Clearing the Way.

Isaiah 40:1-11.Advent 2.

I.

            The Bible is a book about deliverance.  It is always addressed to people in tremendous trouble with good news that things are about the change.  The good news is always about light shining in the darkness, and life conquering death.  Jesus says the good news is that “the Kingdom of God has come near,” which is to say that the world of oppression, death, injustice, exploitation, grief, and pain is not as real as the world of joy, peace, and blessing that God is always bringing, revealing, establishing, proclaiming, and disclosing. 

            That new and good world is actually always here, beneath, within, above, and alongside the depraved and corrupt world of human invention, which we strenuously and violently maintain by our fear, anger, and shame.

            The first word of any evangelistic effort, any initiative to share the good news with people, is given to us by this prophet when he hears God instruct him to “Comfort, comfort my people!”  God repeats twice the command to comfort the people, in case the prophet didn’t understand it the first time.  His message now is not about warnings and threats and condemnations and afflictions.  He is done talking like the other prophets, about what myriad catastrophes and disasters the people are bringing down on themselves by their idolatries and injustices.  Now the message is, “Go offer to my people a word of comfort.”

            This is what the Lord Jesus does through his whole ministry.  He brings the comfort of healing and wholeness and liberation to people, irrespective of their different situations.  He comes to hurting people and offers them comfort, solace, restoration, renewal, and peace.  This is not the time for blaming or fault-finding or identifying “causes”.  He doesn’t seem to care how someone got scoliosis of the spine, went blind, caught leprosy, or lost the use of their legs.  He doesn’t inquire into how or why a demon is possessing someone.  He just brings comfort to people who need to be comforted.

            God tells the prophet to “Speak compassionately to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her compulsory service has ended, that her penalty has been paid, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins!”  By “Jerusalem” he means the people of Judah who are now in exile in Babylon, the people who weep and mourn for the city of Jerusalem that was destroyed by the Babylonians decades before, the people whose parents and grandparents remember with heartbreak their beloved and beautiful city, who assumed that they would never see again even its now ruined form.

            The prophets of the exile had strenuously made the point that this destruction was something the people brought down on themselves by their idolatry and injustice.  They provoked the wrath of God who used the horrible Babylonians to punish the people.

II.

            We don’t necessarily talk about God this way very much anymore.  We have correctly and importantly learned to see God through Jesus Christ as compassionate and merciful, forgiving, healing, and redeeming.  But we who trust in God do occasionally still talk this way, and it’s for a reason.  It sounds like we’re saying God is responsible for the evil and violence in the world and that the suffering we endure is God’s angry punishment.  It sounds to some that we’re making God into some kind of violent, vindictive, ruthless monster.

            But that is only from one perspective.  Since there is no power in the universe greater than God, and God is completely good, it gives those of us who trust in God comfort to know that whatever difficulties we may be going through, no matter how horrible, they are not from some evil power greater than God.  They cannot annihilate us or separate us from the truth of God’s love.  They cannot kill us or torture us forever. 

            When the prophet says that the people’s pain was “received from the Lord’s hand” he means that we can trust that this was not meaningless, gratuitous, empty suffering.  God was with them through it, bringing them through it, and welcoming them on the other side.  Like parents who have to administer painful and uncomfortable medicine to a child, or a coach who pushes the athlete past barriers of physical pain, or any situation where our love for someone is expressed in allowing or even inflicting terrible pain for the sake of preserving their life, God is with us in bearing the consequences of our stupidity and evil. 

            This is what Jesus showed on the cross; in him God was suffering the depths of human pain and rejection.  God was not killing Jesus to satisfy his honor like some low grade, psychotic human tyrant.  God was in Christ, on the cross, reconciling the world to himself.  The saying that God never gives us anything we can’t handle is nonsense; we get stuff we can’t handle all the time.  But we never get anything God can’t handle, and that’s why trusting in God’s love is the key to everything.

            So it may seem to outsiders quite nasty for the prophet to say that the people “received from the Lord’s hand double for all [their] sins”, as if God is up there carelessly throwing thunderbolts at us.  But to people who trust in God that is a statement of hope because we know that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love in Jesus Christ.  God is with us even in the worst imaginable things we have to endure, and God will bring us through to the other side.  Christ even descended into Hell to show that not even there are we without God.    

III.

            The prophet goes on to use images of clearing a way, removing obstacles, and straightening the path, to facilitate the coming of God into the world.   To people living at that time the release of the people from Babylon was incontrovertible evidence of the amazing glory of Israel’s God.  It was an unexpected, shocking, and hilarious vindication of their hard-kept trust. 

