When we gather to hear the words of the prophet Isaiah, we step into a text that does not belong to us alone. Isaiah is part of our Christian Scripture, but before that, and still today, Isaiah belongs to the Jewish people. These words were prayed, sung, and wept over in Jewish communities long before the first followers of Jesus opened their hearts to them.
In the shadow of history — especially after the Shoah, the Holocaust — Christians must confess that we cannot read Isaiah, or any part of the Hebrew Bible, as though our Jewish brothers and sisters were not still reading it too. Too often, Christians have read these texts in ways that erased or demeaned Jewish life. Sometimes that erasure has been violent and oppressive. That history has left scars not only on Jewish life, but on Christian faith as well.
So, when we ask: what does Isaiah mean for us today? we must also ask: how can we speak of Israel, of Zion, of God’s chosen people, without falling again into the old habits of triumph or denial?
I want to pause here to say something contextual. Over the years, I’ve heard many Christians share their struggles, their unease, when they come across the words Israel and Zion in the Bible. Some feel confused, unsure whether they should be thinking about the modern state of Israel, or about the Jewish people, or something else entirely. Others feel a discomfort — worried that to affirm these words might sound political, or even like taking sides in conflicts they do not fully understand.
This is the reason I believe we must talk about Isaiah tonight. Because if we cannot speak these words — Israel, Zion — in a way that is faithful to Scripture and sensitive to history, then our reading of the Bible risks becoming shallow or even harmful.
Christians have often swung between two extremes. On one side, the rejection of Jews — the belief that Christians replaced Israel in God’s plan. This “supersessionism” has fueled contempt and persecution. On the other side, in more recent years, some Christians have tried to identify with Jews, as though we could simply take their story for ourselves. But even that sympathy can become a kind of appropriation — an eagerness to share in Jewish suffering without facing our complicity in it.
Both attitudes leave Jews in the same place: either opposed or absorbed, hated or “supported” — but never simply allowed to be themselves, before God, as Israel.
The challenge for us is to find another way. A way that is not opposition, nor identification, but shared humility and partnership. A way of reading the Old Testament that acknowledges our differences, yet also recognises that we share it with the Jewish tradition and speak before the same God.
If we make the Shoah/Holocaust too unique, we risk pulling it out of history, beyond human responsibility, as though it were something that happened on another planet. But if we make it too ordinary, we risk brushing away its horror, as though it were simply another instance in a long series of tragedies.
Isaiah helps us to hold both truths at once. His vision acknowledges the universality of darkness — “darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples” — but also the particularity of light that shines from Zion. The Shoah/Holocaust belongs to Jewish history, for it was Jews who suffered and carried its unbearable weight. But it belongs also to all humanity, for it revealed the fragility of civilisation itself: how culture, law, and even religion can collapse into violence and indifference.
In this sense, Isaiah’s words are not escapist poetry. They encourage us to recognise both the depth of evil that humanity can produce and the mystery of God’s light that refuses to be extinguished. For Christians, this means remembering the Shoah/Holocaust not as someone else’s story, but as a warning and a calling for us as well.
When we speak of “Israel” in Isaiah, we must be careful. It is tempting for Christians either to replace Israel with ourselves or to turn “Israel” into a simple label for a particular ethnic group or modern political state. But Isaiah’s vision is wider and deeper than that.
Israel in Scripture is the people called by God for a mission: to serve, to witness, to bring blessing to the nations. Israel should be the problem-solver rather than the problem-maker. Its calling is to embody God’s justice, mercy, and holiness in the world.
Christians must carefully read the Old Testament, which we share with the Jewish tradition. That means listening to how Jews have read these texts, learning from their wisdom, and standing in solidarity when they suffer. But solidarity is not the same as blind support or uncritical justification of everything done in the name of Israel. To treat Israel as beyond critique would also be to diminish its calling, for God’s chosen people are called to holiness and service.
Christian interpretation ultimately believes that this Israel — the servant, the light to the nations, the problem-solver — has been fulfilled fully in Christ Jesus. He takes up Israel’s vocation and makes it clear that it is open to all nations, so that Jews and Gentiles alike are invited into the mission of God.
(Christians, in this sense, love ‘Israel’ and share the mission and suffering of ‘Israel’ with our whole heart. But ironically, this Israel is nothing else but Jesus Christ himself!)
This faith does not cancel or erase Jewish identity, nor does it justify centuries of supersessionism. Rather, it reminds us that Israel’s vocation is not about possession or power, but about service and faithfulness — something we as Christians are called to share in, never to dominate.
So, when Isaiah says, “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn,” he does not mean that Israel is a private club with exclusive privileges. He also does not mean that Israel is simply a metaphor for Christians alone. He means that God’s light shines through Israel — in history, in covenant, and in Christ — so that all humanity might find healing and reconciliation.
Jewish interpreters often read this as a call to tikkun olam (in Hebrew)— meaning the repair of the world. Israel’s vocation is not triumph but service, not exclusion but witness. We Christians can also recognise this as our calling: to walk in God’s light toward justice and peace.
The vision is not of one people ruling over another, but of partnership: gifts brought from all nations, wounds healed, peoples reconciled. This is why Isaiah’s words echo in our Advent hymns and in Jewish liturgy alike — they name the universal hope of God’s reign.
Even the Gospel of John, often a sharp text, remembers that the relationship between Jesus and his fellow Jews was not one of total separation, but of debate within the same family. In John 6, when Jesus speaks of himself as the bread of life, many argue with him — not as outsiders, but as family members. It was an intense, painful debate, but it remained within Jewish tradition.
What Jesus brought to the world is the fulfilment of the mission given to Israel, the chosen people of God. Our task as Jesus’s followers (alongside our Jewish brothers and sisters) is not to erase that bond, nor to weaponise it, but to recognise it as part of our own story.
Isaiah’s light shines not only on Israel, but on all who suffer injustice today. That light calls every people — including Israel — to be measured not by power or possession, but by justice, compassion, and peace.
In that light we find our common calling: not rivalry, not appropriation, but reconciliation. Jews and Christians together, and with all who long for justice and healing, are called to walk in the brightness of God’s dawn.