Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has dawned upon you.
For behold, darkness covers the land;
deep gloom enshrouds the peoples.
But over you the Lord will rise,
and his glory will appear upon you.
[Photo: Sunrise over Jerusalem. omsi.edu]
Today, as the news media buzz around implementation of the President's policy to keep out "bad people, murderers, rapists," the words from Isaiah resonate with an alternative vision of America that we've heard time and again, from John Winthrop (1630), to John F. Kennedy (1961), to Ronald Reagan (1984), that we are to be a "city on a hill." Isaiah, writing when Israel was in exile, describes a new day for Jerusalem, literally set on a hill:
Nations will stream to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawning.
Your gates will always be open;
by day or night they will never be shut.
Jesus picked up on the image for his Sermon on the Mount, telling us that a city on a hill cannot be hid -- so be worthy of the privilege, and "let your light so shine" (Matthew 5.14).
For Isaiah, as for Winthrop, Kennedy, and Reagan, the light of "The City of the Lord" is about showing the world how a people can live together, recognizing human dignity, expressed in rights defined by law, mercy, and generosity, not by class, gender, or origin. Citing the prophet Micah's admonition to "do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God," Winthrop intended that, in the Puritan colony of Massachusetts, "the rich must not eat up the poor," and the Massachusetts "Body of Liberties" soon included laws mandating decent treatments for "sojourners," women, servants, children, and even for animals. Kennedy spoke in terms of freedoms guaranteed and exercised, and sharing these with peoples overseas. Reagan embraced immigrants, even illegals, saying in essence, there's no one more American than someone who risks everything to make a better life for his family in a new country. Isaiah continues:
Violence will no more be heard in your land,
ruin or destruction within your borders.
You will call your walls, Salvation,
and all your portals, Praise.
Isaiah imagines "the sun will no more be your light by day; / by night you will not need the brightness of the moon." (I'm afraid that line, so beautiful in intent, conjures incongruous images of Las Vegas and Times Square.)
The Attorney General answered Christian critics with Paul's endorsement of Roman laws, implying that the Administration's policy of "zero tolerance" is ordained by God. Of course, many laws in many lands are anything but, and "an unjust law is no law at all," as we've heard from St. Augustine and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sessions could have found more apt scripture about keeping foreigners out of Israel, but Isaiah is part of a stronger stream of scriptures that say, in essence, it doesn't matter where they come from or how they got here: God is on their side, and you need to take care of them, even if that's costly or difficult. Think of Jesus's story of the Good Samaritan.
I hear that today happens to be International Refugee Day. I'm glad that I started it with something so positive and beautiful as this "Third Song of Isaiah."
[See a related article, Biking July 4: Does God Bless America? (07/2017)]
Postscript: I ran across Ronald Reagan's benediction to the nation in a new book by historian Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Natures. Reagan, leaving the White House in 1989, returns to these themes:
But in my mind, [the City on a Hill] was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the wall had doors and the doors where open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.... And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.
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