The Marvelous Design

You are my God,
I extol you, I praise your name;
for you have carried out your excellent design,
long planned, trustworthy, true.

A mighty people gives you glory,
for you are a refuge for the poor,
a refuge for the needy in distress,
a shelter from the storm,
a shade from the heat.
-- Isaiah 25:1, 3

ISAIAH OFFERS A PRAYER of thanksgiving in chapter 25, a prayer on an exalted but extremely realistic and concrete note. "Thanks for what has been and is." Thanks also for what will be. A strange sort of thanksgiving! It takes into account and includes most awful events that touch -- with a finger of death -- on Isaiah's life.

"You are my God" (verse 1). A revolutionary word indeed, the clearing away of a dense forest of idols. The toppling of false gods, who are in many lives, and as a plain matter of conduct, "my gods."

The verse sings with reasoned clear-sighted ecstasy. The true God has put into the mouth of the prophet a flame of truth. The prophet cries out, knowing Someone is attending.

For most of us, this is a leap in the dark. We neither see nor hear nor touch nor taste; the sense of God is neutral on our tongue and in our mind. It does not touch the heart; the emotional life is not so much drained away as directed elsewhere. We give our hearts, hardly blamefully, to those we know and love -- because we see and hear and touch and kiss. So we plod along, hoping against hope that one day we may pass "from shadows and images into the truth."

Still, here and now, God strikes fire in our mouth also -- though muted, invisible even. And if not, why not then borrow the flame of Isaiah? And as debtors of the flame, why not be assured that the God we invoke, the God we claim even, is the God who once stood by our great ancestry and stands by us, and the children as well?

Then the clearing away of the forest of idols proceeds. Insofar as God is invoked, the toppling of the idols is the work not of benighted spirits like ourselves -- who often cannot tell an idol from a burning bush -- but the work of the true God. The God who knows and loves. The God who is truth and love, immeasurable, and who clears a way in the underbrush -- a clear way between our faltering and waywardness and the holy sanctuary of the Shekinah, the divine presence.

"You are my God." A child can say it; children do say it and sing it, content, the simple words on their lips. Adults too, in the measure we are unbesotted by the world, are offered a monosyllabic volume in one phrase, a triumph, a gift from the One invoked. When many say it, heartfelt, "there I am in the midst."

How sad that the words, and the joy and confidence implied, are not as close to our affective life as a hand or an eye in motion are to our physical makeup. To look on a lovely sky or tree or the sea and say it. To touch the face of a child and say it. In consequence of such beauty, touching it, touched by it, understanding (in the sense of standing under). Knowing the source of such beauty, the Resource.

And the return. The One who waits, and who comes. The One who is. And all in the deepest here and now.

I DO NOT KNOW IF WE CAN SAY this verse with a full heart, meaning it. Mostly we founder about with religious language, trying not to sound utterly absurd to ourselves -- and not always succeeding. What we are left with is something else: the language of lapsed humans, the hiatus and stammering in a world that is too much with us. And a God who is afar, the Unknown and unknowable (as we conclude in a kind of functional despair), not after all counting for much.

But this is not all. In dire need of instructors, we have an instructor at hand, one whose counsel has endured. And, as we ruefully reflect, even a borrowed language is better than none. So we borrow and beg from the wise, if we are wise.

We borrow from Isaiah. The God we invoke grants us a tongue to invoke, a reminder, a mind. God is the builder and healer of the vacant and vapid and wounded mind, which left to its own devices is dumb, blind, and deaf in the world. We are, left to our own devices, what we have made of that world. There remains the task of putting on the language of the great, the "seers" -- like dwarfs in the armor of giants.

Thus verse 1 offers the plenary shocking force of a tradition brought to bear, bearing down and yet strangely freeing as well. What need we have of such a prayer! We, left to our little or great stockpiles of destruction, our "securities," our vain scrambling about the world. What a monstrous mockery of the "great design" saluted, celebrated, offered by Isaiah!

