3rd of Advent
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Isaiah 35
1 The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus 2 it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. 3 Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. 4 Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you."
5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6 then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; 7 the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. 8 A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God's people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. 9 No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. 10 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
“I think Christmas is a sad time.”
It was almost a passing comment. Had it not been made in the context of talking about preparations for Christmas and what the kids were getting for presents, it probably wouldn’t have stood out so starkly in contrast to the rest of the conversation.
I stopped and asked, ‘How so?’
The conversation that followed was in some ways a baptism by fire into what it REALLY means to bear one another’s burdens.
One of the most humbling things about being in ministry is the readiness with which I am taken into confidence by some people. That is something that, although I’d experienced it before I was ordained, it usually came after a period of getting to know the other person. Though there is still a getting-to-know you period it is much, sometimes MCUH shorter. There is, with most people, a predisposition TO trust. I see it almost every week in my rotation at the hospital. That is not only humbling, but it challenges me to uphold that trust, to keep that confidence, and to entrust a lot more, a WHOLE lot more, to the care and ministry of the Holy Spirit.
What became evident in the conversation was that there was very little reason for the person I was speaking to to feel or see much if any reason to rejoice – not just going into the Christmas season, but anytime of year.
Isaiah is addressing a similar condition with the people of Israel. As we’ve noted over the last two Sundays, the prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah were writing to and for a people who are in turmoil or in exile, far from home, across one of the most barren deserts in the world, with no immediate hope of returning to their home.
What have the prophets told them? They’ve told them to make the best of where they are - that there is Hope in that. They have drawn for them a picture of peace where the wolf will live with the lamb, the Lion and the calf shall lie next to each other, and children will play around snake’s dens … a promise that though what they are going through may seem to be nothing but hopeless and anything but peaceful, they are still going to see the fulfillment of both their hopes AND their yearning for peace.
In today’s text, we find the writer continuing in the same vein. He is intent on encouraging the people of Israel during a time when they could very easily have become despondent. Their King has been taken into exile and has died there. Their temple, the core of their identity as the people of Israel, has been destroyed. They are hundreds of miles from home. Where can they go? To whom can they turn?
The songs we sing at Christmas and the stories we tell DO seemingly emphasize the joy and happiness that accompanies the coming of the Christ child, for the most part. There are a precious few that nod their heads to the grief that is patently clear in the birth story we read in Matthew, chapter 2:
16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: 18 "A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more."
There is no outside evidence of the massacre of the boys of Bethlehem. There were probably no more than a dozen babies and toddlers who suffered at Herod’s order. Bethlehem wasn’t much more than a hamlet. The historical record would hardly have made note of such an event in such a violent period.
That is perhaps why ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear’ is so dear to me. Verse 3 –
And ye, beneath life’s crushing load
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! For glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing;
O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing!
It is not all garlands and lights, laughter and making merry, this season we are in. There is most definitely a shadowside to this celebration.
We turn to the text:
1 The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus 2 it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing … 5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6 then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; 7 the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.
What is the writer trying to tell us? What does this mean for Jerusalem Church? How do we approach Christmas? What can we, as a congregation, say and do in the face of a world that has made the observance of the most momentous event in human history a commercial wasteland, devoid for the most part of any true recognition of what it is exactly that made us call it Christ’s mass to begin with … One of the writers has given us directions full of hope, while the other has given us what would otherwise be called a fanciful, to not say rose-colored vision of what a truly peaceable world might be like one day.
Christ quoted this passage at the beginning of his public ministry, when his cousin John sent some of HIS disciples to ask him if he was the true Messiah. We find it in Luke chapter 7, beginning with verse 22. If we look at what he did over the next three years, it would seem that he meant the part about the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf and the lame leaping like deer and the tongue of the speechless singing for joy literally and physically.
Not to chase a rabbit, but I cannot, in good faith, state that miraculous healings no longer occur. There is too much that is unknown and unexplainable, too much that happens for no apparent reason that turns out to have an indelible impact on the lives of the people involved for GOOD – and towards God.
But back to the question of application: how does this relate to Jerusalem Church?
Like this:
We celebrate, and we rejoice, and we have parties and share gifts and meals and give toys and bake cakes and cookies, and send cards, but we never lose sight of the fact that we are surrounded by ‘this world of sin’, by that shadowside that is inconsolably weeping for her children – “for they are no more.”
We bear each other’s burdens, we lend a sympathetic ear, or a shoulder to cry on, we visit, and together we reach for the joy that is found in the knowledge that God so loved the world that God himself came to us in human form, in the person of Jesus Christ, to live among us, to share our pain and sorrow, and our celebrations as well.
This afternoon, at 2:30, we will be hosting a bereavement service here in the sanctuary. This is an opportunity to recognize the pain that can be caused by a mindless pursuit of enjoyment … a denial of the fullness of our emotions that can make for more heartache and tears than for laughter.
It is a chance to be in a community and in a place where together we can struggle to come to grips with a world that WE KNOW is broken, but which has, for reasons individual to each of us, come to be MORE broken through loss. It may be through the most evident form of loss, the death of a loved one. It may be at less-obvious losses, though no less painful – the loss of a job, the loss of a relationship, the loss of a sense of peace, or belonging, that may have been there before. It could be the loss of health, where the accompanying awareness of mortality can be overwhelming. Grief can come in many forms, through many doors, and it can last for a long time. There’s no time limit to the event that might have caused your grief, it might have been last week, or it might have been a decade ago. We would welcome you regardless.
Let’s pray.
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