NOTES for Isa 49:1-6

Speaking about his prophetic ministry, Isaiah utters bitter words: "I have labored in vain, and spent my strength for nothing." What disappointed the prophet so deeply? At first glance, it appears that his ministry, on the contrary, was quite successful. He became, in effect, the prophet of the first aliyah, that first repatriation, that return of the Jews from captivity to the land of their fathers, which everyone, both those who set out for Judea and those who preferred to remain in Babylon, perceived as the triumph of God's people, as the beginning of blessed times that would be crowned by the soon coming of the Messiah.

Isaiah began to speak about the imminent end of the captivity when the Babylonian Empire still seemed unshakable, and when what he had spoken about actually happened, the prophet became a true national hero. But this did not make him glad, and his own words allow us to understand why. He says that God made him a gatherer of the people, the one through whom He wants not only to gather the people but also to renew them spiritually. God wants Yahwism itself to become different, for the witness about Him to resound throughout the whole earth, for His people, a significant part of whom had by that time remained in the communities of an already quite extensive and numerous diaspora, to become His witness for all who seek truth and spiritual life.

Meanwhile, the people did not correspond at all to the task that had been set. There was euphoria over the decree of Cyrus the Great about the return; there were intense, almost feverish messianic expectations. But the closedness of the community was already showing itself, along with a certain contempt for the nations and self-isolation explained by the demand for strict observance of ritual purity. In short, all the traits had already appeared that would later bloom luxuriantly and produce the worst examples of Pharisaic religiosity.

Under such conditions, there could be no question of any witness to the nations, not because there were not enough missionaries, since Jewish mission was quite active over the following centuries, but because these missionaries bore witness to themselves, to their people, to their tradition - in short, to anything at all except the main thing needed for spiritual life: living communion with God and how to find it.

This was not done out of malice or because the missionaries considered those whom they addressed unworthy. They were simply absolutely certain that until those whom they addressed became Jews in every respect just like themselves, no communion with God was possible for them. Thus the mission among the nations that God wanted to organize through His people, scattered throughout the whole civilized world of that time even before Christ's coming, failed. It had to be postponed until Christian times and entrusted to the Church.

About his calling and prophetic ministry, the prophet speaks as of something God had planned even before his birth. No wonder that in Christian tradition this self-testimony of Isaiah took on a messianic sound: it was not hard to connect the prophet's words both with what Jesus Himself says about Himself and with what other prophets say about the Messiah, above all Isaiah of Jerusalem.

Here an important pattern of spiritual life is reflected. Spiritual life is a system of relationships linking a person with God and with other people. Such relationships form a kind of spiritual fabric within which a person lives spiritual life. It is a life that, like every life, changes the one who lives it. And it is always, in any case, a process directed by God. The only question is the extent of God's participation in that process.

To what extent does He enter a person's spiritual life, and to what extent does He direct it from outside? Here everything depends on the person himself. It is no accident that so much is said about the fact that a person, if he wants communion with God, must let God into his life. This is not an allegory, but a completely concrete truth of spiritual life. The whole question is whether God will direct our life from outside, touching it only as a force external to it, or whether our life will become part of His life. However shocking it may sound, this is exactly the kind of inclusion being discussed. Of course, God does not need our life in itself; He can get along perfectly well without us. But He loves us, and that is the whole point.

He understands that we are the ones who need His life. And He is ready to share it with us. But if we begin to live a shared life with God, it turns out that we become an inseparable part of something conceived and begun long before we appeared in the world. And the more God's element predominates in our shared life with Him, the more something beyond the human predominates in it. Something that cannot be contained entirely within the limits of human nature nevertheless joins itself to that nature and determines its existence.

This is how God enters a person and human life. No wonder that everything said here could be applied first of all to Christ: in Him this entry reached completion, fullness. But every person, insofar as he lets God into his life, also takes part in this process. As much as he can contain. And Isaiah, like every prophet, is no exception. He, like all the other prophets, only anticipates what will be revealed to the world in fullness in Christ.

The prophet Isaiah puts in the mouth of the Messiah the word of defeat, that the work of the Messiah ends with failure. And just like that from the human point of view, the evangelic history looks like. Christ preaches wonderful things, attracts to Him followers... But His word is rejected, the followers disperse, and He Himself dies of a shameful death of slaves and bandits. All those who were healed and resuscitated, who used the gifts of Christ, stay somewhere off, and all His works go to the sand. And the same thing we observe centuries after centuries in the history of His followers. Everything they try to build, collapses and becomes the prey of voracious time. But it is from a human point of view. The prophet Isaiah begins to see clearly the essential: in Christ God Himself comes into the world, and that is why happen miracle. The messiah, whose mission failed, is risen - and so won. That is how God wins.

People wait and look not for such victory. People think that Christ should solemnly enter Jerusalem, humble all and to establish His reign. But He dies on the Cross. And that’s why it is important for us to stop thinking how necessary it is, how everything has to take place, and to follow the Lord Jesus - not for the sake of abstract fruits of salvation, but for the sake of Jesus Christ.