Text used – Isaiah 40:1-11

• This morning marks the 2^nd Sunday of Advent – the 2^nd Sunday of this Advent series that we’re embarking on together this year.
  • Series: “Where We Belong” → texts and main ideas/organization come from A Preacher’s Guide to Lectionary Sermon Series, vol. 2[1]
    • This particular series by Tuhina Verma Rasche, and ELCA minister currently serving as the Digital Campus Pastor at University AME Zion Church in Palo Alto, CA → her description: Everyone may have a different definition of home and the places where we belong. Some people may find home not in physical spaces, but instead in belonging to a community that accepts us for the entirety of who God created us to be. Advent and Christmas are a sort of homecoming. God found a new home among us in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. God will find this home again in the second coming of Christ as we await that return. The dwelling places where we find Christ today can be in mangers, surrounded by parents, shepherds, magi, and a variety of animals – and also through the moves of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes those dwelling places can take us by surprise; sometimes those dwelling places can also be where we experience the most comfort and joy, where we truly belong in creation. As the liturgical year begins anew, where do we physically, mentally, and spiritually find ourselves as we make preparations for the coming of Christ?[2]
    • Last week: began the series by talking about beginnings and endings and how God’s time differs from our own → chance to recognize that the beginning of the story may come out of the end of something else and that the end of the story may be more of a beginning in disguise
    • Today: turn to the journey itself – the journey of seeking out where we belong with God → And it’s a journey that begins where so, so many journeys begin: in the wilderness … in the wild places.
  • Title for today comes from timeless classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak[3]
    • Story of Max, a boy who’s having A Day: causing mischief, being wild, talking back → sent to bed without supper → “That very night in Max’s room a forest grew” → turns Max’s bedroom into a fantastical world → Max boards boat and sails off into adventure “to where the wild things are” – land of huge and terrible beasts → Max orders the beasts to “Be still!” and tames them by staring into their great yellow eyes without blinking → beasts make Max King of the Wild Things → “And now,” cried Max, “let the wild rumpus start!” → after pages of wild rumpusing, Max orders the beasts to stop the rumpus and sends them to bed without supper → Max realizes he is lonely “and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all” → smells good things to eat → gives up being king of where the wild things are → Max leaves despite the protestations of the wild things (who want him to stay) → ends up back at home and finds his supper waiting for him in his room
    • Truly such a perfect illustration for this intersection of Advent and journeying and God and wilderness
• Begin today with text from Isaiah
  • Whole of Is = time and place and experience of deepest wilderness → Remember that Isaiah was written during the Babylonian exile. Now, we’ve talked a lot over the years about the Babylonian exile because it was such a formative part of Israel’s history, especially pertaining to their waiting for the Messiah to come.
    • Talked a lot about the historical aspects of it
      • Happened around 600 BCE
      • Babylonian empire conquered Judah → destroyed the Temple (1^st destruction)
      • Took all the best and brightest Jews back to live as captives in Babylon for ~70 yrs. → finally released and allowed to return to Judah by Cyrus the Great, king of Babylon around 515 BCE
    • Talked about the geographical aspects of it
      • Babylonian Empire during the time of the exile = vast area that covered parts of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and down into Egypt
    • Prophets that delivered God’s word to the people during that time
      • Isaiah = in Babylon
      • Jeremiah = back in Jerusalem
    • As I said, these are all things we’ve talked about many times before. However, we don’t often talk about the experience of the people during that time.
      • Hear a hint of their distress in today’s passage: Comfort, comfort my people! says your God. Speak compassionately to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her compulsory service has ended, that her penalty has been paid, that she has received the Lord’s hand double for all her sins![4] → You aren’t in need of comfort and compassion unless you are already in distress – anxious and afraid, frustrated and depressed. Isaiah uses telling phrases like “compulsory service,” “penalty,” and “sins.” Clearly, this was not a good time for the people of Israel.
        • Heb. “compulsory service” = violent connotations → same word as army service, warfare
        • Heb. “penalty” = connotations of guilt → “activity that is crooked or wrong,” an offense or a punishment
        • Heb. “sins” = connotation of atonement → a particular word that makes it clear the people have acknowledged their sins and are seeking pardon for them
      • But in all our discussion of the Babylonian exile over the years, have we ever listened to the words of the people – the words of their worship, their songs of lament – to get ourselves into a deeper place of understanding? → Psalm 137
        • This is the utter despair. This is the desperation. This is the grief laid bare and raw. This is the lament of a people engulfed by their wilderness.
          • Wilderness can be grief
          • Wilderness can be anger
          • Wilderness can be fear
          • Wilderness can be hopelessness
