"The Promise of Advent"

Sermon by The Rev. Cindy Carter

December 10, 2023

Our reading from the Hebrew scriptures today opens the part of the book that has been attributed to an anonymous prophet, usually given the name Second Isaiah. While we know little about the prophet, we do know that it was a difficult time indeed for God’s people. It was a time of defeat and exile.

In its wars with the Babylonians, Judah had been overwhelmingly defeated. In the initial Babylonian war, Judah’s capital city had been captured. The king, his family, and many others had been deported to Babylon. 

Ten years later, Judah was again at war with the Babylonians. This time, Jerusalem had been destroyed, and its walls leveled. The Temple, the center of what it meant to be God’s people, the basis of their identity as a people, had been burned. The Davidic family was removed from the throne and more Judeans were taken from their homeland and deported.

Could things have been more miserable for God’s people? Could things have been more hopeless? Could God’s peoples’ sense of abandonment been greater?

But, God has a new message for God’s suffering people. And, today we’ve heard about this anonymous prophet’s commissioning to deliver this new message.

Comfort, O comfort my people. 

Comfort, O comfort my people. 

Now, those words probably sound familiar to us as we’ve sung them in a beloved Advent hymn or as we’ve heard them sung by a clear tenor voice in Messiah. But we shouldn’t get too warm and cozy with them. As one commentator has written, these words are more than a “quaint…decoration for the holiday season.” They are a “bold declaration about the character of God offered to a demoralized people.”

In our reading today, we see a council of the heavenly hosts, assembled before God, as an end to strife and forgiveness of the peoples’ sins are divinely pronounced. God’s will is for comfort and consolation to people who have been in the depths of despair and hopelessness.

In response to God’s imperative for comfort and consolation, a voice in the heavenly assembly called for a straight, level highway to be constructed so that the exiles can return home from Babylon. The exiles’ return would reveal God’s glory for all to see. 

Then another voice in the assembly proclaimed that God’s declarations are firm. God’s promises are eternal, unlike the fleeting, fading promises of human beings. 

But a human voice was needed – needed to deliver the message to God’s people. From God and the heavenly assembly, we hear the words – 

Herald of good tidings…lift up your voice with strength…do not fear.

We know that the time Judah’s exile would truly end soon, just as promised. The Persian ruler Cyrus would conquer the Babylonian Empire and send the exiles home. 

We don’t know much about this anonymous prophet called Second Isaiah, but we do know about this message of comfort and consolation, forgiveness and restoration, return and hope, that was given by God to be shared with all. 

It is a message we have heard from prophetic human voices in different times and different places. It is a message we will hear in voices during the Advent season, in the voices of John the Baptizer and a young woman named Mary. 

I believe that we, as individual followers of Jesus and as the church, are commissioned to share this message in our time and in our place. Hu man voices are still needed to share God’s message, just as the voice of Second Isaiah was needed. We are commissioned and empowered to share the message of God’s fierce love, this one who comes with might. 

We are commissioned and empowered to share the message of God’s tender compassion, this one who comes with the gentleness of a shepherd tending a flock. 

We are commissioned and empowered to speak words of comfort and consolation, forgiveness and restoration, return and hope, to anyone who feels separated and abandoned by God.

Herald of good tidings…lift up your voice with strength…do not fear.

The promise of Advent is that God will come.

AMEN.