Comfort, Comfort My People (Advent 2B)

 

Comfort, Comfort My People

Second Sunday of Advent (Year B)

 Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8
Homily delivered at the Parish Church of St. Mark the Evangelist

Medford, Oregon

Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
10th December 2023: 9:00 a.m. Sung Mass

 

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

In 587 BCE, a great catastrophe befell the people of the tiny kingdom of Judah.  One of the world’s first trans-national Empires, Babylon, after a decade of dealing patiently, in their lights, with the fanatic and ultra-nationalistic people of Judah, came down hard. After killing all insurgents and activists, they deported the nation’s entire ruling class, letting them off with their lives but placing them in secure and safe districts in Mesopotamia far from where they could do any damage. They blinded the king they had put on the throne of Judah only ten years before. They placed another puppet, this time non-royal and hopefully compliant, in the role of governor of the now newly-named province of Judah.  They burned the capital city, Jerusalem, and leveled to its foundation the symbol of the obstinate, uncompromising national religion that had in some ways been the driving force in the rebellion of the district, the Temple of the Jews’ God, Yahweh.  No stone was left standing on another stone. 

 

This was a disaster of overwhelming proportions.  They had believed that Yahweh had promised to protect his people them and keep them from harm.  He had promised, they thought, to preserve the line of the kings descended from David and protect their rule.  Now all that was gone. 

 

All that was left was a small group of exiles in Babylon and a large mass of “the people of the land” living under foreign domination and rapidly accommodating, intermarrying with, and assimilating to ways of the occupiers in order to get by.   The Jewish way of worship had ceased; the Temple was a mere memory.  Almost all families had lost members, if not been wiped out entirely. 

 

Arguably, the disaster facing the Jews in 587 BCE was greater than even that of 70 CE when the Romans leveled Jerusalem or in the 1940s when the Nazis systematically sought to murder all European Jewry. 

 

Desperation and hopelessness were all that remained.  God had seemingly broken the covenant with his people.  Indeed, they were no longer his, no more even a people.  And he was no more their God.  How could one understand these events any other way? 

 

Among the exiles in Babylon was an unnamed prophet who wrote in the tradition of Isaiah, and whose oracles have been preserved in the latter part of that book.  In the midst of that national disaster, he wrote: 

 

Nahumu, nahamu 'ommi, “comfort, comfort my people.”

 

The Hebrew is a soft, lilting, lullaby.  It is a plural command—“you all go out and comfort them, comfort them, for they are still my people. I am still their God.”  Thus begins the Book of Consolation in the larger book of Isaiah.

 

The words are achingly beautiful and full of love.  “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and call out to her.   She has served her time in prison; her penalty is paid.  Her suffering is so great that it cannot be the mere punishment for past sins—it is at least twice as worse as that.”  

 

This Second Isaiah then introduces several separate oracular pronouncements as the different voices giving this message of comfort. 

 

The first proclaims that as bad as things are, Yahweh is about to perform the ultimate turning of the tables by wondrously and unexpectedly bringing about the return of the exiles from Babylon to Judah.  God will do the seemingly impossible—he will turn the impassible barriers between Mesopotamia and Judah into the route of return. The hill-and-canyon-filled-desert where Jordan, Syria, and western Iraq currently lie will be leveled into a smooth highway that will speed the exiles’ return.  And this will be a sign of God’s glory not just for Jews, but for all of humanity:

 

 

A voice cries out:

‘In the wilderness prepare Yahweh’s road,

make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

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.

Then Yahweh’s glory shall be revealed,

and all people shall see it together,

for the mouth of Yahweh has said it.’

 

The God who is to do this is no tribal deity, no special possession of the Jewish people.  A second voice of comfort takes up this theme of God’s universal nature, of the fact that all humanity stands in awe of God’s mystery, by surprisingly adding: 

 

‘All people are grass,

their constancy is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades,

when the breath of Yahweh blows upon it;

surely people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades;

but the word of our God will stand forever.’

