Second Sunday of Advent
The words burst forth from
out of nowhere. “‘Comfort, O comfort my
people,’ says your God. ‘Speak tenderly to Jerusalem’” (Is. 40:1). Words perhaps best known from G. F. Handel’s Messiah, beautifully set to music. This is the text that Handel chose for the
opening of his masterful oratorio, it prepares the way for all that
follows.
And, of
course, it’s the perfect text for Advent as it calls us to “prepare the way of
Yahweh.” Today’s lectionary pairs the Isaiah
40 text with the opening of Mark’s Gospel, where we find John the Baptist crying
out in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord ? make his paths straight”
(Mark 1:3). This is a season of
preparation, of course, as we get ready to celebrate Christmas and anticipate
the coming of Jesus. It’s a season
designed for prophets, because prophets have always warned us to prepare for the
Lord’s coming—and not only during Advent.
How do we prepare the way for God’s
arrival? How do we prepare the way?
Perhaps we first need to ask whether we’re really excited about the Lord’s
coming. How do you approach it? With fear, thinking that God comes to judge
the earth? With joy, knowing that God
comes to comfort a hurting people? Probably
a little of both.
If we slowed down, maybe even stopped
long enough to listen to our hearts, it wouldn’t take long to confess all the
ways we obstruct and hinder God’s movement in our lives. The Bible’s favorite word for obstruction is sin. Sin is essentially separation and there are
plenty of things that separate us from God, from one another, and
ourselves. There are plenty of ways we
stand in the way of God’s arrival.
There’s selfishness. Self-centeredness
is a barrier. So is our
cold-heartedness. Hearts that are “two
sizes too small,” like the Grinch.[1] There’s our greed. Our
hatred. Our fear of the “other”—whoever the “other” might be. There’s our inability to extend mercy. Our busyness.
Our cynicism. Our skepticism. Being too rational is a barrier, so is being
too sentimental. There’s our obsession with perfection, our need to be perfect
or correct. Our need to control. Our death-grip desire to possess things, and
people, and ideas, even God. Our wealth. Our poverty. Our arrogance. Our lack
of humility. All the illusions we think
are true, including the illusions and lies that we tell ourselves that this
long, unsettling litany isn’t true.
This is some of the “stuff” that keeps
us separate from God, that alienates us from God’s presence, that keeps us
exiled from God, lost, as in the wilderness. This is some of the “stuff” within
us often worthy of God’s judgment. What
can we do? Work harder at being better?
Be more generous? Relax? We know something in us needs to change. Didn’t John the Baptist preach “a baptism of
repentance” (Mk 1:3)?
. . . .
What if all this talk about preparing
for the way of the Lord has nothing to do with us? But aren’t we supposed to
prepare the way? Isn’t this what the
text says here in Isaiah and Mark? Yes,
that’s what it says, but that’s not what it means. I guess it doesn’t hurt for us to try to do
our part. But there are times when we
need to get out of the way. Here in
Isaiah 40, you and I aren’t being asked to do prepare for anything—because God
isn’t talking to us!
Stay close to the text with me and you
realize that Isaiah is describing a conversation going on in the heavens, where
is God speaking at a gathering of the divine council, the “government” of
heaven. God is attended by angels or
messengers, a council that gathers around God, listens to God’s decrees, and
then bring about God’s will. God speaks
to the divine council, “Comfort, O comfort my people” (Is. 40:1). These gracious words burst forth from out of
nowhere.
Now, what you need to know is that Isaiah
40 marks the beginning of what is known as Second Isaiah, chapters 40-55. This text was written while Israel was in
exile in Babylon. The fall of Jerusalem
in 587 BCE and the roughly five decades of exile in Babylon was a collective
trauma to the psyche of the Jewish people.
They struggled for generations with how God could abandon them to this end. The theology that emerged in exile claimed
that the people were to blame, it was their fault for abandoning God’s will for
the nation. They came to see that God
judges a nation when it sets aside true worship, when a nation fails to embody God’s
justice, when it neglects care for the oppressed, when it fails to care for the
vulnerable, the widow, the refugee, the disenfranchised (Is. 58). Exile was God’s judgment. That’s what you need to know.
