Isaiah 40:1-11
Advent 2
December 6, 2020
Comfort, O comfort my
people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she
has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.
Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.
I have heard these words a lot over the years. Sometimes they emerge in a situation of deep weariness, and Isaiah declares “those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.” Sometimes the word echo elsewhere, as in Psalm 103, “As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field.” At least once a year, the words are heard from an angel choir singing Handel’s Messiah: “Comfort, comfort ye my people” and “Every valley shall be exalted.” The prophet’s words have been imprinted on posters, Christmas cards, and even the cover of a worship bulletin. These are words we have heard before. This week, I started to pay attention.
One of the best ways to pay attention to scripture is to ask the simple question, “What’s going on?” If there is a deed performed, what is the action undertaken? If there is a word spoken, what does the Word do? So what is going on in Isaiah 40? I put together a short list.
-
An
interruption of sorrow
-
A
proclamation of grace that cancels our human brokenness
-
A
declaration of homecoming to those who haven’t arrived yet
-
A
reminder of the shortness of our mortality and eternity of God’s speaking
-
A
vision of God’s arrival
-
An
announcement that God’s power is shown in generosity and kindness
-
A
Word of God’s constancy for the faint, weary, powerless, and exhausted
-
A
good bit of cheerleading
No wonder that Isaiah names these words as “Good tidings.” They are tidings of comfort and joy, if you will. Walter Brueggemann goes so far as to name this as the Gospel of Isaiah, the ultimate Good Word. Here is the Gospel: God is near. Don’t be afraid. Home is at hand. Everything will be ok. Keep going.
It is a remarkable text that originates with an audible sigh of relief. “Comfort” is the word from the Hebrew text. This is a word intended to be an exhaled word. We don’t keep the stale air of sorrow in our lungs. We let it out. We can hear it in the Hebrew. Na-cham. Whoo. Comfort. I can’t think of a better word.
For so many of us, this has been a most disorienting year. Back in the middle of March, I wrote a note to the congregation to say, “I look forward to seeing you back in church by Palm Sunday.” I didn’t realize that could be next Palm Sunday 2021. Those who planned to get married either downsized the plans or postponed the parties. Those who passed away had to settle for smaller remembrances, sometimes a good while after their passing. Our children are studying in front of screens. Those still employed are working from the kitchen table. People are making significant decisions about what they want to do and where they wish to live.
It has been a very disruptive year.
One of the most enlightening conversations came from a friend who put it this way: “I’m spending a great deal more time in my house, but I don’t feel at home.” Listen to that. Stay with that a minute. He rarely goes to the store, much less to pick up take-out food from a restaurant. He has enjoyed almost nine months to spruce up the property, plant vegetables, and tackle all those long-deferred improvement projects. He spends more time with his wife than he has for years, and they have rediscovered that they like one another.
And yet, his heart is deeply unsettled. He feels like an exile on his own property, a long way from home. Why is that?
No doubt there are plenty of reasons. There is confusion in the air. A completed national election is still disputed by a candidate who told us in advance he expected to be outvoted. A significant number of our neighbors have convinced themselves they will never get the covid-19 virus, so they ignore the scientific facts of public health.
Closer to home, even though a lot of the Christmas lights have gone up earlier, nobody seems to be caught up in the usual hoopla for the holidays – Thanksgiving was quiet, Christmas could be quieter. The only excitement on my street is when the big brown truck stops in front of the house. We can open the parcels, gift wrap the contents, and send them out again – at least, that’s my plan for this week.
It's disorienting and disruptive, a challenge to both the imagination and the emotional reservoir. There are plenty of ZOOM seminars to keep us connected with the rest of humanity. One of them began with the simple piece of advice: admit how you feel. Slow down and don’t try to outrun it; there’s nowhere to run. Don’t sugar-coat it to your friends, for they are probably feeling the same.
In a different year, we would complain to one another about how stressed we feel. There’s so much to do! In this strange year, we can complain how stressed we feel, because there isn’t a lot to do. The point of intersection is whatever is behind the stress. Let me suggest it is the singular truth that we don’t feel at home. We are far from home.
So the Word of the Lord comes to the prophet Isaiah. It is a single word: comfort. The word is repeated: comfort, comfort. And it is offered to all of us.
I did a little poking around and discovered something. In the Hebrew Bible, comfort is a re-alignment word. It is a verb designed to move us from one emotional state to another. Some scholars suggest it bears a twinge of repentance, a decision to not go down the road of self-destruction. It’s curious that every time in the Hebrew Bible when God repents – when God changes the divine mind and cancels all the lightning bolts – this is the verb: comfort.[1] How could it be otherwise? God’s ultimate purpose is not destruction but re-building. Restoring. Bringing us home.
The amazing thing about Isaiah – at least this incarnation of Isaiah – is that he preaches homecoming to people who haven’t gotten there yet. He points beyond his own circumstances toward the horizon just out of sight. Isaiah speaks as a captive in Babylon. For nearly seventy years, he and his neighbors have lived in a land that is not their own. For all we know, Isaiah may have been born there, raised there, flourished there – but it was not his home.
For most of those seventy years, the Jews in Babylon debated and discussed how this calamity came upon them.
- Some said, “Maybe we should
have listened when the prophets warned we had turned our backs on
holiness.”
- Some said, “Maybe we should
have paid attention when the prophets called us to stop worshiping our own
comfort and start loving our neighbors.”
- Some said, “Maybe we ignored
God’s commandments so regularly that ignoring became a habit.”
- Some said, “Maybe God grew
tired of waiting for us to come to our senses.”
And after this long, seventy-year dialogue, God interrupts: Comfort, O comfort my people. Speak tenderly to them. Announce all sin is forgiven. Tell them all penalties are paid. It is time for a new beginning. It’s time to come home.
That’s what God says, even before his people physically return to the places they could almost remember. “Returning home” is more than packing up the ox cart and hauling your stuff back to the old zip code. “Returning home” is a symbol for what it means to live with God. It’s a metaphor for re-connecting with the invitation to obey what God teaches as a way of loving both Creator and creation. It’s a practical return to flourishing and fulfillment.
In the middle of this very disruptive year, I hear an invitation like that. 2020 is Year of the Reset, the Year to See Straight. In the middle of all we have lost, we can claim what we value most. In a time when we have been stripped of extravagances, God’s invitation is to trust the essentials. In a season when we have been deprived of hugs, we must find other ways to affirm and stay connected. In a moment when wanderlust has been curtailed, we begin to see – in 2020 vision – the gifts and beauty that already surround us.
To make this move in our hearts as well as in our imaginations, we are comforted with a new view of home.
Like the prophet, I strain to imagine what we might see. We have a fresh awareness of how fleeting life is, like the withering of grass or the fading of the flower, but we can treasure all the days that God provides. I can only imagine how it would feel to live without fear, to know deep in our bones how gracious God is, and to flourish in that freedom.
Best of all, I can begin to picture how good it is for God to find us, how sweet it is for God to make a way to us, how joyful it is to announce with full resolve, “Here is your God.” That is when we know Advent is doing its work on us. And the moment can come when we discover that the Word spoken to the prophet Isaiah is also a Word spoken to us.
Comfort, comfort. Don’t be afraid. Here is your God.
[1] See, for instance, Exodus 32:12-14,
Judges 2:16-18, 2 Samuel 24:16, and Jonah 3:9-10
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