            Over 500 years later, John the Baptizer quotes this passage, identifying himself as the voice crying out for a way to be cleared in the desert.  For John it is about getting ready for the Messiah, the Deliverer, who is about to arrive.  For us it has to do with spiritual preparation in which we remove all obstacles in our hearts and minds that would obstruct or prevent the emergence of God within us.

            Advent is supposed to be about this intense personal and communal spiritual work that opens us up to God’s Presence.  God’s Presence isn’t static.  It keeps moving.  It has to flow through and in us.  Like electricity, if it isn’t flowing it isn’t there.  And in order for it to flow we have to be clear and open, without obstruction or barrier, without roughness or congestion.  There should be no valleys, hills, or rough places to disturb the flow of God’s grace and Presence within and among us.  These are all obstructions thrown up by our egos, our “flesh.”  Like grass and flowers these are ephemeral and temporary.  They dry up and wither.  But the Word of God that exists forever blows them away.   

            The “valleys” in our life are the depressions and downers that keep us paralyzed, that keep us focused on ourselves; they are the sour, pinched, narrow, dark, tight places in us, where we activate our anger and let our fear fester and our shame suck us down like quicksand.

            These places have to be filled by the Word.  So we turn to prayer and meditation; we listen to Scripture; and most importantly we take on actions of generosity and blessing, justice and peacemaking.  Jesus is the Word, and we fill up our low places when we follow him, imitate him, listen to him, and rely on him.   

            And the high mountains and hills that block the Spirit are often our accomplishments, the things we are proud of, the achievements we list on our resume.  These are what also effectively get in the way of our seeing God’s Presence.  Our self-important, boastful, conceited, un-self-critical self-righteousness is the greatest barrier to God’s emergence in our lives.  This is the brave and attractive – and false – face we show to the world.  This is what we hide behind and project for public consumption.  It blocks the flow of the Spirit.

            The Word breaks them down by leading us into acts of humility and selflessness; by our letting go; by our disciplines of self-examination, and confession.  Even self-deprecating humor is a way for the Word to drive down our high places.

            And the best way to deal with the “uneven ground,” the places where we are unstable, confused, emotional, unfocused, where are we unbalanced, unsteady, unsure; the places of ambiguity and doubt, uncertainty and insecurity?   The Word gives us grounding when we hold on to each other in the Spiritual community.

IV.

            Finally, the prophet is to broadcast for all the good news of God’s deliverance of the people.  This means that we too need to lose our reticence about saying what God has done for us; and God is always doing amazingly good things for us.  In what ways have we found deliverance?  In what ways has God’s liberating power been made real in our lives?  Where are the miracles happening in your life?

            For God’s redemption and release is manifested to us in two ways.  First, the prophet says, God comes into our lives like a warrior, defeating evil and death, banishing disease and injustice, establishing a new order of equality and peace.  Those words about lifting up the valleys and bringing down the mountains also refer to the social leveling that God is about, as we hear repeatedly in the Bible, and as exemplified in Mary’s famous hymn and Jesus descriptions of his ministry.   “Here is the LORD God,” says the prophet, “coming with strength, with a triumphant arm, bringing his reward with him and his payment before him.”

            And at least as importantly for us, God also at the same time comes in the gentler form of a shepherd.  “Like a shepherd, God will tend the flock; he will gather lambs in his arms and lift them onto his lap.  He will gently guide the nursing ewes.”   This is imagery of course that Jesus himself adopted.  He is the Good Shepherd.  He gathers us together.  He seeks us out when we are lost.  He feeds us and protects us from predators.

            It is important to me right now to notice that he, the Lord Jesus, is the Shepherd.  We are all the sheep in his care.  There are no special sheep among us to whom the Shepherd has delegated his power and authority.   Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church, says our Book of Order.  Not the pastors, the elders, the executives, or in other systems, the bishops or even the Pope.  We may be in different places along the journey.  But in God’s eyes we are all sheep.

            It is this common reliance upon and trust in the One Shepherd that ought to be the core of our identity.   In the journey to the Promised Land, the prophet is saying that we can’t go back to the old polity of kings and classes and nobility and peasants, insiders and outsiders.  We have to establish something like a gathering of people who trust in God, turning to the Lord and seeking out his Word together.

V.

            Sometimes, like the people of God stuck in Babylon, we open our eyes and see miracles.  The walls have come down.  The gates and doors have been blasted open.  The jailers have given up and departed.  And the way home is clear.  That which was low has been raised up.  That which was high has been brought down.  The rough road has been paved.

            And all we have to do is trust in the One who proclaims all this, and start walking.

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