Does there exist a "marvelous design" of things, as stated? A design sovereignly outside our wrecking will? We doubt it with all our hearts. And with doubt for a wrecking weapon, we set about proving it is not so. Or proving that the design is in our own hands, no one else's -- which is the same thing, only worse.

Wreckage. Doubt. The doubt that becomes a habit of the mind, and the wreckage -- of truth, of community, of the world itself -- that follows close on. A bull rampaging about in a moral twilight.

I long to pay tribute to the "design," to master the doubt. I long to enter that stream of life and holiness, that "plan formed long ago," to which I am called, beyond any doubt, beyond any wreckage of mine, beyond a culture of doubt and wreckage.

The grand design exists, no matter what the world makes of it (or resolves to unmake). The design of reality is nobly conceived here. It is a web, whispering and weaving its pattern of moral beauty and fidelity. It summons us, but it does not require us. It stands firm, inviolate, without us. Thus the sorry tale of a wounded freedom.

We are free to stand outside the design, in a pitiful charade of the superhuman. We are free to be American, to be silent, to be complicit, to consume with ardor, to embrace violence like an iron bridegroom whose embrace crushes.

And yet, the design of God, we are reminded, is "perfectly faithful." It perdures, no matter what, no matter the infidelity on our part. A majestic steadfastness reigns, an unstained love, despite all the stains of a venomous and adventuring generation -- our own.

"FOR THE CITADEL OF THE ARROGANT is a city no longer; it will never be rebuilt" (verse 2). What a gauntlet is hereby cast down! The statement is abrupt, it admits of no intervention, softening, or repair. What can it mean?

The overthrow of the proud, moreover, is adduced as the cause and occasion of holy praise. "I will exalt your holy name, for you have worked wonders ..." and "you have reduced the city to a heap of stones." Such a strange juxtaposition of divine works! And it is equally strange that the second statement evokes praise, as does the first.

The "report on the city" (verse 2) is first of all a moral statement, a judgment of the state of affairs, here and now. It is the "glance within," the calm conclusion of the one who pierces through semblances to the heart of the matter. Judgment is mine, says God.

There is something about the "last word." Who utters that word, and with what authority? According to Isaiah, the outcome of moral crisis rests in other hands than the powers of this world. Those manicured hands, their thumbs down! They, too, will be judged.

For such reasons as precede and are to follow (Isaiah is a great one for logic that defies all human logic), therefore the nations too will revere God (verse 3). What a statement, what a claim -- then or now!

Nonetheless, they shall one day see; pride and chariots and spears and all their hardware and claptrap go exactly nowhere. A salutary lesson; perhaps the beginning of the end? In any case, we take note of the vision of Revelation, that the nations will stream into the gates of heavenly Jerusalem.

These redoubtable nations may see, to their confusion, two occurrences that strike them blind. The first, as above, is a disaster to their unchecked ego. And then they see that God is the God not of the big achievers and puny believers, but of the helpless, the needy, the victimized, and the distressed (verses 4 and 5.) God is shelter and shadow; such this God is, for those who have no chariots to trust in.

On the other hand, we are offered wonderful images of the powerful, reduced and rendered. Like rain against a wall, like (more intense) heat in a time of drought. God brings their power to nothing, like a cloud tempering a hot spot.

What do we make of all this? It appears that such worldly power as is excoriated here, held up to scorn, is literally stuck, without hope or compassion. It never learns.

Newly offered, and always available, is the biblical analysis of, first, the desperate measures of the "old way," and, second, the possibility of a "new way."

VERSE 6, THE GRAND FEAST, "for all people." This is the universal theme so dear to Isaiah and the other prophets. God is host of the banquet. Then her role changes; she becomes the Comforter.

The feast is ready. The menu is dwelt upon, with pride, with anticipation. A menu for all! What people love, what awakens and satiates appetite, this will be served. "On this mountain" refers to Zion, understood as pivot of the universe, a place of gathering and departure both.

The end of things is a celebration. This is something beyond fantasy or dream wish. It is the substance of hope. The imagery also is exorcising; it liberates us from images of nuclear Armageddon. God so loves creation as to celebrate, and not for its mere perdurance or survival -- let alone its utter destruction, as some have claimed, making Armageddon an idea whose time, so to speak, will never come.

