Return to Normal?
Everyone wants to get back to normal after Covid-19. All of us have had our lives disrupted. Well, maybe not everyone yearns for that old normal. More men than women want to return to how it was then. More white people than people of color want to return to that old normal. More straight persons than LGBTQ+ people want that old normal. That is, the more we have been privileged, advantaged, and empowered, the more want to go back there.
It is clear in any case that our “return to normal” cannot be simple, direct, or in a straight line. Very much has changed irreversibly and will not be restored. It remains to be seen what the new normal may be; it will in any case require careful and broad negotiation, precisely because some of the folk among us who have not been privileged, advantaged, and empowered up until this point do not want to go back, and do not intend to go back. They want to go forward to a new normal that we have not known before.
It belongs to the hard work of faith to be engaged in that negotiation and in the shaping of the new normal that will be partly the old renewed and partly newness never before imagined:
Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old (Matthew 13:52).
In the Old Testament the disruptive fissure that posed in stark terms “back to normal” questions was the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of leading public figures into exile.
Given that great disruption, it was inevitable that some would ask, “What comes next?”
In the prophetic tradition of ancient Israel, I can identify two texts that reflect a wonderment and expectation about the future. There are more than two such texts, but these two texts contain a particularly distinctive phrasing.
In Isaiah 1:21-26, the poetry announces the primary themes of the book of Isaiah that are to come:
The failure of the city of Jerusalem (vv. 21-23);
The devastation of the city (vv. 24-25).
In verse 26 the poem begins to reflect on what comes after the devastation:
And I will restore your judges as at the first,
and your counselors as at the beginning (v. 26a).
Two things strike me about this rhetoric. First, there is the verb “restore” (shuv). God will return Israel to its life. Second, this verse uses a quite distinctive term, “at first” (or “in the beginning”). The substance of this half verse is that the restoration will be to a form of social existence that reflects “your judges,” that is, that reflects a small rural economy known in the Book of Judges without large urban centers. Such an existence was sure to be precarious, given the ready potential for unregulated violence.
On the other hand this existence was much more immediately aware of a theological dimension to lived reality, alert to the force of God’s governance. Thus in the Book of Judges the rendering of social history is according to a covenantal formula of disobedience-judgment-petition-rescue (see the formula in Judges 3:7-11).
While this formula is a rather heavy-handed imposition upon memory, such a memory and such a restoration will be without the pomp of the temple, without the security of a large military apparatus, without highly developed technology, and without the reach of an international economy. The governance of God was engaged much more directly. There would be no larger human governance that could impose order, provide protection, or engage in exploitation. It is a life marked by intense political vulnerability. That is the “at first” that the prophet anticipates in verse 26a.
But then, in verse 26b, prophetic expectation extends further with an abrupt “afterword.” After a time of “at first” vulnerability, there will be a city.
Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness,
the faithful city (v. 26).
That anticipated city is surely Jerusalem, a city that in time to come will be marked by righteousness and faithfulness, the very characteristics that were lacking in the condemnation of verse 21! It is as though the prophet anticipates that after the disruption of the exile, Israel will again enact the sequence of its ancient history from rural to urban, from judges to kings, from vulnerability to an ordered society. The poem does not articulate a time frame. It does not tell us how long it will be until “afterward.” Thus the poem ponders the future according to the models of society rooted in old memory.
A second text that claims our attention is in Jeremiah 3:7:
I will restore the fortunes of Judah and the fortunes of Israel, and rebuild them as they were at first.
As in Isaiah 1:26, this verse also uses the verb “restore” (shuv). Only here it is used three times, “restore, fortunes, fortunes.” The “fortunes” are that which is restored. Moreover, the text, like Isaiah 1:26, uses the term “at first.” These are the only two verses that use this exact same form. Thus Jeremiah, like Isaiah, is considering what will come after the great disruption. The verse uses the term “rebuild” that sounds not unlike an anticipation of “Build Back Better.” In the next verse, the anticipated restoration is given a more explicitly religious tilt:
I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against me, and I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and rebellion against me (v. 8).
The governing verbs are “cleanse,” an act of purification via purgation, and “forgive.” The poetry does not suggest exactly how “cleanse” and “forgive” are linked to rebuilding; clearly the poetry intends a systemic, wholesale recovery from the disruption.
When, however, we consider the entire chapter in Jeremiah 33, it is unmistakably clear that the prophet is not settled on one single scenario of restoration. Chapter 33 consists in a variety of scenarios of restoration that seem to be arranged without any overall design, that is, rather happenstance. Two of these scenarios have claimed my attention. On the one hand, verses 12-13 offer a bucolic anticipation of an economy based on sheep. These lines expect that everywhere, in every region of the land, shepherding will prosper.
In this place that is waste, without human beings or animals, and in all its towns there shall again be pasture for shepherds resting their flocks. In the Shephelah and of the Negeb, in the land of Benjamin, the places around Jerusalem and in the towns of Judah, flocks shall again pass under the hand of the one who counts them, says the Lord (vv. 12-13).
For shepherding to prosper, moreover, there must be a stable social order without threatening or rampaging armies or predatory urban power. The vulnerable shepherds featured in the anticipated economy are not unlike those later shepherds who, near Bethlehem, were,
living in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night (Luke 2:8).
It is striking that through an editorial process the next scenario of hope that follows in the text, placed back-to-back with this company of shepherds, is an anticipation of the restoration of the Davidic monarchy (vv. 14-16; see 23:5-6). Only now, Davidic rule, unlike the sordid failure of the regime in the run-up to the Babylonian disruption (see II Kings 24-25), will be marked by justice and righteousness.
