Advent II
Isaiah, 40:1-11
2 Peter, 3:8-15a,18
Mark, 1:1-8
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The ancient city of Babylon was a hot, dusty, flat, sun-baked city - about fifty or sixty miles south of modern Baghdad. About six centuries before Christ, Nebuchadrezzar, King of Babylon, began a massive building project, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the wonders of the ancient world. Nebuchadrezzar built a lush artificial mountain of astonishing size and beauty and sophisticated technology and engineering to irrigate the rooftop gardens. He built it to comfort his wife, Amyitis, who was from the mountains and longed for her green homeland. His tender concern for his homesick wife is almost touching.
Within a couple decades of starting work on this fantastic pleasure garden, Nebuchadrezzar invaded Judah and laid siege to Jerusalem. Eventually Jerusalem, King David's majestic city, hitherto impregnable, fell, and the Babylonians collected its spoils - pillaging, plundering, raping. They leveled the protective walls of Jerusalem and demolished the magnificent Temple of Solomon. Jerusalem was virtually a rubble heap. The Babylonians appreciated talent and learning, that able people are the engine that creates power. So they gathered the cream of Jerusalem and Judah - the leaders, the scholars, the engineers, the merchants, the architects, even the priests, and they marched these people and parts of their families through the desert wilderness to Babylon.
Nebuchadrezzar's sensitivity to homesickness didn't extend to the Jews. The Babylonian Captivity of the Jews, the Exile, lasted for about seventy years. The captives had children, and those children had children, but they retained their Jewish identity, worshiped the Lord, told stories about their homeland, and continued to long for Jerusalem. The psalmist cries, "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Sion." (Ps 137:1)
They had believed that the Lord would never allow their city to be destroyed; that God would never allow the heathen to occupy Sion and lay waste the Holy of Holies, the meeting point of God and his people, God's tabernacle, his home on earth. They questioned whether God had abandoned and forsaken them. They questioned whether their God was really the one true God. Their way of life, their worship, their certainties, their familiarities, their comfort had been crushed. In their bleak darkness, their desolate sadness, they were tempted to despair, but they kept alive a hope, a hope of return and restoration and renewal. The Greek tragedian, Aeschylus wrote, "I know that men in exile feed on hopes." (1)
The people of New Orleans know something of this temptation to despair and the essential bread of hope. They know about losing their home, about devastation and loss, about having little control over life, about being abandoned, about being separated from family and loved ones, about being an exile in a strange land. They know about waiting, waiting to be relieved, waiting to be restored, waiting for a better world. They have to struggle to keep hope alive. They feed on hope.
Although with a lesser urgency, almost certainly with less suffering and loss, most of us also are waiting for a better world. All of us all feel a lack of control in our lives. We all know about pain and loss, about regret and disappointment. The pace of life, the constant change, the perpetual need to adapt, it unsettles us and leaves us feeling at least a bit unhinged, lost in the wilderness, separated from our home, from where we belong. Hope gives us the power to endure.
The Prophet Isaiah announced the good tidings: "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem." God does not forsake his people. God cares for them. God loves them. Level the mountains, fill in the valleys, make the way straight, smooth the rugged ground. God comes to them, not to judge, but to liberate. God brings them home. God satisfies their patient expectation. God fulfills their hope. That's Isaiah's message to ancient Israel, and it's the gospel to us.
Isaiah announced that Israel's horror and misery was over, the exile was returning home, and the pain had not been in vain. Israel's trials had strengthened and deepened her faith. Just as God had delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt, so now he acted again, releasing his people from bondage and leading them through the wilderness. Isaiah's message is: God forgives; God has granted Israel a new beginning; a better world, a new kingdom, is at hand. In our lives, challenges, trials, pains, sorrows, can work for the good. Everything that happens to us is an opportunity. If we have hope, 'bad things' can renew us. If we have hope, 'bad things' can strengthen our relationship with God.
Like Isaiah, the Good News of Jesus Christ begins with expectation. God comes to those who await him patiently, to those who expect him, to those who long for him. The beginning of Luke's gospel is full of characters waiting upon God. (2) Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist, are waiting. Simeon and Anna are waiting in the Temple, Simeon "looking for the consolation of Israel" and Anna fasting and saying prayers. And, of course, Mary is waiting. They are expectant, prepared for God to come to them.
Mark begins his gospel on the same tone. Israel is waiting upon God. He quotes Isaiah, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord," to signify a mood of expectancy. God has promised that he will come to Israel and make things new. John the Baptist announces that the promise is about to be fulfilled, and all of Jerusalem and surrounding Judea expect it and go out to the wilderness to be part of it. John tells them to repent and to be baptized. That's the response God wants from us so that we can be prepared for his coming.
What is repentance? For most of us, the word has negative connotations, overtones of punishment, something we'd like to avoid. But repentance is a gift, something we have to have again and again and again, constantly throughout life. Sure it involves confession of sin, but it's a lot more than that. It means turning around, changing our mind, changing our heart, re-orienting our life to God, instead of ourselves. Repentance is like conversion, a continual process of growth; it's a great gift, something we seek and nurture with gratitude. It's how we want to live.
What does it look like? For an individual, repentance means turning away from self-preoccupation, delighting not in our virtues or perceived superiority over others, but recognizing our darkness and seeking healing in Christ. Fr Gerald Hughes juxtaposes true and false repentance:
- True repentance brings joy and inner freedom, and false repentance increases anxiety and makes us thin-skinned, defensive.
- True repentance welcomes criticism and learns from it, and false repentance is touchy about criticism and rejects it.
- True repentance brings broader understanding, tolerance of differences, and hope, and false repentance leaves us more rigid, more dogmatic, more intolerant, more likely to condemn.
- True repentance makes us more compassionate, more sensitive to the needs of others, more concerned with justice, and false repentance leaves us with harder hearts, more concerned with the interest of a group or an idea.
- True repentance means that we can laugh at ourselves as well as see humor in almost every situation, and false repentance means that we are unable to laugh at ourselves, to see our absurdity.
- True repentance makes us feel close to God, drawn to God, needing God, and false repentance makes us feel self-sufficient. (3)
Fr Hughes points out that what we say about individuals also applies to groups, groups like churches. A truly repentant church focuses on mission, on sharing God's love and good news, not on its maintenance, not on its own comfort, not on the preservation of its institutional structures or customs. A truly repentant church knows that all securities are provisional and passing away. Life as we know it is a wilderness. The only security, our only home, our only hope, is Jesus. True repentance means that the most important thing is nurturing a real relationship with Jesus.
The church is not a club of the like-minded, but the body of Christ, a home of diverse members, united in trying to love God and one another. So it's a place of friendships and love, of ministry and openness to the different, to the stranger, to the exile. The truth is that we're all exiles.
"Prepare the way of the Lord." In Advent, we remember Joseph and his vulnerable, tender, pregnant wife setting off on a hard journey home. The path had not been made straight, and the crowds didn't welcome them. There was no place for them. And when Mary delivered her son, she laid him in a manger. There, lying in the manger - and soon on the altar, is our hope, our home - the place where we belong, the place where we are accepted, the place where we are loved.
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
1. Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), Agamemnon, l. 1668.
2. Henry J. M. Nouwen, 'A Spirituality of Waiting,' in The Weavings Reader, John S. Mogabgab, ed., (1993).
3. Gerald Hughes, S. J., God of Surprises, Darton, Longman and Todd (1985), pp. 74-75. Quote is not verbatim.
© 2006 Lane John Davenport
