Advent 2B, 10 December 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
- Isaiah 40:1-11. Comfort, O comfort my people says your God.
- 2 Peter 3:8-15a. New heavens and a new earth where righteousness is at home.
- Mark 1:1-8. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah.
O God of the prophets, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.
The season of Advent in the Church is meant to be more an annual pilgrimage than a shopping spree or a holiday frenzy. The observance of Advent is a spiritual, theological practice, and it’s also political, sociological, economic when we are paying attention to the scriptures. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it is also a pilgrimage in a season marked by darkness. For those of us in and around the city, true darkness is barely possible to experience, but the loss of sunlight is felt deeply, nonetheless. So many of us are unaccustomed to noticing the beauty of darkness. I have found that I need to slow down to notice the beauty of darkness, to appreciate the growth that occurs in the darkness, to identify the many blessings of darkness. It takes some slowing down and remembering that to the Divine, darkness and light are both alike.
Our Advent pilgrimage began last week with a lament – crying out “how long O Lord?” and a prophetic call to God to remember and to be accountable to God’s people. In other words, we are in a mess, O God, remember, we are your people and we need your help. This week, we hear the first verses of Mark (“the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ”) and the middle of Isaiah, with a little bit of the second letter of Peter on the side, which offers a lovely explanation of the extraordinary patience of the Holy One, Who longs for every single one to be received into God’s tender compassionate embrace. The Holy One does not want anyone to succumb to exile, alienation, or dislocation from Love.
The opening words of our portion of Isaiah today are “comfort, comfort.” In Hebrew, in addition to the repetition for emphasis, the verbs are in an intense form, so it’s like comfort to the 4th power. The word, nacham, is the word for pity or console from a root that indicates a strong sigh or audible exhale. And the verbs are first person plural. You all comfort, you all comfort my people says your God. The “you all” is addressed to the messengers of God. The etymology of comfort, you know, is together, or with, strength. Here’s another way to hear it: All you messengers of God, speak peace, speak forgiveness, speak repair to my people with great-together-strength and tenderness. These are strong and stunning words of encouragement and hope that the Gospel of Mark is recalling for the Jesus followers in the latter half of the first century.
The Gospel of Mark quoted Isaiah – although the English major in me wants points to be deducted for that because Mark actually mashes up Exodus, Malachi and Isaiah and attributes it all to Isaiah. Either Mark didn’t know, or he thought that his hearers wouldn’t know, that the words “see I am sending a messenger out ahead of you to prepare the way” aren’t in Isaiah. But maybe his point is that if John the Baptist was fulfilling again God’s promise to God’s people made to Moses, and made to Malachi, surely the promise exists in Isaiah even if it’s not explicit. [1]
Perhaps Mark was indicating that, for his community, no prophetic work was more important than the book of Isaiah. The book of Isaiah was compiled over an enormous period of time, some 300 years. And between the last verse of chapter 39 and the first verse of chapter 40, at least 160 years passed. Think about that. 160 years ago, our country had come apart at the seams and was in the middle of a civil war. 160 years is three years shy of how long Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston has existed. Between the last verse of chapter 39 and the first verse of chapter 40, the people had been exiled, alienated, dislocated in what had been a political, sociological, economic, theological, spiritual disaster. For Mark, it was not so different from the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 of the Common Era. For Mark, I imagine, it was just like that. And so we might hear the words of Isaiah, and the words of the Gospel of Mark this morning with particular attention to suffering and disaster being experienced by people today — politically, sociologically, economically, theologically, and spiritually, in the Middle East, or in Sudan, or in the Congo, or in Ukraine, or in our own country.
Now, I want to go back to say something about the pronoun “you” because of our inability to distinguish the singular and plural (in the north anyway). Combine that with the fierce sense of individualism in our culture, and we tend to hear prophetic biblical testimony as intensely personal rather than intensely communal. I believe it’s one of the biggest translation problems we face with regard to interpreting scripture.