The imagery of a reconstituted monarchy is extended in the next promissory paragraph that assures that God’s covenant with David is as sure as the covenant that orders creation (vv. 19-22; see Psalm 89:3-4, 33-37). We have seen in the Isaiah text that the rustic image of Judges and the urban scenario of Jerusalem are sequenced one after the other. In the rendering of Jeremiah, by contrast, there is no such sequencing. There are only two scenarios of restoration on offer that are placed back-to-back.
When we consider Isaiah 1:26 and Jeremiah 33:7 together, we have the only two prophetic texts that speak of a return “as at first.” Thus we may discern in these two texts the articulation of something of a pattern. It will be “as at first”:
Isaiah: a bucolic restoration of judges … afterward … a restored city of justice and righteousness;
Jeremiah: a rustic reemergence of a shepherd economy … a restored monarchy of righteousness.
Both prophetic traditions offer a glimpse into the future that consists in more than one model of social order.
Both models are rooted in memory, and the prophets do not adjudicate which of them is preferable. This twice offered double model suggests that restoration, in prophetic expectation, is not and cannot be a straight line anticipation or a straight line prediction. (We may notice that in the gospel narrative of Jesus we can see the same two models articulated if we pay attention to the geography of the narrative. Thus Jesus’ ministry is in Galilee; “Galilee” functions as a narrative cipher for a less regulated society occupied by marginal people, whereas “Jerusalem” is an embodiment of wealth, power, and regulation. The preference in the gospel narrative is clearly for “Galilee.”)
Prophetic expectation is, rather, an open-ended hope that has confidence in God’s restorative capacity, but that is willing to engage in playful ways with alternative possibilities. Thus the “as at first” return to normalcy is not obvious or settled. Surely there were those in Israel who resisted the reemergence of judges as very risky and wished for the stability of kingship; at the same time there were, no doubt, those who remembered the monarchy as predatory and usurpatious, and who wished for the more open ordering of a less regulated society.
None of this in Isaiah and Jeremiah is prescriptive or predictive. I do not cite these texts because they provide clues to our own “return to normalcy;” they do not. Rather, I cite them, because they may suggest to us how a faith tradition may responsibly participate in the debate about what may be “better” that is, how we could “Build Back Better.” If we work with these models of a bucolic option of judges and shepherds or with the urban option of kingship, we might consider models available to us from our memory concerning a restored political economy.
When we pursue the judges-shepherd model of social organization, we get an image of a simpler ordering of face-to-face neighborliness that is without huge structures of governance, tax collection, and military investment. There is an attractiveness to this simplicity. Except that it can never yield the kind of juggernaut of economic, military, and technological power that goes with certain visions of restored greatness.
On the other hand, a model of urban kingship yields a strong centralized government. Such a government is capable of mustering great resources for wellbeing and security; it is, however, also capable of great monopoly of resources and opportunities for predation for the privileged.
The question of models of normalcy is a tricky and complex one that admits no obvious settlement. That is why poetic-prophetic work must be done in order to keep before us open-ended possibilities that cannot be closed off by premature ideological conclusions. Indeed, the prophetic voices of the Old Testament are preoccupied with just such imaginings:
Isaiah imagines a future in which the vulnerable are protected:
With righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked (Isaiah 11:3-4).
Jeremiah imagines a welcome embrace of the Torah made possible by forgiveness:
I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people…for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more (Jeremiah 31:33-34).
Ezekiel imagines the rule of God deployed on behalf of the vulnerable:
I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak (Ezekiel 34:15-16).
Amos imagines a renewed agriculture and a restored urban life:
The time is surely coming, says the Lord,
when the one who plows shall overtake the one who reaps,
and the reaper of grapes the one who sows the seed;
the mountains shall drip sweet wine,
and all the hills shall flow with it.
I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,
and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,
and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit (Amos 9:13-14).
Habakkuk imagines a tenacious faith for very hard times:
Though the fig tree does not blossom,
and no fruit is on the vines;
Though the produce of the olive fails,
and the fields yield no food;
Though the flock is cut off from the fold,
and there is no herd in the stalls,
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will exult in the God of my salvation (Habakkuk 3:17-18).
These poets teem with alternative visions of the new normal.
It is reported that the first apostles asked the risen Christ:
Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom of Israel? (Acts 1:6)
They received no direct answer. It is clear, in any case, that what they hoped for is not what Christ promised. They hoped for a Davidic restoration; they got from him parables: two coats, two sons, one Samaritan, a mustard seed -- images that problematized any simplistic notion of restoration.
It is clear in prophetic expectation that restoration is indeed a gift from God. It is equally clear, however, that restoration is a human task. We are not passive recipients. We may have a decisive say in the shape of the restoration. It is urgent that we exercise intentional agency about that coming future, that we are not caught with a future imposed upon us that is inimical to our common wellbeing.
These parabolic offerings of the coming future are tilted toward generosity, forgiveness, compassion, and hospitality, not waylaid by any strident profiteering and exclusionism. The poets imagine that there will be a time to “Build Back Better.” But it will take some sustained intentional doing. This poetic-parabolic future characteristically features fresh human decision-making.
That future is not imposed. It can be received and generated at the same time.
Walter Brueggemann
Walter Brueggemann
Walter Brueggemann is surely one of the most influential Bible interpreters of our time. He is the author of over one hundred books and numerous scholarly articles. He continues to be a highly sought-after speaker.
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