The Third Sunday in Advent
“What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? What then did you go out to see?”
When Isaiah prophesied the words we hear today in the first lesson, it was during a period in Israel’s history when Kings were ruling Israel. Before this, Israel was ruled by judges, of which Samuel the prophet was the last. He had appointed his sons to lead after him, but they were not faithful like Samuel ,and during his time the people come to him and demand the establishment of a monarchy - they want a king.
Samuel knew that this desire for an earthly king was a kind of rejection of God as King, it was a falling away from faithfulness in God, but God relents and gives them what they want and in time Saul is anointed King, but things don’t go well. Saul is disobedient towards God and eventually the Lord sends the Philistines against Israel and Saul is killed and David comes to reign.
Isaiah enters the scene several hundred years later, called to be a messenger or prophet of God to the leaders of Israel and to the people who were often in rebellion against God and against the covenant they had with God. Isaiah is often given strong words for Israel, warnings about what will happen and what God will allow to happen if they continue to turn away, but at others times Isaiah offers words of great hope to them, reasons for why obedience and faith should be their pursuit.
Isaiah will warn of the purifying fire and judgement that will come upon Jerusalem, but also speak of the vision of the new Jerusalem; he will call down Kings for their wickedness, but then remind the people that the tree their enemies hewed down will spring forth a branch of hope from the stump, from the family of David, and this figure, this branch, will be called Emmanuel or ‘God with us’.
Isaiah is often thought of as the Advent prophet, as so many of his prophecies are so directly and clearly fulfilled in the coming of Jesus, and so many verses from his prophecies are heard all throughout our services in Advent and at Christmas. The portion of Isaiah’s prophecy we hear today is portion of that joyous vision of what is to come, spoken to a people struggling with their faithfulness, struggling with hope for the future and what the future may look like, “Say to those with fearful hearts, ‘Be strong and do not fear, your God will come…he will come to save you…the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped…a highway will be there, called the way of Holiness…’”
This is the role of prophets: to prepare a way, a road on which we can journey towards hope, to hear God proclaim the things we need to hear even if we are hearing them in a moment or a time where hope is fleeting, even if that hope is coming…but not yet. On the Third Sunday in Advent, on which we think about joy, we also think about another prophet who is central to Advent, one whom even Jesus describes in the Gospel today as a prophet, but even more than a prophet: his own cousin, John the Baptist.
John was an odd-duck, prophet, hermit (of sorts), and one who wore animal skins and lived off of insects and wild honey. It’s possible that John was a member of a somewhat mysterious community of faithful people called the Qu’mran Community, people who – like monks or hermits – lived simply in the wilderness and devoted their lives to prayer and preparation for the coming of the Messiah, the one whom Isaiah and all the Prophets had been preparing the people for so long.
Whoever John was, he was someone upon whose life God had placed a particular call, God had asked something very important and very special of John, and that was to be someone who watched, waited, and prepared others for the coming of that sprig of hope that would grow from the stump (Isaiah), one who John would describe as someone whose sandals John himself was not even worthy to untie. John is the one, Jesus says in the Gospel, whom Malachi foretold, one who would be sent ahead of the Messiah to prepare the way ahead of him.
I said this week at an Evensong meditation that John’s work of preparation was to call us to get ourselves and our hearts in order. You might think of that parable from the Gospels when Jesus says that we must sweep out the house of hearts to be a place fit for God to dwell in; but emptying it of its clutter, of its distractions is never enough, it must be filled with what is good. An empty house, even if it is clean of dirt and empty of clutter, is not a hospitable or welcoming place. What is that clutter within our hearts that needs unpacking, sorting, and sweeping out? Those things that are more barriers to knowing and receiving God’s love than they are helps.
John’s role was unique because he stood on the doorstep of this monumental change in how God relates to us; he stood on the doorstep of God’s coming to us, rather than our trying to get to God. John is trying to prepare people to see that the birth of this little baby, his cousin, is not the birth of another prophet, or a powerful teacher – but the birth of one who will alter the course of that downward spiral that humanity has been in since we snacked on an apple in a garden.
And so today, with John the Baptist in prison awaiting his execution by Herod, he hears that the one he’d been getting people ready to meet had come, and he sends his disciples out to ask Jesus if he is the one, and what does Jesus do? He quotes Isaiah, the part we hear this morning – blind see, lame walk, lepers healed, deaf hear – to show them: all of those promises of that future sprig of hope growing from the dead and dry stump, the promises of that new life of healing and abundance…deserts turned to oases…I am the one Isaiah told you about.
When John’s followers find and approach Jesus they ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” John the Baptist’s work of preparing hearts for the Messiah was so that we might recognize the one; our work through this season of Advent as we labour to prepare ourselves for Jesus’ first coming, is to help us to have the eyes to see that there is no other saviour for whom we wait, there is nothing more for us to look for than him, no other or greater power than him, nothing that will patch that hole in us or heal that wound that we have except him, no one that will be the answer to those sighs and hidden longings of our hearts…but him.
Too often we can be like the ones Jesus hints at when he asks what the people went into the wilderness to look for when they sought out John, “A reed shaken by the wind? (someone with no backbone) Someone dressed in soft robes?”; that is, what are you looking for? An easier way, are you wanting a saviour/Messiah who won’t put such a cost on following him, maybe a saviour made in your own image or who only asks of you what you’re comfortable with? Preparing the way within us, as John strove to do for those he met, is about softening and opening our hearts to see God our salvation in the face of this little child of Bethlehem, and to know with confidence not just this season but always – that we’re not waiting for someone else. He has come, he is here, and he will come again and his call on us is to be like John to prepare the way within us for his second coming, and to go into the world and to prepare the hearts of others to receive this good news.
