Today is the second Sunday of Advent, and in this online-only worship service, we’re looking at a powerful promise from Isaiah to God’s people in exile. In addition, this online worship service video includes music, prayers, and an update from our ministry partners at Lutheran Services in Iowa.
This week’s sermon texts are Isaiah 40:1-11 and Mark 1:1-8.
Helpful this week were this commentary from Journey with Jesus, this one from Working Preacher, and this 2011 commentary also from Working Preacher.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
The passage I just read is the very beginning of Mark’s Gospel. As he decides how to tell the story of Jesus, he begins with a heading: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Then he gets into his story by quoting the prophets of old, who promised, “A messenger will come to prepare the way, crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”
The messenger out in the wilderness, the prophet preparing the way is John the baptizer, and we’ll talk more about him next week, but today, I want to dig into the prophecy Mark claims John is fulfilling, that verse about preparing the way of the Lord, especially the part about making the path straight.
That prophecy comes from the first reading Addy shared, in Isaiah 40. For the confirmation students listening, this should sound familiar from class this week, but for the rest of you, here’s crash course in a few hundred years of historical background for you to know.
Centuries before Jesus was born, we’ve got the nation of Israel, right? God’s chosen people? God had used Moses to rescue the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt and led them to the promised land. They fought a bunch of battles and conquered the land, then for a few hundred years they went through a bunch of different leaders called judges, until eventually they decided they wanted a king, so God gave them a king named Saul. Saul turned out to be a pretty lousy king, so God replaced him with King David, who had his own issues, but he was a lot better than Saul. That’s the Biblical books of Judges and First and Second Samuel.
During David’s reign, God made a covenant—a promise—that a descendant of King David would always be on Israel’s throne, and God would be their God and they would be God’s people forever. Unfortunately, not all of David’s descendants were very good kings. Some of them led the people to worship idols and make foreign alliances and generally turn away from God. If you’re following the story, that’s pretty much the books of first and second Kings and Chronicles.
As the people and their rulers abandoned God, God kept sending prophets to them as messengers from God. Usually the prophets’ messages were basically, “Turn back to God. Stop sinning, stop worshiping idols, stop oppressing the poor and taking advantage of the orphans and widows and start living as God’s people. Otherwise, God’s going to get upset and send another nation to punish you, if you don’t shape up.”
Occasionally the kings listen to the prophets, and they destroy the idols and start some reforms, but most of the time they laugh at the prophets and stone them or throw them down into cisterns, that sort of thing. Eventually, the prophecies come true, and God allows the Israelites to be conquered, first by the Assyrians and then by the Babylonians.
I know this doesn’t sound much like Christmas yet, but stay with me – we’ll get there.
In 597 BC, the Babylonians conquer Israel, and take the people off into exile, hundreds of miles away in modern-day Iraq. And for almost 60 years, the people of Israel live as exiles in Babylon, wondering what happened. God’s promise has failed. In Babylon, the exiles spend a lot of time repenting and telling God how sorry they are for all that idol-worshiping, and they’re pleading with God to rescue them. Most of the Old Testament is written down during this time, which makes sense. The stories had been passed down orally—parents telling children—but now they’re worried about their stories getting lost, their children forgetting who they are, forgetting that they are set apart as God’s chosen people.
And then, in about the year 538, God gives them the message we heard in Isaiah 40. “Comfort, O Comfort my people, says your God.”
After all this time in exile, after decades of wondering if God has forgotten about them, God sends them a message of hope.
Isaiah continues, “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.”
The price of their sin has been paid! Imagine what it would be like to hear that message. In these awful circumstances, in the worst times any of them have lived through, the prophet proclaims that God has not forgotten them. They are forgiven!
And not only is the punishment over, it says, “Speak tenderly, speak compassionately to Jerusalem.” That’s a beautiful example of God’s grace, because everything in Israel’s history says they’re probably going to re-offend. For hundreds of years, every time they’ve turned back to God, they’ve eventually turned away again and tried to go their own way.
As Isaiah says a moment later, these people are like grass, their loyalty is like flowers of the field, that wither and die. And yet, God speaks tenderly to them. God chooses to comfort them. God still loves them. God refuses to give up on them. The people are like grass, but God’s word stands forever. God is faithful. When God makes a promise to love these people, God sticks with it. God has a rescue plan for them.
A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” God is going to lead the people back home.They won’t have to go through 40 years of wandering in the wilderness like they did when God led them out of Egypt; this time, it’ll be like there’s a highway across the desert, a straight path for God to rescue them and restore them.
God is coming with strength. This is the proclamation the prophet is ordered to call out. Like a shepherd, God will gather the flock together and care for the sheep.
And historically, this happens. The exile ends because the Persian empire defeats the Babylonians, and their emperor Cyrus sends all the captured nations back home. In the Bible, that’s the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
A couple hundred years later, as Mark tells the story of Jesus, he turns to Isaiah to illustrate what God is doing. Once again, God is rescuing God’s people, making a highway through the desert, refusing to give up on people who surely deserve to be abandoned. But this time, it’s not just a one-time thing for a particular group of exiles. This time, God’s rescue plan is for the whole world. And God’s not working through some foreign Persian king; this time, God comes in person.
All the prophecies of God sending a savior are fulfilled. As the Psalm says, steadfast love and faithfulness meet, righteousness and peace will kiss each other. God forgives the iniquity of the people and pardons all their sin – pardons all our sin. Jesus—a descendent of David—breaks the cycle of sin, forever.
I went through all this historical background today first because I think it’s good to know our history, but also because at least for me, today feels like we’re in a time of exile. It’s nowhere near as dramatic or as bad as the Babylonian exile was for the Israelites, but still, it feels like we’ve been exiled from our church building, separated from seeing family and friends, cut off from the way life ought to be.
If you’re feeling like that today, if you’re feeling like we’re in a time of exile, wandering through the wilderness, listen to the promise of these readings. God sends a messenger of hope in the wilderness, proclaiming forgiveness, proclaiming restoration, proclaiming good news.
God does not give up on God’s people. God does not give up on you. God has not given up on you. God is faithful, even when we are not. This is the message of Advent: Christ is coming. Christ has come. Christ will come again. Hope is here.
Amen