 

Note that Second Isaiah’s message is NOT: “The national disaster was God’s just punishment on us and now he will restore us to our former state.  We will be his people and he will be our God, and all our enemies will now get their just deserts and it will be a great thing to be a Jew.”   

 

Rather, Second Isaiah’s message is: “Our suffering was beyond anything just.  It is a mystery, just as God is a mystery.  But our suffering is part of what it means to be human.  All of humanity suffers.  We are grass.  We are impermanent.  But God’s word remains, and that for all people.” 

 

It has always struck me as odd that Second Isaiah here thinks that a voice of joyful news would cry out, “All people are grass.  They wither in a day, and fade.”  What good news is there in such a saying? 

 

Accepting our common humanity and our facing square-on our limitations is actually a very liberating thing.  It is, in fact, good news.  It is the start of all authentic spiritual growth and health.  It is the thing that makes Socrates wise and the sophists around him foolish—he at least knows and accepts that he is ignorant while they go about in self-delusion.  It is the process that Buddhists call giving up desire, abandoning the expectations that enslave us, and the start of the process of enlightenment.  It is the start of what Muhammad called al-Islam, “submission” to God.  It is what the wisdom tradition in the Hebrew scripture calls the “beginning of all wisdom,” “awe or fear of the Lord.”   For those following Twelve-Step spirituality, it is the First Step, “we admitted we were powerless and that our lives had become unmanageable.”  It is what Jesus is describing when he says we must first lose our lives in order to find them. 

 

Acceptance of our condition as imperfect, limited, and very temporary people living in an imperfect and sometimes overwhelmingly horrifying world is needed to break down the barriers between us and other people.  It is at the heart of the process of repentance, of regretting and turning aside from our misdoings, and performing amendment of life. 

 

I think that is why St. Mark in today’s Gospel says that John the Baptist’s preaching of repentance was the “Beginning of the Happy Announcement” of Jesus Christ.  Mark sees John as the “messenger sent before the Lord’s day,” in Malachi, and as Second Isaiah’s voice crying out “in the wilderness prepare the way.”   John, as dour and unsparing as we usually like to think him, is still a bringer of Good News, because he urges us to accept that we are helpless and hopeless, and this universally so, since all people for him needed his baptism, regardless of their heritage, religion, or family background. 

 

But acceptance is only the start.  In order to find the hope and help we lack, we need to turn our lives over to this God who breaks down barriers, smooths down the barriers and fills up the gaps, makes the rough places plain, recreates the broken nation, and raises the dead to life. 

 

The third oracle in today’s Isaiah passage fairly sings in joy of what it means when we recognize God’s hand in these loving acts of restoring the exiles.  Second Isaiah personifies the City about to be rebuilt by the returning exiles, Jerusalem built on Mount Zion, itself as a herald of joyful news, the joyful news of God’s love:   

 

 

Get you up to a high mountain,

O Zion, herald of good tidings;

lift up your voice with strength,

O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,

lift it up, do not fear;

say to the cities of Judah,

“Here is your God!”

See, Yahweh God comes with might,

and his arm rules for him;

his reward is with him,

and his recompense before him.

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.

 

Second Isaiah here takes the commonplace image used by the Hebrew prophets, the image of the coming day when Yahweh will set things right, by rewarding the righteous and punishing evil-doers, and changes it drastically.  No longer is this a day that burns.  No longer is it a great day of military conquest.  It is a day of gentle love.  It is a day that God as a loving shepherd feeds his flock, and carries the little lambs tenderly in his arms.  “Here is your God,” he says, implicitly saying “and not in those images of blood and fire.”  For Second Isaiah, God is a loving shepherd, not a warrior or executioner.

 

During this season of Advent, let us remember Second Isaiah’s message:  we are all grass, and quickly fade.  But God loves us.  The day of God’s coming is a moment of comfort, a moment of joyful news, not just for some, but for all.  It is a moment when God as a mother sings lullabies to us, and as a gentle shepherd, carries us in loving arms.

 

Thanks be to God.