(part of the “Waiting on the World to Change” Advent Series)
Isaiah 40: 1-5, 27-31
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. 2Speak 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.
3A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4Every 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. 5Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
27Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? 28Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 29He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. 30Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 31but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
Today is the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. It is the moment when the north pole (for the northern hemisphere) is tilted the farthest away on its axis from the sun. I think it actually occurs at 9:03 a.m. this morning if you want to put it on your calendar. Today is the day of the year when the light hours are the shortest and the dark hours are the longest. It’s always been interesting to me that our celebration of Jesus’ birth is placed just after the solstice. (Because, honestly, we’re not sure when it ACTUALLY happened. That day was just sort of assigned.)
This passage from Isaiah is the beginning of what most scholars call “Second Isaiah”. It was probably written toward the end of the Babylonian exile and is directed to those that had been forcibly removed from their home in Jerusalem several years before. Now, this was not what we typically know of as “slavery”. Most of the Israelites were allowed to have their own homes and come and go as they please. They were even allowed to work for a living. But it was a different culture and a different homeland. Everything that they had known before was gone. The society was different. The culture was different. They weren’t really sure how to maneuver in this new way of living and life around them was surely one of darkness. It would be easy for them to assume that God had deserted them, that somehow God had left them in a place to which they were unaccustomed and had just left them to fend for themselves. At the very least, their image of God probably had to be recast.
But around 539 BCE, Cyrus, the ruler of Persia, conquered the Babylonians and so many of those exiled were given the chance to return home. So, the exiles are filled with a message of trust and confident hope that God will completely end this time of despair and hardship. Speaking to a city and a way of life that is all but destroyed, the exclamation is made that the exile is indeed about to end. God is coming to lead the exiles home, bringing redemption and restoration. In essence, God is coming to show them a new and different way to live, a new and different to look at life even in the midst of darkness.
In this writing, there is no prophet even mentioned. Instead, here, it is God who is speaking. It is God who is promising a new start for the city and a people whose lives today lie in ruins. Out of the void, out of the ruins, it is God’s voice that we hear. Out of the darkness, a new day is dawning. “Comfort, O comfort my people…Remember, that every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low, the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then my full and final glory will be revealed.”
Now notice here that God does not promise to put things back the way they were before. God is not limited to simply rebuilding what was taken away. No, God is recreating, making new, lifting valleys, lowering mountains, and ultimately, when all is said and done, revealing a glory that we’ve never seen before in what is essentially a brand new Creation, a brand new “in the beginning…”. “See, I am making all things new.” “Comfort” here is not just solace or consolation; it is transformation. “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”
As I noted yesterday, we live in an “in-between” time. Old English would refer to it as “betwixt and between”. It is that time of liminality. We live in an overlap of time. The light is shining into the darkness but we are experiencing these long hours of darkness. I’ve been reading some of the Psalms and Scriptures of lament lately. It is those writings of grief for the world. It is those writings of grief for us. It is those times when we just want to shake our fists and scream at what is going on. It is those times when we are waiting for the world to change. We modern-day Christians struggle with that. Somewhere along the way we were told that we were supposed to be well-behaved around God. But I think God can take anything we dish out. And, to be honest, God is not a casual acquaintance. I would like to think that I am close enough to God to get angry sometimes.
This passage from Isaiah is an answer to those laments. It’s not saying that bad things won’t happen; it’s not saying that the world will be perfect. It’s saying that things are going to get better, that God is recreating us and the world even as we shake our fists and shout into the abyss. Living as a Christian means that we are constantly pulled and stretched between the poles of longing and lament, of hope and despair, of grief and resurrection. It is all part of our faith. We do not live in some naïve state of being with the belief that God will somehow remove us from the reality of the present. No, we are asked to be here, living in faith. We are truly people of joy and hope. That’s why the woes of the world hurt us so badly. That’s why we grieve. That’s why we lament, a holy practice of lament. That’s why sometimes we shake our fists and scream into the lamentable abyss. And God comes and sits with us, Emmanuel, God-with-us, and offers comfort and renewal, restoration and hope.
“With This Bright Voice” By Amanda Gorman (for 2025 UNICEF campaign) With this bright voice We speak— Audacious and audible.
What yesterday we might have called obstacles Today rise as opportunities That make us unstoppable.
