of this wandering rabbi, executed for sedition four decades before, gives
them comfort, gives them hope . . .
And
as I sit there, bruised and battered from my season of despair, I begin to feel
it too, as if it is a contagion. I tooI begin
to feel the presence of the Lord God in that place, and I hear the tale of
long-dead John the Baptizer, compared to that long-ago voice in the wilderness,
who proclaimed the coming of that
good news, who swore that he was not fit
even to tie the sandals of the crucified one . . . I listen to the testimony, hear the words of hope, and I begin to believe.
Against all evidence, against all sense, really, I begin to
experience hope. Comfort, comfort, O my people.
The Dream of the 20th Century
Scribe
As
I work long into the night on an interpretation, laboring to get it right, I try to avoid the nabbed of
competing voices, but the filter into my consciousness nevertheless. Ebola stalking the land, turning West Africa into
a charnel house, and sending a world into panic. ISIS stalking the Middle East, maiming and
beheading everyone who gets in the way.
Oil prices—crude oil, that
is—while down at the moment, will certainly rise to choking levels by summer’s
light. And violence blooms like evil
flowers across the land . . . And I think—not for the first time, nor I
suspect, for the last—where is the
good news in all this mess?
But
it is the time of dreaming, it is the time of hope, and on this second Sunday of Advent, I remember the prophets
beat, the multi-lensed, multi-generational, multi-epochal song: comfort
comfort, O my people, and I plead: come, Lord Jesus, come. Amen.
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