You also need to know that between
Isaiah 39 and 40 is approximately 150 years of silence. Isaiah 39:7 warns,
“Some of your own sons who are born to you shall be taken away; they shall be
eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.”
So, when I said these words of comfort burst forth from out of nowhere,
it’s true. God was silent, but now God
speaks. “Comfort, comfort my
people. 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” (Is. 40:1-2). Enough is enough. No more judgment. It’s time for tender words. It’s time for healing, for homecoming.
And, so, fulfilling God’s command, a
member of the divine council gets to work and cries out, “In the wilderness
prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God”
(Is. 40:3). Note that it’s not the
people commissioned to build their own highway.
The divine council is put to work. Building the highway is heaven’s
job. For this is no ordinary highway,
this is Yahweh’s superhighway that stretches from Babylon all the way home to
Jerusalem. This is an expressway. Valleys will be lifted, mountains brought low
to make it easy to get from one place to the other; the ground will be leveled
out, nice and flat. God’s army corps of
engineers will construct a thoroughfare, a holy way to carry God’s people home,
and a holy way that will also convey, carry the “glory of the LORD,” and all
will see it; “the people shall see it, together.” Why?
“For the mouth of the LORD has spoken” (Is. 40:5).
“Cry out!” a voice says (Is. 40:6). The prophet hears the divine command—then resists.
The prophet says, “What shall I cry?” Things
are so bad that even God’s prophet is discouraged; the prophet comes up with
excuses, set up obstacles for why this will never work: people don’t pay
attention, people don’t listen. “People
are grass. They have no constancy. The grass withers, the flowers fades, when
the breath of the LORD blows upon it” (Is. 40:6-7). But the divine voice will have none of this
and counters the prophet’s complaint, “The grass withers, the flower fades; but
the word of our God will stand forever” (Is. 40:8).
So, the divine voice tells the prophet,
“Get you up to a high mountain. O Zion, herald of good tidings” (Is. 40:9). Good
tidings. This is significant,
because “the substance of this address is so crucial because this is the first
intentional, self-conscious use of the term gospel
in the Old Testament.”[2] Zion, herald of the gospel! “Lift up your voice with strength, O
Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,”—the gospel!—“lift it up, do not fear; say
to the cities of Judah, ‘Here is your God!’
See the LORD comes with his might” (Is. 40:9-10). God will prepare the way, construct the way,
and then along that way God’s glory will come, and then become the way; God
will carry them home, and care for them like a mother (Is. 40:11). Israel is summoned to look. Look, for God is on the way to liberate God’s
people!
Sounds like the opening of Mark’s
Gospel, doesn’t it? The opening of the
Gospel sounds like Isaiah, Mark alludes to it, but it’s actually a composite of
several texts; Mark redacts or edits them, and his redaction exposes his theologically
subversive intent. Mark tells us, “As it
is written in the prophet Isaiah, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare the way for you’” (Mk. 1:2).
However, you won’t find these words in Isaiah, because they’re not
there. These words are similar to what
we find in Exodus 23:20, “Behold, I send a messenger before you and to bring
you to the land I have prepared for you.”
And they are almost verbatim to what’s found in the last chapter of
Malachi, the last prophetic book of the Hebrew scriptures. “See, I am sending
my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord, whom you seek will
suddenly come to his temple” (Mal. 3:1).
The book of Malachi is followed by almost four hundred years of silence
until we get to the Gospel of Mark.
And for nearly one hundred years prior
to Mark, “the ancient rabbis and scribes held that true prophecy [had] ended
with Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.”[3] The rabbis felt that the prophetic voice had
fallen silent forever. Mark says to all
of this: rubbish!. Something new and
different was stirring again in history, he believed, except it wasn’t
happening in Jerusalem, the political and religious center, which as corrupt
and blasphemous, collaborating with the Roman Empire. Instead, something new
was beginning out in the wilderness, out on the edges of society—where God often
hangs out. God loves the
wilderness. That’s where we find John
the Baptist. He’s a fringe element, a lone voice—the voice of a tiny, tiny
minority—that’s wise enough to discern the coming of God.