We respond In every strife In every struggle
God did not wait till the world was ready, till nations were at peace. God came when the Heavens were unsteady and prisoners cried out for release. God did not wait for the perfect time. God came when the need was deep and great. In the mystery of the Word made flesh the maker of the Stars was born. We cannot wait till the world is sane to raise our songs with joyful voice, or to share our grief, to touch our pain. God came with Love. Rejoice! Rejoice! And go into the Light of God. (Madeleine L’Engle)
Lyrics:
[Verse 1] I’ve seen more than I, I wanna see The people I love turnin’ on me But I know, I know, I know, I know there’s a A better day comin’ I’ve been dreamin’ that one fine day All my trouble gonna fade away And I know, I know, I know, I know there’s a A better day comin’
[Chorus] Woah-oh, woah-oh A better day comin’ Woah-oh, woah-oh A better day comin’
[Verse 2] And it’s harder holdin’ on to forgiveness To lay those ghosts to rest Oh, but the sun can rise out of the darkest night No anger, no bitterness Can fill the hole inside my chest Too long, too long, too long, too long have I Have I been runnin’ Ooh, that blue horizon ain’t far away I hear it callin’ out my name And I know, I know, I know, I know There’s a better day comin’ The sun’s gonna rise out of the darkest night It’s gonna change everything, woah-oh
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence— 2as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! 3When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 4From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. 5You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.
6We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. 8Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.
I’m backtracking a little and going back and picking up some of the Scriptures from yesterday’s lectionary. And, yes, this passage assigned to us as the Old Testament reading for the first week of Advent seems a little dark and dreary. I know. You’re ready for some twinkling lights and perhaps a star and some signs of hope. But we get a lament. How does a lament fit in with this season?
The truth is that our culture, particularly in this country, doesn’t handle laments well. I don’t know if we’re too shaped by our English Puritan roots or what. But somewhere along the way, we became convinced that all of those things that go wrong, all those things that are uncomfortable, all of those things that involve grief and such, should be pushed down, or bottled up, or hidden away in the junk drawer of our lives. So, when we lose those we love, when health issues don’t seem to cooperate with the life that we envisioned for ourselves, when things just do not go according to our plans, we tend to hide them away. We are taught to be strong, even stoic at times. And we are convinced that there is a proper way to grieve and an expected and timely way to move on.
So, consequently, reading laments is an odd, if not uncomfortable, practice for us. Take this one, for instance. The Israelites have returned home after years in exile. But home was not the same. It would never be the same. The Temple (the place where they knew God was) had been destroyed. And in their search for God, for a God that seemed elusive or even hidden, they began to look at their own lives and name their grief and pray a prayer of lament. But how does that fit into Advent?
Well, see, we’re often told to move on. Do we really move on? Do we really put those things away or do they just continue to gnaw at the comfortable parts of our lives? Is that really the best way to handle our grief and our losses and our failed expectations? Maybe we should take a lesson from our brothers and sisters who are immigrants or refugees or part of the African, Middle Eastern, or African American traditions. They openly wail their grief and pound their chests in atonement. Their lament is tangible. It can be felt. It can be heard. It can be shared. It can be named. And in that naming, it is claimed. And in its midst, God enters.
I have lived most of my life with little loss. That changed over the last seven years or so. In those years, I have lost people I love, a beloved dog, as well as my own well-being and security. I have lost what I expected to be. I remember when my wonderful friend Suzy died of ovarian cancer, I tried to be strong, to “move on” the way that everyone expects you to do (particularly as a pastor—for some reason people don’t want their pastor to grieve uncontrollably). I did fine for several months and then at Annual Conference that year, where Suzy and I usually sat together and ate together and caught up with our lives, I heard her name read in worship and I collapsed into sobs. I was pretty much given the impression from one of the other clergy that that probably wasn’t acceptable. I didn’t care. It was cleansing. It was prayerful. It was lament.
Re-read the lament. Or write your own. No, we don’t “move on”. That’s a farce. What we do is we walk the journey of lament. We name our grief or our loss and we claim it. And into our grief and our despair and our loss, God comes. God comes not as a magic Band Aid that fixes our problems but as a Master Creator that re-orders them. We do not move on. We are never rid of them; instead, they are redeemed and recreated.
In this season of Advent, we are sometimes tempted to put our best face on, to work to make the season one of joy and memories. But the season calls us to be fully ourselves, to be the ones into whose lives God enters. Maybe a few laments wouldn’t be all that bad. Maybe some good old-fashioned wailing will make us realize what God offers us. Maybe sharing with others will lead to transformation for all of us. God doesn’t wait to enter until everything is perfect. That was never the deal. God enters when transformation is at hand. God enters when God is needed the most. So, maybe go ahead and clean out that junk drawer!
Spirituality is the ability to live with ambiguity. (Ray Anderson)
I have sort of been on a Carrie Newcomer kick, so I guess you are too! She is Quaker. Her mentor is writer Parker Palmer, whose writings many of you may have read. She has a rich catalog of music that echoes peace, love of others, the beauty of this world, and a deep and abiding spirituality and belief in the God who is always and forever coming into our lives. I hope some of her music will bring you the joy and peace it brings me.
Dancing to God 