Second Sunday of Advent –
December 6, 2020
watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifBp6nMdD9k
Her son, 10,
and daughter, 5 look at her with sunken, hungry eyes. The Babylonian army has besieged Jerusalem
for weeks. Supplies have run out. The assault begins and does not take
long. They break through the city walls. The few soldiers who put up a defense are
quickly impaled on Babylonian spears.
Families are dragged from their homes into the dust of the streets flowing
with Israelite blood. They watch as the
Babylonians burn Solomon’s glorious temple.
Then, the march. Mile after mile they walk to their new home,
their new normal as slaves in Babylon.
She does not survive the journey but her son and daughter do. They will live as people without rights on
the bottom rung of the social ladder in Babylon until that little boy and girl
are in their 70’s, the elder generation of Jews in this foreign place. They do what they can to keep memories of
Israel alive.
They tell the stories of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. They remember Moses
and the Exodus through the Red Sea. They
tell of Joshua and settling the Promised Land.
They remember the victories of David and the temple of Solomon. But now the brother and sister are old,
tired, broken people. For decades they
have listened as their Babylonian overlords mocked their God. Is it true?
Are the Gods of Babylon superior to Yahweh? Is their God as dead as they
feel?
A rumor spreads of a new prophet
rising in the Jewish quarter. Young
people are talking about what he has said.
At a make-shift gathering where one of the few available scrolls of the
Torah is read on the Sabbath (thank goodness the Babylonians allow this),
people are saying this Jewish prophet has something new to say.
This old man and old woman saw their
dreams shattered decades ago, a thousand miles way. Everything they hoped for was violently
ripped from them. Still, they go. What else is there to do? The surprisingly large crowd of Jews listen
as the young prophet says,
Comfort, O
comfort my people,
says your God.
2 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.
Can there be comfort? The people of God have been swallowed by the
sands of history, buried under the force of an enemy too powerful for God. No, says the prophet. Mighty
Babylon? Don’t buy it! Babylon was a tool in the hands of the Almighty God,
used to punish his people, says the prophet.
Exile did not happen because of
Babylon’s strength but because of Israel’s sin.
Now the prophet says the penalty for that sin has been paid. The Lord’s punishment is over. It’s a new day. God punished, but did not abandon His people. God does not do that. God faithful and sovereign offers a new word.
“In the
wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our
God.
4 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.
5 Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
The first command is “comfort.” Heavenly beings are ordered by the most-high
God to give solace to His people. Scripture
gives glimpses of a heavenly realm that is full of creatures we cannot
imagine. These heavenly beings are mentioned
in Genesis, Job, Daniel, Revelation and other places, always in service to
God. “Comfort” – the word we see in
Isaiah 40:1 – is a verb in the imperative form.
The heavenly beings must obey God’s order to comfort his people.
A
second command is “prepare.” The prophet prepares the way of the Lord – the way
God will lead His people back to the Promised Land. King Cyrus who will lead Persia to overthrow
Babylon is to free the Jews and send them home in a second Exodus. Centuries later, a wild-eyed prophet named
John prepares the world for the coming of Jesus by preaching repentance and
baptizing those who come to him.
We
who read the Bible, worship the Lord, and believe that God loves us are
commanded to prepare the world to meet Jesus.
We tell our story of coming to new life in Christ. We tell of His grace and the salvation He
offers. We help our friends who don’t
know him clear away the clutter that blocks the pathway into their hearts.
Comfort. Prepare.
The third command is “Cry out.”
Proclaim God’s word. What message
is the prophet to announce?
All people are
grass,
their constancy is like the flower of the field.
7 The grass withers, the flower fades,
when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers, the flower fades;
but the word of our God will stand forever.
All people are grass. The King of Babylon is grass just like the
blind beggar wallowing in the dust of the street hoping someone will spare a
bit of bread. All people are grass. George Floyd, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, you,
me – all people are equal. All wither
and fade. The wealthy slumlord and the renter
trapped in poverty stand before God in the same condition. Right now, some have it easy and others
suffer, but that inequality will end.
Injustice cannot stand before the almighty God. He puts all things right.
The
tears that suffering brings are real and maybe you have hard to bear hurt and
loss. God sees the tears shed by
shattered hearts. God knows death is
claiming victims everywhere right now. God
hears our cries.
Isaiah
knows suffering. The Old Testament knows
disillusionment, defeat, and death. Many
6th century BC Jews had given up.
But the prophet saw beyond the immediate dire circumstances. The prophet shows us that God is a deliverer.
Get you up to
a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good tidings;[a]
lift up your voice with
strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,[b]
lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
“Here is your God!”
10 See, the Lord God comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
11 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.
We
know Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of these words.
The
birth of Jesus reminds us that God sees the inequalities and injustices of our broken
the world. God has done something about
it. In Jesus, God empathizes with us and
takes upon himself the worst of us and nails it to a cross. Our sins, our pain, our grief, our loss – it
has been crucified with Christ. In Him,
we are no longer slaves to sin. We are
new creations and we have a mission.
We
are witnesses. In this age, the people
of God, we who are in Christ, tell our story about how we have come to know God
through the salvation we have received in Jesus.
Withering
grass and fading flowers reminded Isaiah that in the end, all are equal before
God – equally small, equally sinful, equally lost. The wealthy, the poor and everyone in
between, we all fade. Isaiah reminds us that
God gathers in his shepherd arms, holds us, feeds us, and lifts us to where He
is.
Jesus
uses different metaphors, a table, and a cross.
At that cross, we are all dead.
He invites we who are dead to the table – all of us. Everyone gets a seat. The imperfect, the defective, the broken – we
sit together in a community of love.
We
serve each other bread – his body broken; our sins covered. We serve each other wine – his blood shed;
eternal life given to us.
As
we walk in the promises of Isaiah, acknowledging that pain is real but has been
defeated by the power of Christ, we walk to the table, guests of our loving
Heavenly Father. We are invited to be at
home at this table. We dare to believe
that God is real, can be trusted, and will make the world right. We dare to live in that belief.
Once
we’ve eaten, we go out and tell our story of life in Christ. We walk in the
light and we spend our lives inviting others to come with us as we enter the
story of the God who comforts, heals, makes us whole, and gathers us in His
shepherd arms.
AMEN
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