Justin Appel
Dear Friends,
Today’s reading from Isaiah chapter 54 is a beautiful account of God’s mercy to the world. This passage states that the children of the “barren woman” will be more than the “married woman.” In fact, the barren woman is instructed to enlarge her tent, to broaden her boundaries, since her “seed shall inherit the Gentiles.”
Read from a traditional Christian perspective, and with a typological framework, we can understand this passage to speak about the Gentiles, or more precisely, the Church of the Gentiles. Even though this woman was barren (not a part of God’s covenant with Israel), she will be barren no longer, for “more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman.” This imagery fits into the larger typological understanding of the Church as the Bride of Christ as expressed in the New Testament.
This passage declaims that even though God “turned away” from the Gentiles temporarily, now “in everlasting compassion I will have mercy on you.” Isaiah’s prophecy parallels this situation to God’s promise to Noah after the flood. God’s promise not to destroy the earth cataclysmically reminds us, in Isaiah’s utterance, that “neither shall my compassion fail you, nor shall your covenant of peace be removed.”
This is the message of the Epiphany: that through Christ, God’s mercy is extended from the Jewish nation to “the whole world,” to us Gentiles, to Christ’s Church.
What better text to encapsulate this theme than the Song of Simeon? Here is a beautiful setting of the Nunc Dimittis in the style of Gerald Finzi by David Bednall.
“For mine eyes have seen thy salvation:
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles;
And to be the glory of thy people Israel.”
Yours in Christ,
—Justin
