Second Sunday of Advent 2020

 

Comfort

Lectionary readings: Isaiah 40:1-11 and Mark 1:1-8

What a year it has been. Relentless. We’ve reached the environmental tipping-point into another mass extinction; the perfect unbalanced conditions to unleash a new viral strain that has impacted all our lives, taken loved ones from us and left others with life-long health issues, and hit our economy harder than anything for four hundred years; and we’re about to find ourselves an island nation with no trade deals with our neighbours. And our theme for today is God’s Comfort. Are you having a laugh?

The first people to hear these words from Isaiah knew what it was to live through multiple crises. Within the space of a generation, they’d lived through the siege and fall of Jerusalem (not the first siege they’d lived through, by the way), the destruction of the temple, the removal of the royal court—of the monarchy and government and civil service—into exile. Those left behind found themselves in a ruined land, vulnerable to raids on whatever remained by surrounding peoples. The institutions that formed and sustained identity—the temple, the nation, the land—not just places, but beliefs about those places and themselves as a people—were stripped away or fallen apart. This was a people who had experienced, and were still experiencing, trauma. And into this moment, God speaks: Comfort, comfort my people.

To whom is God speaking? Not to Isaiah, the prophet, who is simply reporting what he has been permitted to see and hear. No, Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, the god of a people in exile in the territory of other gods, is addressing the assembly of the gods, the angelic and demonic beings. It is Yahweh who has permitted his people to be humbled, in judgement for their dogged commitment to injustice. It is on account of Yahweh’s justice, not powerlessness, that these things have come to pass; and it is on account of Yahweh’s mercy that now he decrees, ‘Enough!’ Enough, now. It is time to rebuild.

It begins in the wilderness, in the place of encounter with God, in the place where corrupted institutions are stripped away. In the place of exodus from slavery in Egypt. In the place of exile from captivity to self-deception and false security in Jerusalem. It begins, as it always begins when God is doing a new thing, in the wilderness. And it proceeds with a levelling of uneven ground, in order to achieve a uniting of all peoples on equal standing which goes hand-in-hand with the glory of the Lord being made visible.

This is not yet achieved, in Isaiah’s vision, or in ours. There is a tension, a paradox: that it shall be achieved is inevitable, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken; and yet, its fulfilment also requires the active participation of the gods and mortals. Our God does not work alone, nor by coercion.

What, then, is the comforting message? All people are grass. Excuse me? That’s it? That’s what you’ve got? All people are grass? How is that good news? Well, when you are already withered and faded, and you see others in all their glory, here is a reminder that this is not blind chance, nor the inevitable outcome of human initiative or lack of initiative, but God’s agency, God’s generative and ongoing sustaining activity within the world; and, therefore, we ought to view ourselves and others with humility and appreciation, perhaps even delight. All people are grass…and grass is actually incredibly resilient; it grows back; it also binds the earth (soil) together to prevent erosion, to prevent further loss. Individual blades of grass may be small, but grass is nonetheless significant; it feeds, well, directly or indirectly, everything.

The angelic beings are called to comfort God’s people. And, in response, God’s people are called to be the herald of good tidings. God’s people in exile; God’s people who have come through crisis and are yet to experience the return, the building back. God’s people, in the midst of all the peoples, in God’s world. Tidings of Comfort and Joy. To proclaim the good news that God comes to right injustice and embody mercy.

What, then, is the word for today, the word to us and the word for others through us, on this Second Sunday of Advent at the tail end of 2020? It is, surely, that in Jesus, God is with us, to feed, to gather up, to carry, to gently lead. To fill empty stomachs and hunger for justice; to hold anxious children in the emotional security of reliable love; to carry the exhausted and hurting ones who just can’t carry on; to walk with parents and teachers and employers and the self-employed and those in positions of responsibility who feel lost and alone right now. This is what the Church should look and feel like.

And what is the word for tomorrow? That crises reveal judgement on injustice and inequality, on disregard for the most vulnerable; and, once the crisis is over, what emerges must be more just, more merciful. The vision begins from the margins, the grassroots. We have a world to rebuild, and a role to play, not alone, nor by coercion, but alongside comforting angels. John the baptiser—not an angelic messenger, but a human one—took God’s imperative to the divine assembly upon himself. Will we?