Preaching text: Isaiah 40:1-11
Hope. This whole season of Advent is about hope. The hope that the Christ child brings. The hope of the incarnation, of God-with-us. The hope of a new and transformed world, a place where every tear is wiped away and pain and death are no more. The hope of salvation. The hope of mercy and forgiveness. The hope of a new heaven and a new earth. The hope of everything wrong being set right.
A little over a week ago, I celebrated my 45th birthday. In those two score and five years, I have seen amazing things. Hopeful things. I have seen once lethal disease brought to heel. I have seen us journey via probes and sometimes in person into the depths of space. I have watched tyranny fall, sometimes without even a shot being fired. I’ve seen the wall come down. I’ve seen unbelievable advances in technology. I’ve seen civil rights expanded to people who once were denied. And I’ve seen God behind it all, revealing to us his continuous transforming love. Behold, he seems to say, a preview of what is to come.
History is often compared to a pendulum. It swings out and then swings back. For many of us, it seems like it’s swinging back. Many of those hopeful things I just mentioned were years or even decades ago. Now, we look out on a world and see very little to hope in.
In my original manuscript, I followed up here with a laundry list of all the things wrong in the world. But I'll admit I'm tired of talking about that. I rant and rave about it every day on my Facebook feed and I'm burning out from it all. You all know what's wrong in the world. You see it on the news and in your newsfeed everyday. Things are pretty terrible right now and you don't really need me to repeat everything all over again for you to know it.
I admit that I do not live much in hope these days. Fear has become my constant companion, which is probably why I’ve preached on it so much. I fear for my family, for my wife and myself with our health issues. I fear for my friends who at Latino or black or gay. I fear for my daughter, growing up in a world where men of power and means feel entitled to abuse and harass her. I fear for the country I love that now seems hellbent on a course backwards.
The truth is, thought, we’ve been spoiled. Very spoiled. The past 60 or so years on this planet are an anomaly of history, where we have seen unprecedented peace and prosperity. No generation before saw the world work so well in their favor as we have. Yes, there have been wars. Yes, there have been famines and disasters and disease. But not like there was before. No modern conflict even remotely compares to the brutality of the world wars. No modern disease compares to the Black Death or even the Spanish Flu of 1918 (death toll 100 million). No modern disaster equals Pompeii or the Great Kanto earthquake in Japan in 1923 (an 8.0 earthquake that killed almost 150k and leveled Tokyo).
As I said last week, as bad as things seem, they could be a lot worse.
But here’s the thing. In the midst of all those horrible horrible things that past generations of humanity have faced, God was there. God was at work in those times, slowly, incrementally, bringing the world closer to his kingdom.
Case in point is our first lesson. Isaiah 40 is the beginning of what scholars call “Second Isaiah,” a portion of the prophetic book likely spoken by a different prophet than the first 39 chapters. Yes, my friends, it seems likely there was more than one prophet identified as Isaiah (although whether that was his actual name or not is not known to us.) We know this because this second section of chapters take place at a different time than the first. They take place deep in the Babylonian exile. Jerusalem has been destroyed. The people of God have been carted off into slavery in Babylon. A generation or more has passed since those horrible events.
Slavery, conquest by a foreign power, desolation of the homeland, all nightmarish things that have come to pass upon the people of God. And yet this new Isaiah proclaims “Comfort, O comfort, my people.” A new hope is arising. God is still at work. He will metaphorically level the mountains and the valleys. He will come with might and liberate his people. Feeding them like a shepherd.
It’s wonderful poetry, but it also came to pass. Cyrus, king of Persia, the only figure in the Bible besides Jesus to bear the title “Messiah,” would soon conquer Babylon and set free its slaves. He would help rebuild Israel and give the land back to the people. God proved faithful and brought the nightmare to an end.
It’s no coincidence that this passage that predicted the first Messiah would later be used to describe the Christ. For here again is one who will set the people free. Here again is one who would bring comfort. Here again is one who would feed his flocks as a shepherd. The nightmare will soon end.
This is how God works. Time and again, throughout the struggle of human history, God remains at work, slowly incrementally bringing his kingdom to fulfillment. Jesus was a big step, the biggest, the one who came to live, die, and rise again for the sake of all people and the whole world. For you and for me, to set us free from sin and death.
God is faithful. Yes, as the pendulum of history swings us towards darker times, he is still at work. His prophet’s cry is still “comfort, O comfort, my people” because he will. He always has. The light of God’s mercy and love will never dim even in the darkest of times. No matter what we or the world face, God is still on the throne. He will always be on the throne. He will always work to bring his people out of darkness. He will never give up on us. And in that, my friends, is our true hope. Amen.
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