          • Wilderness can be unease – a sense of not knowing what comes next or how to get there
          • Wilderness can be separation/isolation
• Friends, there are so many ways and places we find ourselves in the wilderness – in those wild places in our hearts and mind and souls, in those wild places in the world around us where things feel unstable, unsettled, uncomfortable, and unmanageable. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to be able to spend only a short amount of time in those wild places, escaping them quickly or even being able to see them coming and avoiding them altogether. But then … there are those others times – those times when we find ourselves blindsided by the wild places, knee-deep in the muck and mire, the inescapable pull of them before we even realized that’s where we were headed. Yes, friends, wild places can be difficult places to anticipate, difficult places to navigate, and difficult places to escape. Fortunately, there are two things about wild places that we are promised again and again.
  • First: we have each other in wild places → Whether we are stuck in the fearfulness of the wild places together or whether we are there to lead one another through, wild places are often not as lonely as we think.
    • Interesting point made by scholar having to do with the plural nature of the addresses in today’s passage – include both masculine and feminine plural commands as well as masculine and feminine singular commands: That is to say, the passage contains not one commission but three. Its inclusion of masculine and feminine, singular and plural subjects yields a broadly inclusive call to action and proclamation. God’s plan for salvation, restoration, and return is collaborative. The multiple addressees don’t only span differences of gender and number. The commands range across space, addressing audiences in exile and in the homeland, separated by hundreds of miles. And they speak to an audience in the space between, whose activity will make possible the reunion of compatriots long separated from one another. This inclusive exhortation furnishes an opportunity for [all]. Each member of the community, both present and absent, receives a commission to preach and transform the very landscape to make possible the shared experience of redemption and return.[5]
  • Even more importantly: God is with us in those wild places → Even when we feel like we’re wandering the wilderness all alone, we are never truly alone.
    • Today’s reading begins with that promise – those words of comfort and promise of compassion: Comfort, comfort my people! says your God. Speak compassionately to Jerusalem
    • Today’s reading continues with that promise: A voice is crying out: “Clear the Lord’s way in the desert!Make a level highway in the wilderness for our God!Every valley will be raised up, and every mountain and hill will be flattened. Uneven ground will become level, and rough terrain a valley plain.The Lord’s glory will appear, and all humanity will see it together; the Lord’s mouth has commanded it.”[6] → God has already led the people through the wilderness once – as God led them out of slavery in Egypt to the promised land – and God will do it again … and again … and again.
      • Remember what we said when we were talking about the Babylonian exile? God spoke to the people through two prophets during this time
        • Isaiah = with the people in Babylon
        • Jeremiah = with the people left behind in Jerusalem
        • Even when they were a nation forcibly divided by distance and violence and generations, God remained with the people … with all the people. And God promised to not only be there in the wilderness with them but to send someone to lead them out.
          • Promise heard in today’s Scripture
          • Promise fulfilled by John the Baptist as he prepared the way for Jesus (beginning of Mt’s gospel): In those days John the Baptist appeared in the desert of Judea announcing, “Change your hearts and lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!” He was the one of whom Isaiah the prophet spoke when he said: The voice of one shouting in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord; make his paths straight.” … At that time Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan River so that John would baptize him. John tried to stop him and said, “I need to be baptized by you, yet you come to me?” Jesus answered, “Allow me to be baptized now. This is necessary to fulfill all righteousness.”[7]
      • Rasche: There’s something interesting about Isaiah’s words and the words of the gospel. God is found in the most unexpected of places. God’s out in the wilderness. And even if God’s people have royally screwed up, God clears a way home for them. God knows our wilderness. God’s not just some entity out there, but God, Christ, knows our wilderness experiences – because God’s been there too.[8]
• Friends, this whole season is about waiting for a God who was born into a wild place – the wild place of a manger and the wild place of humanity. It’s a season about waiting for God to return once again to bring God’s kingdom of joy into to this wild place that we call life once and for all. And it’s a season about examining our own wild place wanderings and looking for ways to find both God and one another. – text: Go up on a high mountain,messenger Zion! Raise your voice and shout, messenger Jerusalem! Raise it; don’t be afraid; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” Here is the Lord God, coming with strength, with a triumphant arm, bringing his reward with him and his payment before him. Like a shepherd, God will tend the flock; he will gather lambs in his arms and lift them onto his lap. He will gently guide the nursing ewes.[9] → Thanks be to God. Amen.