Another outcome is indicated by the image of the universal banquet. God, together with all people, will celebrate.

Celebrate what? Humanness vindicated, in the right order and cherishing of all creation. What was true in the beginning remains true through all the tormented path of history, and is true to the end. God's love, our love, God-community, we in community; sweet creation, no longer "groaning" or "in travail"; itself in us. A dance of creation to follow the banquet. Christ calling the tune.

The tone changes in verses 7 and 8. It is as though the feast were proceeding as planned, in all its splendor and pomp -- and the overarching tent had become strangely oppressive. A realization dawns; we are not yet altogether liberated. There are empty places at the table. More, sorrow is in the air, a sense of loss, the absence of loved ones. At this late hour, when our liberation is both announced and celebrated, is death in command?

We can perhaps pursue the tent image as apropos. Suppose the tent were to collapse; not catastrophically (this after all is post-catastrophe). But it wafts down slowly over the guests. It is silken, not suffocating, light as down. Still, it darkens the scene, interferes with free movement, gets in the way of gesture and dance. It has become a kind of "veil of mourning," it lies upon "all people." Now it encompasses them more closely. It veils their faces, one from another.

Are we the living? Are we the dead? We gaze at one another through this veil. Death has dared to make an appearance, even at the feast of life; it is an ancient and terrible tale.

Something further must be done. The guests cannot of themselves lift the veil of death, that tegument which has become a kind of second skin. A claim that says, "You do not know one another; but I know you. You may celebrate life as you please, but death owns you. Multitudes of you have died. You will all die. Eat, drink, and be merry."

This is intolerable. The feast of life, arrogantly becoming a feast of death!

The guests are helpless. Who shall lift the central pole, and with it that huge adhesive burden? God must act.

God acts. Death is banished forever.

And then a further ritual of tenderness. We see the Host passing among the guests. They are again breathing free, their beloved restored to them. All are weeping in joy and relief. And God passes among them in spontaneous tenderness and wipes the tears from faces.

"GOD WILL remove the reproach from his people, over all the earth" (verse 8). In light of the preceding, the reproach, the opprobrium, includes all the ways in which death has laid claim to people in the terror of our history. To me, that terrible word "control" sums it up. The iron will to own others is the will to magnify and justify the spirit of death.

Appalled we have heard with monotonous regularity of "new attacks by the contras; civilian deaths high." Likewise in the Philippines, in Northern Ireland, in South Africa, in so many other tormented regions of our world. At whose door will these crimes be laid? Who will pay for the blood of the innocent?

These are very old questions, alas. But they must be raised again and again, though the heavens be turned to adamant and the skies rain blood. "For God has spoken."

"And it will be said on that day ..." (verse 9). Surely it is helpful to reflect on the strange, incongruent tenses: the Lord having once spoken, and then the echo, "on that day, it will be said."

We are to echo that holy Word, on a given day. Not yet. And why not yet? Why not now? If not now, when? If not now, never? What is this delay we are so tolerant of, so afraid of?

We can at least say, in our humiliation and scorn, "I will not be a party to the delay," which is a matter not to be laid to God, but to cowardice, fear, and ennui -- to ourselves, in other words.

But let us look at the word that "will be spoken," and yet is not spoken. And yet, "God has spoken it."

This is the awaited One, present in hope. Thus meaning is bestowed on things, above all on those things that seemed to have no meaning, that escaped and evaded and even mocked any possible meaning -- such as present political "realities," the most unreal phenomena of our lifetime. A politics of murder, condemning us to a polis where murder is the ordinary tactic.

We have clear instruction in verse 9 concerning the character of this God who saves, his moral physiognomy. The instruction is offered in the Sermon on the Mount and is verified on the mount of Calvary. The message is so clear it blinds. And in blindness, we place our hope elsewhere, in almost anyone -- except God. Ultimately, in any thing, since the hope embodied in those we grant our hope to -- the "hope" of our leaders -- is in the bomb. Thus hope is demonized, lodged in dead gods, gods of death. These, it is debasedly hoped, will save us.

