Monday, February 12, 2007

Watchman, What of the Night?


There is this very interesting passage in Isaiah that caught my attention the first time I came across it last year. In chapter 21, Isaiah, on behalf of YHWH pronounces oracles of judgment against Babylon, and then Edom. In the oracle concerning Edom, there is this imagined conversation between a tower watchman and an inquirer:

He calls to me out of Seir,
“Watchman, what of the night?
Watchman, what of the night?”

The watchman said,
“The morning comes, and also the night.
If you will inquire, inquire;
Return! Come back!”


The picture is of someone calling out to a night watchman, asking for the time. Is the night coming to an end soon? Is the day coming? This picture becomes a metaphor for the darkness that will befall Edom. People will be asking when the night will end. Will the day come soon? Will the darkness pass? The watchman replies that the day will come. But night also. ‘Come back and ask me another time!’ he says. Although this passage originally concerns Edom, I believe it applies as much to Israel in exile, crying out for the dawn of YHWH’s kingdom and homecoming. It applies as much to anyone who may be living in darkness, searching the horizon for the first signs of daybreak.

What about us Christians? We observe that the world is in tatters. It would seem that we are still living in darkness and that we should be asking the same question: Watchman, what of the night? Yet, we believe that on that first Easter morning, dawn has broken into the world. New creation has begun. We live in the age of Advent, as we await the coming of Christ. The first Christians were on watch. But they were watching for something else. They had witnessed the dawn. They were waiting for the full light of day. Saint Paul proclaims in Romans 13:12 – the night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. Jurgen Moltmann notes this from early drawings of praying Christians:

The early Christians prayed standing, looking up, with arms outstretched and eyes wide open, ready to walk or to leap forward. Their posture reflects tense expectation, not quiet heart-searching. It says: we are living in God’s Advent. We are on the watch, in expectation of the One who is coming, and with tense attentiveness we are going to meet the coming God.

It is quite interesting that nowadays, we pray with our eyes closed. We want to shut the world out so that we can search our souls, and focus on the Lord. There is a time for contemplative and mystical prayer as we seek to draw near to God in the present. But there is also a time for us to pray messianically as we wait expectantly for Christ to come from the future to meet us. We watch and pray with our eyes open as we watch for the Advent. We also pray with our eyes open to witness the world groaning in pain, as we cry for God’s kingdom to come. We now play the role of the watchman. As the world cries out ‘What of the night?’, we who have glimpsed the light of day answer, ‘the day is at hand.’

In prayer we wake up to the world as it is spread out before God in all its heights and depths. We perceive the sighing of creation, and hear the cries of the created victims that have fallen dumb. We also hear the song of praise of the blossoming spring, and feel the divine love for everything that lives. The person who prays, lives more attentively. Pray wakefully – that is only possible if we don’t pray mystically with closed eyes, but messianically, with eyes wide open for God’s future in the world. ~ Jurgen Moltmann, In the End – The Beginning