A Prophetic Word for Today: Comfort
A Reflection on Isaiah
40.1-11
RCL Advent 2B
10 December 2017
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 eucharist
on Sunday the 10th of December.
Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 eucharist
on Sunday the 10th of December.
Isaiah 40.1-11
40.1
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.
2 Speak 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.
3
A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a
highway for our God. 4 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. 5 Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people
shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord
has spoken.”
6
A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said,
“What shall I cry?” All people are
grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. 7 The grass withers, the flower
fades, when the breath of the Lord
blows upon it; surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our
God will stand forever. 9 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!”
10 See, the Lord God
comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his
recompense before him. 11 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.
A historical introduction
Throughout
the Christian year we are guided through the Hebrew scriptures and the apostolic
writings by means of a lectionary.
During this annual journey we encounter the writings of the Hebrew
prophets, some of their words familiar to us, some of their words strange and
even confrontational. Our encounter with
these voices from the past is somewhat skewed by the views of more conservative
Christians who understand the prophets to be foretelling future events
fulfilled in the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. But this understanding of the prophets is not
quite biblical.
We live
in a society where religious faith and civil government are supposed to remain
separate, what some people call ‘a barrier between church and state’. Sometimes this barrier is quite solid such as
the constitutional prohibition of the establishment of any religion as the
religion of the state. At other times
the barrier is a bit more porous such as setting Christmas Day, Boxing Day,
Good Friday and Easter Monday as ‘bank holidays’ and even statutory days off
for workers.
No such
barrier existed in the history of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The king, the priests and the prophets each
played a distinct and integral role in the life of the kingdom. The king as God’s anointed exercised God’s
sovereignty in time and space and was understood as the guarantor of the
kingdom’s faithfulness to the covenant in every sphere of public life. The priests as descendants of Aaron and Levi
were responsible for the faithful exercise of the ritual law and practices
ordained by God in the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures. Between the king and the priests the
institutions of pubic life were to embody the covenant.
The fly
in the ointment of public life were the prophets. To be sure the prophetic role was understood
as a necessary one, but prophets, whether a charismatic individual, a member of
the royal court or a fraternity of individuals, were called upon to
speak God’s truth to power. Much like the role of the monarch in a
constitutional monarchy such as ours, the prophets were to advise, to encourage
and to warn the king and the priests. They cast their eyes on the events of the
world around them and searched the scriptures to understand what God was saying
to the people among whom the prophets lived.
As you
can well imagine, being a prophet could be an uncomfortable vocation. Some of the prophets whose names are recorded
in the Hebrew scriptures were co-opted by the system and only spoke words that
fit with the prevailing political and religious agenda of their time. Others such as Nathan dared to call David to
judgement on account of David’s adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her
husband Uriah in combat. Then there were
prophets such as Jeremiah whose contemporaries tried to silence him as well as
imprison him and, according to tradition, eventually arranged his execution.
In the
apostolic writings we call the New Testament John the Baptist figures as a
prophet who proclaims the coming of the promised Messiah. He called his contemporaries to repent, to
look at the world through God’s eyes, and then act accordingly. His criticism of the life of Herod led to
imprisonment and execution. John’s story
is a healthy reminder of the risks of speaking the truth to power, whether the
power of the state or the power of public opinion.
A prophetic word for the people of
Judah: Comfort
A little
more than five hundred years before the coming of Jesus an exile from the land
of Judah held captive in the Babylonian empire was called to pick up the mantle
of the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah had lived
two hundred years before this unknown prophet and who had spoken God’s truth to
the people of Judah living in political, religious and social turmoil. This ‘first’ Isaiah did not live to see the
destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and the incorporation of Judah into
the Babylonian empire. But his words
still spoke to the people in exile who longed for their return to the land God
had promised their ancestors Abraham and Sarah.
The
words we heard this morning from this ‘second’ Isaiah are spoken to a people
who can no longer claim to have an independent kingdom with an anointed
king. They no longer have a Temple in
which the descendants of Aaron and Levi can fulfil the ritual law embodied in
God’s covenant with Moses. All they have
is their identity as a people chosen by God to bear witness to the truth that Yahweh,
the Holy One of Israel, is the source of all life and being, the One who is at
work in time and history to bring about the divine purposes for the whole
creation, human and non-human, animate and inanimate. To this dispirited community this ‘second’
Isaiah speaks a word of encouragement.
Despite
the reality of their current exile the prophet sees the signs that there is a
change afoot which will lead to the return of the people to the land of
Judah. All the suffering of the previous
decades has not gone unnoticed by the Holy One nor has the Holy One forgotten
the promises made to Abraham and Sarah, the promises made to Moses and the
people during the exodus from Egypt. ‘See,’
the prophet says, ‘the Lord 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.’ (Isaiah 40.10-11) A highway will open up before the people and
they will return to the land to continue their vocation to be a sign to all
peoples of the God who seeks the salvation, the wholeness, the full humanity,
of every one, Jew and non-Jew, male and female, young and old.
A prophetic word for today: Comfort
When we
baptize a person into the Christian community, we anoint them with fragrant
oil, sealing them with the Holy Spirit and marking them as Christ’s own
forever. This ancient sign, only
restored among Anglicans in the mid-twentieth century, has many meanings. One of them is a reminder that, in baptism,
we become members of a prophetic community in whom and through whom the Spirit
of the Holy One works, giving us inquiring and discerning hearts, courage to
will and to persevere, the spirit to know and to love God, and the gift of joy
and wonder in all God’s works.
Just as
the prophets of Israel were called to advise, to encourage and to warn the
people of their times, so we call upon our families, friends and neighbours to
heed the signs of the times and to choose to love one’s neighbour as oneself,
whether that neighbour is rich or poor, Christian or non-Christian, powerful or
powerless. Just as John the Baptist
called upon his contemporaries to look at the world through new eyes, the eyes
of God, and then fell foul of those in power, so we speak God’s truth to power,
whether the power of the civil authorities or the power of public opinion, and
bear the risk.
And then
we wait, giving our families, friends and neighbours the space to choose, to
decide how they will live. This is the
most difficult part of being a prophet, understanding that God’s word is a word
of persuasion not coercion.
Our word
is ‘comfort’ --- an embodied and potentially costly comfort. The comfort of which we speak is not some
warm and fuzzy feeling expressed within a greeting card. It is a comfort that calls for housing when
people are homeless and need shelter --- in our neighbourhood not somewhere
else. The comfort of which we speak is
not a prayer expressed only in words spoken within this place. It is a comfort that calls for costly
stewardship the fiscal and physical resources entrusted to us as individuals
and as members of this Christian community.
The comfort of which we speak is not the shaking of our heads when a
young woman is abused on the Skytrain.
It is a comfort that dares to intervene when hateful speech and
repugnant actions threaten any sister or brother made in the image of God ---
even if that hateful speech and repugnant action arises from someone whom we
know.
Perhaps
sometime in the future someone will write, ‘In the year of the sesquicentennial
of Canadian confederation, when Justin Trudeau was Prime Minister of Canada,
the word of the Lord came to the people of Saint Faith’s Anglican Church,
saying, “Comfort, O comfort my people.”
And they rose up and said, “Here we are, Lord. Send us.”’
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