The opening of Mark’s Gospel, with texts
from Exodus and Malachi are combined with a modified version of Isaiah 40. Mark refers to a voice crying out in the
wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” A way needs to be cleared for Yahweh’s
advent, the coming of God. Something new,
however, is required to convey the arrival of God. Even though most English translations read,
“Prepare the way of the Lord,” Mark actually substitutes a verb not found in
the Isaiah text. Instead of “prepare,”
Marks says “construct,” (kataskeuasei)
construct a way. [4]
Just as God provided a way when there
appeared to be no way in Israel’s exodus out of Egypt, just as God provided a
way when Israel thought the way back to Jerusalem was cut off, God provides a
new way, constructs a new way to convey God’s presence in the world. God’s liberating way becomes the way of Jesus
of Nazareth. And as in Isaiah 40, it’s
the voice of God that declares what should be done. It is God’s decision to come toward us in a
new way. God takes the initiative. The opening of Mark’s Gospel is ambiguous and
can be translated in multiple ways, essentially saying, “Behold, I (God) send
my messenger”—and the messenger could be either John or Jesus or even
Mark—“before your face who will construct your way.”[5]
. . . .
The point here is that God loves to
construct a way when there is no way.
God loves to construct a holy way that will convey God’s presence into
our lives, into the world. God provides
the way and then God moves on that way.
The designation of Jesus as “the Way” is often associated with John’s
Gospel (see John 14:6) and Mark is saying something similar, except Mark isn’t
saying that Jesus is the way toward God, but that Jesus is God’s way toward us. Jesus is the way, and God travels “on” him
toward us. Jesus is the new road God is
constructing in the world, the superhighway that leads God’s people to
liberation. Later in Mark’s Gospel,
Jesus is often described as being on the way and disciples discover the kingdom
of God—the “the turning of the world” when God’s justice and liberation break
into our world—they “see” this when they’re on the way with Jesus.[6] And, like them, we need to look for it. Expect it.
Anticipate it.
We often think of Advent as a time of
preparing for what is about to happen, whether it’s Christmas or the return of
Christ. But there’s another dimension to
advent that’s often overlooked. I
alluded to this in last week's sermon and it’s the driving force behind what I’m trying to
share today. And it’s this simple, yet profound claim: Yahweh is an advent-ing God who is always journeying toward us. God is always coming toward us. God is always providing a way where there is
no way. Good chooses first, again and
again, to deliver and save and convey us toward the place of liberation and
resurrection. God constructs something
radically new and different in the midst of the old world, despite our sin,
despite all that tries to hinder, hamper, and obstruct God’s way. Jesus simply arrives. He comes.
He announces the arrival of God’s kingdom, and then, and only then,
invites us to change, to repent, to do something about it. For Mark, the order of salvation is not
repent and then believe the kingdom has come.
It’s the other way around! Mark
says, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and
believe in the good news” (Mk. 1:15). Jesus
is God’s new beginning. Jesus is God’s way. And in Jesus, God is always on the
way toward us, seeking to be with us—and there’s nothing you or I or anyone
else can do to stop this. This is the
miracle of the Incarnation, this is the miracle of Christmas.
As old Grinch discovered, even though he did everything he could to stop the arrival of Christmas in Whoville, even though he tried his hardest to obstruct, hinder, and prevent the arrival of Christmas morning, he realized he was powerless. On that day, he had to get out of the way and yield to what was before his eyes and open his ears:
He stared down at Whoville! The Grinch popped his eyes!
Then he shook! What he saw was a shocking surprise!
Every Who down in Whoville, the tall and the small,
Was singing! Without any presents at all!
He HADN'T stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same![7]
Somehow or other…it
came.
[1]
Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas
(New York: Random House, 1957).
[2]
Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 40-66
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 20.
[3]
Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A
Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,
1994), 125.
[4]
Myers, 124.
[5]
Myers, 124-125.
[6]
See Mark 8:27; 9:33,34; 10:52
[7]
Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Image credit: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (MGM Television, 1966).
Image credit: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (MGM Television, 1966).
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