Isaiah, Jesus, and the Issue of Prophecy in an Advent Season

I knew that going to seminary would challenge my faith in all kinds of ways.  I knew that a seminary education might make it hard for me to have conversations with people who had different kinds of learning/training.  But Advent has challenged my faith in ways I didn't expect--so far, nothing earthshattering, but strange, nonetheless.

I wrote an earlier post about the Foundations of Preaching class approach to preaching the ancient prophets:  "Several times our professor reminded us that if we're preaching the Hebrew Scripture passages, the answer to the prophets question is never Jesus. In other words, we think that Jesus is the Messiah foretold by ancient prophets, but those prophets would not have thought that. The first Christians knew that something earthshattering had happened in the ministry of Jesus, and to make sense of it, they turned to their scripture, which would have been the Hebrew Scriptures. They had to decide if they were at a hinge moment when they created a whole new approach to God that would require abandoning past scripture or if they could use what they had been taught to make sense of it."

My Hebrew Bible class (what an earlier generation would have called Old Testament class) professor said something similar.  Isaiah, to whom we turn in many an Advent reading, is not predicting Jesus.  Prophecy is not fortune telling, not future forecasting.  I understand why so many people think the prophets who lived hundreds/thousands of years before Jesus were telling everyone that Jesus would arrive, Jesus specifically, not a general savior.  I was taught that too, in Sunday School, by people who had never heard differently, kind, older people who taught the classes based on what they were taught.  These same Sunday School teachers of my youth thought/taught that the Gospels were factual histories written by people who were there to witness it all.

So far, my seminary studies haven't challenged my faith here.  I came to seminary accepting parts of  the Bible as truth, but not fact.   I see sacred texts as inspired by God, not dictated by God.  And I see more sacred texts than just those collected in the Bible.  I have assumed that those of us who have gone to seminary in the past 10-20 years will have come across these ideas.

So it's jarring to hear Advent sermons and blogs and tweets that still talk about Isaiah as predicting the coming of Jesus.  I accept that older theology and music will have those ideas.  But if you've gone to a mainline seminary recently, why are you still preaching that the Hebrew prophets told us about the coming of Jesus?  Why are you preaching that Isaiah was talking to us in the 21st century?  The ancient prophets were concerned with the people in their own time, not centuries into the future.  The salvation that concerned them was not my personal salvation--or anyone's personal salvation--but the salvation of the whole community.

As I said, not a huge deal, and certainly the larger church community would not see this as particularly interesting.  But it's leaping out at me this year, in part because I had to preach on a text from Isaiah, and my professor was very clear that if we made the classic mistake of saying that Isaiah was predicting Jesus, we would fail the assignment.  

Here's the one reference to Jesus that I kept:  "In this time of Advent, I encourage us to think about Jesus who comes to tell us that the kingdom of God is inbreaking, happening right here and right now. . . . In this time of Advent, as we prepare ourselves to welcome the inbreaking kingdom of God, let us develop a prophetic imagination for our own day. Let us walk in a world illumined in ways that dictators can’t imagine."

(I will be recording this sermon for my S. Florida home church, so more will be coming soon).