Thus our hope is that death, more properly murder, will save us from death. This is the knot we have twisted about our own throats.

We die of it before we die.

ALWAYS INTRIGUING, THOSE WORDS "save" and "salvation." There is of course a hyperspiritualized translation, intensely concerned with self, fermenting, to all appearances, in the head only, a kind of pseudo-ecstasy, without cost or outlay of pain. It operates in a closed circuit of the like-minded, borrows a closed language.

So understood, "salvation" also welcomes, without critique or second thought, a large assimilation of the culture: attitudes about women, money, success, ego. It is purportedly apolitical, but in fact acknowledges little or no difficulty with wars, hot or cold, with racism, violence, foreign incursions.

Implied in this view is a quite clear conviction, a cultural one to be sure. There is nothing seriously wrong with America. America is, in fact, God's finest triumph. Let us wage wars, let us be racist and sexist and rampage on the earth; it is all blessed, all according to His (sic) will.

To be "saved" in this sense, in the final analysis, is to have America justified by a god of the culture. And as to the Christians -- for many of them, their Christianity is qualified; it dangles from the chief noun, "American" -- these are justified in the same swath of benignity.

An image suggests itself. In Acts 10:9 and following, we are told how Peter, at prayer, is rewarded with the vision of a great napkin descending from heaven, teeming with the fauna of the world. It is as though all creation were offered to him for blessing and nourishment. And he understands that the law of clean and unclean is, to say the least, put in question.

All to the good. But it occurs to me that, for large numbers of Christian Americans (sic), the "napkin from heaven" is in fact an American flag. This magical talisman descends from a questionable realm of political authority, beyond accountability, a mount of Olympus.

The flag unfolds. The teeming "goods and services" that tumble out are all marked "made in America." They are for the most part weapons. They are meant to mollify and glorify the "complete American," including of course the Christian Americans heretofore referred to, including also those abroad who seek to emulate mother country and her mother church and the "salvation" offered jointly by the twin powers.

There is another more modest, thoughtful, and critical understanding of the word. This "other" Christian is burdened, at times overwhelmed, by a sense of the sins of his people, and by implication his own sins. This one confesses, and seeks reconciliation; crosses lines and enters forbidden territories to declare the presence of the God of life in the midst of the lurking apparatus of death. Wherefore pays up.

The faith of such a one has a dark and poverty-stricken look. This one hears from his betters, the mystics, that "all will be well," if only because God has spoken -- not (God knows!) because things are anything but grievously unwell.

If God has spoken, it must be so. Though how and when and whence? She raises eyes to the heavens, weary but unquenched. Even at times, now and then, not often, she "rejoices, is jubilant" (if you can believe that!). Sometimes, one is tempted to say, the good humor of believers is itself a kind of salvation, a kind of saving.

From ill humor, rancor, dwelling perversely in the underside of things, deliver us, O God!

"For the hand of God rests on this mountain (Zion)" (verse 10). The hand of God makes the mountain the very center of earth, a pivot, a lyre in the winds, a sounding board, a point and end of pilgrimage and worship. All these. Whereunto we are summoned and therefore go. And arrive. An image of eternal life.

While the adversary (Moab) is dealt with otherwise, to say the least. A series of striking images of subjugation: "trodden down like straw on a manure pile." And though he "stretches out his hands, like a swimmer entering the waters," it will all come to nothing. An image of pride and control and skill, daring the plunge into an unfamiliar element, and he sinks. The "trickery, magic of his hands" goes nowhere.

Moab is addressed directly in verse 12 for the first time. Isaiah has become the direct oracle of the divine will. This is of course a kind of holy folly: to look on these "unassailable ramparts and wills," and announce in a dead calm, "It will all come down."

And more, the present tense. The downfall, rack and ruin, are even now under way. We mourn, we rejoice, we endure.

Daniel Berrigan, priest, poet, and peace activist, is a Sojourners contributing editor.