Metaphors
10 I will greatly rejoice in the LORD,
My whole being shall exult in my God;
for he has clothed me with the garments of
salvation,
he has covered me with the robe of
righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
11 For as the earth brings forth its shoots,
and as a garden causes what is sown in it to
spring up,
so the LORD GOD will cause righteousness and
praise
to spring up from all the nations
-Isaiah 61:10-11 (NRSV)
Isaiah 61 opens with excitement. The prophet tells us how God’s love and anointing clarify our mission. Instead of a focus on worship, as essential as that may be, the prophet explains that God expects us to “bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives...release to the prisoners…[and] comfort all who mourn,” simply because God has anointed you with His love and joined you to the Body of Christ through the Church (61: 1-2). While this section, at first blush, may seem to describe our tasks before God in urgent, personal, and individual terms, just a few verses later, justice and we see that redemption is a long-term, yet still critically urgent, family project. Through two helpful but common biblical metaphors, one that relates our relationship to God to that of marriage and one that relates our relationship to God’s redemptive in us to gardening and farming, our faith and devotion to God involves more than just us and our fidelity, individual love, and personal commitment to God.
I love metaphors because metaphors do a tremendous amount of work for us. For one, metaphors play an aesthetic role. A beautiful metaphor is often the difference between our friends and family, simply knowing that we love them or appreciating the grand narrative our love for them is wrapped up in. To miss a lost loved one is natural, but to miss our dearly departed them like one might miss the summer’s sun during a rainy winter morning is almost supernatural. While the prophet tells us that he “will greatly rejoice in the LORD” because “he has clothed me with the garments of salvation” and “the robe of righteousness,” already an exquisite metaphor, the stakes are raised when marriage enters the mix.
The power of metaphor is on full display in Isaiah. Metaphor helps us by bringing our present experience into the wider intergenerational, artistic, and even cosmic narrative of God’s love; it also helps us, as it does in verse 10, by relating feelings we understand to feelings we can yet fully grasp to help us understand God’s love and our experience of it. As the prophet explains, God’s righteousness and salvation clothe and cover us like marital love and familial bonds. While we may assume that we will feel exuberant joy when God wraps us in His salvation and righteousness, Isaiah removes all ambiguity by relating the joy from God with the joy of family creation and formation.
The family aspect of this intersecting group of metaphors is further emphasized by the last but perhaps most crucial of the bunch: the garden metaphor. Unlike the near immediate transformation attendant with marriage or childbirth, the text tells us that growing in God’s righteousness is “as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring us” (v.11). Rather than how we might think of modern farming as something done for low wages by marginalized and oppressed people here and abroad, farming in ancient Israel was a family affair with each member toiling, in unison, and collaboratively year-round for the family’ survival. Isaiah borrows from this common understanding amongst the Israelites returning from exile so that we can vividly understand that our families grow in God through a slow process of work, effort, joint commitment, and cooperation.
As parents, we, like our children, should meet God’s tasks with obedience and commitment. By appreciating the symbolic power of Isaiah 61’s metaphors, we know that marriage is a source of joy and the family is a cooperative endeavor that God expects us to pursue His righteousness diligently. While this may not mean that, as children, we will always see our parents experiencing the joyous and anticipatory longing described in Isaiah. It does mean that our prayers and praise aren’t private but familial. Just like we wait with gleeful anticipation for spring’s first fruitful harvest, we should, with equal diligence, prepare our family farm to survive harsh winters with the same level of excitement as biting the sweetest fruit or greeting our future spouse at the altar.
Dear God, we joyfully pray that we develop the determination to bring our family closer to you! Our heartfelt family work is dedicated to You because we know You have set this family to grow in Your righteousness. Amen!
Questions for reflection: In what ways has God’s righteousness been sown in your family? In what ways do some of your family practices resemble garden work? Do you have any daily, monthly, or yearly practices you would liken to watering, weeding, or caring for the vegetables and fruits in a garden? What might your life look like if your family treated your growth in God like the growth of vegetables and fruits on a farm?