by Bill Taber
This is an excerpt from final section beginning on page 50 of The Prophetic Stream, Pendle Hill Pamphlet #256, published in 1984. You can purchase the full pamphlet from Pendle Hill Bookstore or perhaps find a copy in your meeting library.
I will raise up for them a prophet for you [Moses] from among their brethren, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to themall that I command him. [Deuteronomy 18:18]…
The trouble was that Jesus, the living, present prophet, was not available to George Fox when he began to seek. Jesus Christ had been stuck up on the wall in an impressive and magnificent way, but he was completely out of reach to the ordinary person.… Jesus was stuck on the wall of the church, quite honorably, and he was stuck back across 1600 years of history, or he was stuck far off into the future when he would be the final judge.…
I believe that Christ is available in our time because George Fox and others have rediscovered a living Christ different from the conventional image on the wall….
Second Isaiah’s Suffering Servant songs have intrigued both scholars and devout readers for many centuries.… One way of getting closer to the spirit of Jesus is to look at these songs. Through them we can enter into the mind and heart of the historic and eternal Christ, getting behind all that verbal theology which had frozen him into a static image on the wall for many people.
One of the shortest of these songs about the coming servant of the Lord mentions “justice” three times im four verses:
Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not fail or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law. (Isaiah 42:1-4)…
These verses lead me to ponder the powerful gentleness of the historic Jesus and to appreciate the quiet way of the Holy Spirit as it brings us to our knees before the law of justice. True justice, the justice we all seek, is more akin to healing than to punishment, to a renewed and higher harmony than to rigid organization. Thus, far back in the Old Testament we find seeds of the insight so precious to Friends that the means do determine the ends, for this Servant-to-come will use gentle means, for only so can he bring the justice which is true healing, true health, true order. The last verse tells us that the Suffering Servant is like a wedge which is slowly, imperceptibly opening the heart of humanity so that true justice may grow. The power of that advancing wedge of Christ is infinite and absolute, even if very slow and gentle; it will never be discouraged because its root and source is faithful covenant love….
Time after time these verses [in Second Isaiah] have helped me take down the distant picture of Jesus Christ and brought me closer not only to the historic Jesus of Galilee, but also to the cosmic and gentle presence which I have felt in my own heart….
George [Fox] often used conventional Christian language and endless Biblical quotations, but he always used them with a difference because his experience had made Christ a present, living reality rather than a theological statement or an inaccessible, distant deity. I am convinced that Fox can still help take the two-dimensional Jesus down from the wall for us if we become acquainted with his rich and varied ways for describing the inward work of Christ. Fox and early Friends accepted the outward work of Christ [on the cross], but they insisted that it is this inward work which transforms us and guides us into new ways of ethical behavior, new ways of service, and new ways of fellowship….
George Fox invites us out into the midst of the prophetic stream by giving us a variety of words for the inward-working and transforming Christ of his own experience. These terms can become more than words only as we ponder them and step gingerly or boldly into that stream.
(c) 1984 Pendle Hill. Use of these passages from The Prophetic Stream is by permission of Pendle Hill. Taber was Quakerism teacher at Pendle Hill at the time this pamphlet was written.