Restore the Land

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, the writers of the Hebrew scriptures often reflect upon the natural environment, and they are not speaking in metaphor. They mean what they say. Today’s reading from Isaiah 49 is no exception:

I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people,

To restore the land

Saying to the prisoners: Come out!

To those in darkness: Show yourselves!

Along the ways they shall find pasture…

They shall not hunger or thirst

I often think, “What would it mean to restore the land?”  Which then leads to so many other questions – What land? Restore it how? Restore it to whom? But it also begs the question for me, “What harm has happened to the land?”

If we grew up in the Christian faith, so many of us likely inherited spiritualized readings related to land, water, etc. – as if these were secondary to the “spiritual” life.  The biblical imagination, however, knew that land and spirit were connected. We may not have been taught that the “work of God” was to restore the land, but clearly the biblical writers in the Hebrew tradition saw this as the work of God’s people.  And these were the scriptures that Jesus read and internalized.

Jesus says in this gospel passage from John that he is here to do the work that God is doing in the world.  Jesus’ work and mission is an extension of the work of God in the Hebrew scriptures. Restoring the land (and the rivers and the lakes, etc.) – if the biblical tradition is to be taken at its word – is part of that work.

There is decent biblical evidence to suggest that by the time the Hebrew scriptures were written, they were already witnessing forms of environmental degradation.  Various wars and conquests as well as the wealthy buying up huge tracts of land were altering the landscape and changing its ability to sustain people.  Fast forward to Jesus’ time and he is clearly seeing the impacts of the Roman Empire on the environment.  The Romans built roads, cut down entire forests, rerouted rivers and sent resources back to Rome.

That’s why the biblical writers “dream” of rivers teeming with life and riverbanks full of trees that provide shade and medicines (from yesterday’s readings). That’s why Isaiah is dreaming of a land restored where debt prisoners (people who are forced to work the land to pay off their debt) are set free and everyone has enough to eat.

It is also why some scholars assert that Jesus went into the wilderness – both apprenticing with John the Baptist and by himself – to “remember” what wild felt and looked like and to reconnect with an undomesticated God that he called Abba.

Just as the people of Jesus’ time misunderstood what he was all about, so too we might miss the very real call of Jesus to take up the work of restoring the land.  This may mean the literal restoration of land that has been poisoned with toxins. It may mean the restoration of the land to original inhabitants. It may mean making sure that everyone has access to land – for recreation and for sustenance. It may mean making sure that we use land for the collective good. And it could mean a whole lot more.

For today, notice the land.  Notice the land that you live on (no matter what kind of dwelling you live in). How “wild” is it? Who has lived on that land across time? What did the place you live look like previously? How much or how little remains?

Notice how the land is used around you. Notice who “owns” the land and who does not own land. Notice the condition of the landscapes and who lives where.

Notice places where the wilderness has taken back what was domesticated.

Just let God speak to you today about restoring the land.

PS – I’d be remiss if I did not highlight another beautiful passage that comes from our first reading in Isaiah.  No matter what you are going through these days, please take these words in…

“But Zion said, ‘I don’t get it. God has left me. God has forgotten I even exist.” And God said, “Can a mother forget the infant at her breast? But even if mothers forget, I’d never forget you—never. Look, I’ve written your names on the backs of my hands.”