I notice this most clearly in Advent each year because the prophetic calls for repentance, for forsaking sin, for expectation and preparation, are calls to a people – not to a person. They are calls to and about institutions and economies and nations – and if we want to downsize a little, to cities, to communities, to collectives. The prophetic calls for repentance we hear in Advent are calls to move, as a people, from exile to home, from disintegration to integration — to strengthen the integrity of the whole. They are calls from disease to health — to increase the well-being of all: all people everywhere. As far as I can tell by reading scripture, salvation is never an individual enterprise when it comes to the Holy One. And by the way, did you notice the definition of salvation in 2nd Peter? “Regard the patience of our Lord as salvation,” says the second letter of Peter. Salvation is the patience of our Lord.
And how shall we live while the Lord is being patient? One answer is by comforting – together strengthening God’s people, speaking with powerful gentleness, and working to level the terrain and create dignified public accommodations (like highways) to facilitate homecoming, friendship, and integrity. The metaphor of highways runs through all four of our Gospels.
I’m going to offer you all a series of questions – something of a meditation this morning. The risk of asking a lot of questions in a sermon is always that any of you might hear a question and get lost in thought and miss the rest. And I want to say, that’s perfectly fine if that happens. Let the questions lead you where you need to go deeper into the heart of God. (And if my questions lead you to nod off or to make your ‘to do’ list, well so be it). [2] In our reading, what way forward is being hoped for or promised for those who have suffered immensely? Isaiah says that the city has become a wilderness rather than a fortress of safety – an urban wasteland of rubble and danger. What do we know of this kind of perilous territory in our own time? What do we know of the wilderness of homeless shelters or of gated communities? The wilderness of food stamps or of five-star restaurants? Of South Bay or Back Bay, of Bradston Street or of Newbury Street? Why might we hesitate to go to any of those wildernesses as a herald to proclaim God’s consolation?
Where have we as a people been in exile for generations? When have we as a people left behind our home, or been driven out or carried away from our home? How have we experienced exile in relationships that have demanded that we leave behind parts of ourselves that define who and Whose we are? What would it take for us to return to the place where we started and own what we left behind in spite of the ruins and the rubble? This is not an invitation to indulge in nostalgia. It’s a reckoning with eyes wide open. It’s a call for reparations.
Why would we want to get up to a high mountain to proclaim the end of exile with the words, “here is your God,” but not proclaim that in the shadow places, in the low places? How might we proclaim God’s promise of tenderness and mercy in the face of arrogance, or of despair, in our primary relationships, in our workplaces, in our communities? How might our lives be different if we were to honestly believe that all who have suffered immensely have served enough time, that exile can be over, and that it’s possible begin again in a home waiting beyond the wilderness?
This morning we are celebrating the baptism of Robert Russell Bennett, thanks to his family. Baptism is a kind of homecoming – a celebration of belonging – of coming home to a community marked by sincere love, a community where we share prayers and meals, and where we share what we have from each according to their ability and to each according to their need, serving our neighbors, and encouraging one another to lead lives of integrity and virtue. According to sociologists, belonging to a community of faith correlates with better health ‘to do’ and longer life, as well as higher levels of generosity. [2]. The more religious communities there are in an area, the more well-being there is in that area, even for people who are not participating in a community of faith (but when participation flags, religious communities are not sustained). Showing up in a loving faith community is one of the single most powerful things any of us can do to sustain the well-being of our wider world. So thank you all for showing up this morning, for coming here on your pilgrimage today to represent the goodness and love of God.
- The name Malachi actually means “my messenger” or “my angel” – angel and messenger are interchangeable words in Biblical literature. In fact, God and God’s messenger are often interchangeable in Biblical literature.
- These are questions based on my teacher, and former rector, Bill Dols’ approach to engaging scripture. His work can be found in the Bible Workbench series. See 12/7/08 for his treatment of Isaiah 40:1-11. I’ve expanded the scope to be corporately, rather than individually, directed.