In the year 539 BC, Cyrus, the ruler of the Persians, conquered the Babylonians. A relatively benign and tolerant ruler, in the following year Cyrus allowed the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem and Judea and resume their customs and traditions, provided that they recognized his authority. Around the time of Cyrus’ decree, the prophet Isaiah wrote these words, which we heard this morning.
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to herthat she has served her term,that her penalty is paid,that she has received from the Lord’s handdouble for all her sins. (Isaiah 40.1-2)
A voice says, Cry outAnd I said, What shall I?All people are grass,their constancy is like the flower of the field.The grass withers, the flower fades,when the breath of the Lord blows upon it… (Isaiah 40.6-7)
When we read Isaiah we should remember that the prophets of Israel were poets. Modern translations of the Bible are helpful, because unlike older translations, the newer ones arrange many of the words of the prophets in poetic lines and verses. Not only was Isaiah a poet, there is an inherently musical quality in many of his words that musicians throughout the ages have recognized.
There can hardly be a person in most churches who can hear or read the first verse of Isaiah 40 without mentally hearing George Frederick Handel’s magnificent setting of the Authorized Version of this text: Comfort ye, my people. That setting, of course, is one of the arias in Handel’s Messiah, an oratorio that premiered in Dublin in 1751
But how many people also hear in their heads Johannes Brahms’ setting of verse 7: The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it. Brahms set Isaiah’s words for his moving German Requiem that premiered in Dresden in 1868.
The two settings could not be more different. Handel’s setting of the words “Comfort ye, my people” is tender, sweet, and lyrical. Brahms’ setting of “the grass withers, the flower fades” is rugged and stern. Handel’s music lulls and soothes us with its message of profound comfort; Brahms’ music is a chilling but necessary reminder of our mortality. Yet, there was one inspiration for both composers: Isaiah’s words spoken to Jewish exiles in faraway Babylon.
What possible connection could the two messages have? Could chapter 40 of Isaiah have been sung by the Jewish exiles in Babylon? We know that they sang. Psalm 137 records the poignant lament of the exiles: “By the rivers of Babylon” there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion… For there our captors asked us for songs and our tormentors asked for mirth… How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137.1-4)
The Jewish exiles in Babylon needed comfort, for they knew all too well that human flesh was as weak and frail as the grass and flowers that briefly flourished on the Judean hillsides before being blasted and withered by the hot, dry winds. Like the scorching sirocco they had seen the Babylonian chariots sweep down on them. They had seen Jerusalem and Solomon’s great temple burn like so much dry grass. And like dry straw scattered in the wind they had been scattered; some of them had gone into exile in Egypt, most had been taken by the enemy to Babylon. What they had not yet seen was this “comfort” of which Isaiah spoke.
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Every year on the second Sunday of Advent we hear the story of Jesus’ baptism. Historically, and despite it being third of the four Gospels in our Bible, Mark’s was the earliest Gospel to be written. No birth story in Mark, no angels and shepherds, no family tree, Mark jumps in right when Jesus’ ministry begins – at the banks of the river Jordan, with a wild man named John, who has been living in the desert.
It’s an odd place for Mark’s story of Jesus to begin – in a location where no one would be looking for God, where there is no heavenly choir, only the shouting of a man clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, [who] ate locusts and wild honey. But this is where Mark’s Gospel begins and he makes it clear that this is an important event. Everyone shows up – rich and poor, people wanting to see a good show, and people longing for change, for something better in their lives. To see a living prophet, to hear his words, this was worth the trek through the heat to the riverbank
And the tone of what Mark has to say is different from the other Gospels too. In the other three, we are brought gently into the story of our Lord, starting with His family lineage, and, despite the angel choirs out in the fields, with his humble birth. We meet Him as a tiny, helpless baby, and only gradually come to know Him as The Son of God. But not in Mark! This Gospel sets the tone for Jesus’ life and ministry – the tone of apocalypse – the end of things, the end of the world.
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. And we agree that the other Gospels, the ones with the baby, the comfy ones, are more to our liking. But “comfort”, as used by Isaiah, and in the Bible in general, doesn’t mean comfortable. Comfort refers to strength – Strengthen my people – says our God, and we really need strength to make the journey of change from what we have become, to the whom – the Whose that we must be.
Advent reminds us that we are exiles. The exiles in Babylon looked back to the days when they lived peacefully in their own lands and looked forward to their return. Like the exiles in Babylon, we live between the times, looking back to God’s coming among us in the Babe of Bethlehem and to His coming again in power and great glory.
The familiar hymns of Advent are often songs of longing and exile: “O come, O come, Emanuel, and ransom captive Israel that waits in lonely exile here”. But Advent points us toward a future when we will be given a new song to sing, not a song of exile but a song of triumphant redemption.
We journey through a world and a time when there is often little sign of God’s presence. The spirit or wind that touches our lives seems too often to be the hot, dry desert wind that withers the flowers of the field. But we journey on with God’s song on our lips and God’s breath in our lungs and God’s spirit sustaining us. We journey on toward a world and a time when the grass and the flowers will flourish, the trees will clap their hands, and all of God’s creation will sing joyously, “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emanuel shall come to thee, O Israel”. Even so, quickly come, Lord Jesus – quickly come.
Let us pray:
Lord God, as we wait, help us to remember and dwell on the salvation You have provided. Help us to remember that the same grace that saved us at the cross is the same grace that sustains us today. Remind us always that Your saving grace is at work in us even now, guiding us, supporting us, and shaping us into the image of your Son Jesus, in whose Name we pray. Amen.