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Sermon for Advent 2B
December 4, 2005
Isaiah 40:1-11
Judith A. Davis, Rector ©
Christ Church + Washington Parish
The
opening words of the 40th chapter of the Book of the
Prophet Isaiah read like this in the King James Version of the
Bible: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak
ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is
accomplish’d, that her iniquity is pardoned.”
 I
wouldn’t normally read from the Authorized Version of 1611, commonly
called the King James Version, except, that when some of us hear
those words read, our minds immediately jump to those same words as
the libretto by Charles Jennens of Handel’s Messiah, written
around 1740.
By the
time I was 14, I was singing with the adult choir in the church of
my childhood and had sung Part I of Handel’s Messiah. And I
loved it. These plaintive words open the sung portion of Messiah
after the brilliant and somber overture. The somber opening chords
of the overture place us in a time warp in the Babylonia Exile of
God’s people. While the opening chords are somber, they are no
funeral dirge, but rather they lead to a brilliant fugue with hope
shining through, lively with the music of faith, not with sounds of
despair but with sounds of hope—hope for a new beginning, hope that
God has not forgotten God’s people and that God will act to deliver
them.
Advent is
about that kind of new beginning, about hope for God’s people, and
that God will act to help them. I’m glad for the wonderful blue
colors of Advent, a reminder of something new, a reminder that the
liturgical year has come back around to its beginning and I now have
a new year in which to try, again, to wait expectantly for the One
who is to come—the one who will make all things new, the one who
will wipe away every tear from our eyes, the one who will come in
power and great glory, the one who indeed will come again into our
own flesh like a small baby in a stable on a cold night under a dark
blue sky filled with silver stars and like one who will come finally
at the Last Day when the trumpet sounds to claim us for his own for
the life to come.
I’m
thankful for these new Advent banners that Bill and our seminarian
last year, Cindy Simpson made to break into our worlds with the
bright blue color of the night sky with its glorious stars. Enjoy
the blue which we use as an alternative to purple; enjoy the stars,
enjoy the light; enjoy the advent wreath and the light it brings.
And in that newness of color and light, let us prepare ourselves for
Christ’s coming.
And now
let us go back 500 or so years before the time of Christ to the
story of God’s people in Jerusalem. he prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem
had warned the people that they might be conquered by the
Babylonians who had already conquered the northern kingdom of Israel
some 700 years before the time of Christ, and now these very
oppressors are swarming over the countryside of Judah, ready to move
in. Eventually it happened and the defenders of the City of
Jerusalem were powerless over them. Isaiah had prophesied the
destruction of the temple and now the temple was destroyed and men
and women were taken away into captivity in Babylon. Those who were
left behind were no better off. The Babylonians ruled the land, set
the laws, plundered the harvest. If this was, as the prophet had
foretold, God’s judgment on their past sin and disobedience, then a
very heavy price was been exacted. Not for the first time, the
people of Israel and Judah wondered if being God’s “chosen” people
was much of a privilege after all. And where was Messiah? Where
was the anointed servant of God who would restore the long-lost
glory of Israel and once again rule from the throne of the great
king David? How long must this downtrodden people wait before the
lord heard their cry and came to their aid?
This, in
brief, is the story at the point where Handel’s Messiah begins. The
prophet Isaiah had warned the kings and the people of Judah of
inevitable disaster if they persisted in their idolatry and
religious compromise. Chapter 39 of Isaiah, usually seen as the end
of what is called First Isaiah, ends with its stark warning to king
Hezekiah, “Behold, the days come, that all that is in your house
shall be carried to Babylon, nothing shall be left, says the Lord.”
Those words were spoken in the early years of the 7th
century before Christ. In between Isaiah 39, the end of First
Isaiah, and Chapter 40, the beginning of Second Isaiah, we have a
gap of 100 years or so of constant threat from the Assyrians and
finally the all-conquering Babylonians, until Jerusalem was indeed
conquered and ransacked and its people taken into slavery in 587
BCE. But God had not forgotten God’s people, and God would send
them another prophet of the same school of Isaiah, with a new
message.
So now,
let us be in that time, 60 years from the day when the Babylonian
troops arrived and captured Jerusalem. After six decades of enemy
occupation, the people are losing hope that they will ever again be
free and independent or that their relatives who were marched off
all those years ago to the slave camps in Babylon will ever return.
They take little notice as the prophet makes his way to the steps,
all that remains of the once magnificent Temple. He is a disciple
of the great prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem of a previous generation
and has taken the same name. They’re used to his rantings and they
know his message, “it’s all your fault. You ignored God, disobeyed
laws, turned to idols. It all turned out just like you were warned
it would. Like the man on the Metro reading about the coming
judgment from his Bible or the guy up near the Naval Observatory in
Washington with his placards about the Roman Catholic Church, he is
largely ignored as irrelevant.
But today
he surprises the people. Usually his first word shouted at them
above the noise of the market place is “Woe unto you,” but
today—today they can’t believe their ears. His word sounding like
the long, clear note of the tenor recitative later in Handel’s
Messiah, is “Comfort.” They hear a note of gentleness. At last,
amid the despair and regret, they hear a note of hope. The prophet
tells the people that God has given him the message to “comfort”
God’s people, to speak tenderly to them. No one had spoken to them
like that in 60 years—all they had heard was shouted commands from
the oppressors and dire warnings from the prophets. Now, can they
believe their ears listening to a voice of comfort?
The
prophet told them that God still cared for them, that God had not
abandoned them, and that, indeed, God would send the deliverer, the
Messiah, the anointed one who would be like King David, anointed to
lead them, God’s chosen one, a fitting successor to the throne of
David and the agent of God’s purpose for God’s people. Finally God
would speak tenderly to them and tell them that they had paid their
dues and at last their troubles were at an end. And that is always
where true comfort lies. Real comfort is to receive strength form
another and to receive it tenderly. For comfort would not only be
that the one would give them strength, but that that one would also
put an arm around their proverbial shoulders and give them peace and
the assurance that God loves them and they are still God’s people.
“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak
comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare
is accomplish’d, that her iniquity is pardon’d”
The tenor
is quoting the words of the prophet in exile, but as we listen to
this pure and plaintive sound, we hear those words merge into the
words of John the Baptist in the New Testament, announcing the
coming of God’s Anointed, God’s Messiah:
“The
voice of him that crieth in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of
the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Then
the tenor breaks into the great aria, “every valley shall be
exalted, and ev’ry mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight,
and the rough places plain.” We image this highway
being built in the desert making access to God’s coming even better,
and somewhere in the back of our mind, we hear the great words of
Mary’s Magnificat, “He has brought down the mighty from
their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.” Messiah’s coming will
bring justice, vindication for the downtrodden at the expense of
those who have fostered injustice. The highway will be made level,
offering equal access to all who travel upon it waiting for the
coming of the Messiah, and when Messiah comes, the glory of the Lord
will be revealed.
During
these days of Advent, let us hear these new words of hope, as
Isaiah’s people heard them. Let us take these images of light and
blue and silver home with us and prepare a highway in our own hearts
for God, that God would come to us again this Advent with words of
hope and comfort and that God will hold us close and speak tenderly
to us and give us a vision of that great life to come. Let us
prepare our hearts that Christ, the Anointed one, will come to us
down that highway and make us whole and restore us to God and bring
us peace.
“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye
comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare
is accomplish’d, that her iniquity is pardoned.
Ev’ry valley shall be exalted, and ev’ry mountain and hill
made low, the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.
And the Glory of the Lord shall be revealed. And all flesh
shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken
it.” (Isaiah 40:1-5, alt).
Amen.
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