[1] A Preacher’s Guide to Lectionary Sermon Series: Thematic Plans for Years A, B, and C, vol. 2, compiled by Jessica Miller Kelley. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press), 2019.

[2] Tuhina Verma Rasche, “Advent/Christmas series: Where We Belong” in A Preacher’s Guide to Lectionary Sermon Series: Thematic Plans for Years A, B, and C, vol. 2. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2019), 79-80.

[3] Maurice Sendak. Where the Wild Things Are. (New York: Harper Collins), 2012.

[4] Is 40:1-2.

[5] Anathea Portier-Young. “Commentary on Isaiah 40:1-11” from Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-isaiah-401-11-10.

[6] Is 40:3-5.

[7] Mt 3:1-3, 13-15.

[8] Rasche, 82-83.

[9] Is 40:9-11.

Text used – Mark 13:24-37

• Let me ask you a question this morning: Does time move in one single direction – forward – or is it more fluid … more overlapping … more cyclical?
  • Don’t worry → not a question I expect you to answer definitively
  • Western world: we have a very linear, one-way view of time → There was yesterday. There is today. There will be tomorrow. But all the things that did happen, are happening, or will happen are singular events. They occur once and then never again. We can learn from past events and hope for future events, but they only come around once.
  • Many other worldviews (Australian Aboriginal culture, Native Americans, Buddhism, Hinduism, Aztecs, ancient Greeks, many African cultures, etc.[1]): time is more cyclical
    • Scholar Howard Morphy at Australian National University describes cyclical time: Some events, like eating food, happen each day. Some changes, like the Sun rising above the horizon, are visible in minutes. Other events, such as major ceremonial gatherings, occur after months or years of preparation and some changes, such as human aging, occur over a lifetime. All these can be nested within cycles of repetition in which the uniqueness of each individual event is lost. … While different events have their own durations and are caught up in independent rhythms associated with seasonality, with cycles of reproduction and growth, and with celestial movements, the very fact that the one event can be used as a sign of the other (or as a metaphor or analogy for the other) brings them together.[2] → Following this worldview, time is more a spiral than anything with various events coming around and around again, and the echoes of those events from previous years and previous generations tie them all together. To use a holiday example, the act of putting up the Christmas tree this year recalls Christmas trees we’ve put up in the past and connects us to each of those times.
  • Particularly drawn to the part of Morphy’s description that links past, present, and future through the use of signs and metaphors: event A in the past was a sign that event B would happen in the future, so those two events are linked together in the spiral of time → Nowadays, we have a thoroughly Westernized grip on time – an understanding of time as a commodity more than anything. We spend We bank time. We earn time. And we admonish those who waste time. And yet in the life of the church, the way we follow the ebbs and flows of the liturgical season is a much more cyclical view. Each December, we reconnect to the story of Advent and prepare ourselves for the birth of the Messiah. Each Lent, we reconnect ourselves with the story of that same Messiah’s last weeks and days and hours. Each Easter, we rejoice anew in the story of the Messiah’s escape from death and the tomb into eternal life. Each Pentecost, we celebrate the birth of the church through the burning fire and powerful wind of the Holy Spirit. We share in the same stories year after year because they connect us to Christians throughout the ages.
  • Cyclical view of time = prevalent throughout Scripture as well
    • Time and again, God refers to Godself using some variation on the formula “God of your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”
    • Entire work of the prophets = speak God’s words into a particular time but to connect that to a time to come
    • Paul’s entire ministry is built on conveying meaning and faith through the past actions and teachings, life and death and resurrection of Jesus
    • Jesus spends much of his ministry interpreting First Testament Scriptures for the day
      • Also times when Jesus speaks to the future
• Today’s text falls into that last category. It is a text embedded deep in cyclical time.
  • Not exactly the cheerful, Christmas-is-coming text we’re expecting on this 1^st of Advent: In those days, after the suffering of that time, the sun will become dark, and the moon won’t give its light. The stars will fall from the sky, and the planets and other heavenly bodies will be shaken.[3]
    • Unexpected because of the apocalyptic nature → Most people don’t tend to put much stock in the whole “the end is near” idea.
      • Mock it in popular culture – films, etc.
      • Makes for a snappy rock lyrics – R.E.M: “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!”
      • Becomes a distressing preoccupation for some – those solely focused on reading the prophecies of Scripture (esp. Revelation) as a word-for-word predictor of world events
      • And yet, when we read these words of Jesus – words about “the Human One coming in the clouds with great power and splendor” – we have to think about the context into which these words were spoken.
        • Jesus’ time: Jews were under the imperial thumb of the Roman Empire
          • Occupied
          • Taxed → insult of their own hard-earned wages being handed over to their oppressors added to the injury of that occupation
          • The Jews – and all the other cultures and nations subsumed into the Roman Empire – were given a modicum of freedom … but make no mistake, friends. They weren’t free.
        • Time when Mk’s gospel was written = chaotic, dangerous, and ugly
          • Roman’s had just destroyed the Temple for the 2^nd (and final) time → swift, harsh, total reaction to a Jewish revolt in 66 CE (roughly 30 yrs. after Jesus’ death/resurrection) that led to the first Roman-Jewish war[4]
          • Christians were facing persecution
          • I can imagine it would have felt like the end of the world to anyone living through those times.
    • Text is also unexpected because it seems to begin at the end → We’re beginning the season of Advent … with this passage from the end of Jesus’ life and pointing to the 2^nd coming of the Messiah? What? Ah, but that’s our linear view of time showing again.
      • Scholar: It can seem strange, at first, to begin our anticipation of the birth of Jesus by being exhorted to wait for his coming again. After all, this talk of Jesus’ return seems out of sequence because, in the context of the liturgical year, we are still awaiting his birth. In one important respect, however, it is entirely fitting, because it places us squarely with those who awaited the birth of the Messiah. Neither those who awaited the first coming of the Messiah, nor those who now await his return, know when he will appear.[5] → And there it is, friends. There’s the point: the waiting.
        • Cyclical waiting that keeps us grounded in the full story of Christ and his purpose
          • Jesus’ beginning = end of the separation btwn God and humanity
          • Jesus’ ending = beginning of a new life in which death has lost its eternal hold on us
• As we read the Scriptures that lead up to Jesus’ birth on Christmas Eve and wander our way through another Advent season, we are reading texts of waiting. We are enfolding ourselves once again in God’s story in one of the in-between chapters – a chapter that pauses and anticipates, a chapter that holds its breath and hovers on the edges … waiting.
  • Waiting with a pregnant Mary
  • Waiting with a pregnant Elizabeth
  • Waiting with Joseph in all his multi-faceted anxiousness
  • Waiting with prophet Isaiah for the One who is to come
  • Waiting with Anna and Simeon in the Temple
  • We inhabit each of those stories of waiting whenever we read them. We let the cycle of those stories wash into our own story as God’s time circles around again.
• But we’re also in the midst of our own waiting – waiting for Christ to return to join heaven and earth in eternal joy and rejoicing. → rest of today’s Scripture reading speaks to this 2^nd kind of waiting
  • Speaks of the unpredictability of that time: But nobody knows when that day or hour will come, not the angels in heaven and not the Son. Only the Father knows.[6]
  • Most importantly, speaks of the kind of waiting we should be doing – active, intentional, attentive
    • Parable of the fig tree: tender branches + new leaves = summer[7] → So watch for signs and be cognizant of what they might mean.
    • Example of someone leaving their house and making sure their servants and doorkeeper remained ready for their return[8]
    • Jesus: Watch out! Stay alert! You don’t know when the time is coming. … Therefore, stay alert! You don’t know when the head of the household will come, whether in the evening or at midnight, or when the rooster crows in the early morning or at daybreak. Don’t let him show up when you weren’t expecting and find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to all: Stay alert![9]
      • Lillian Daniel, UCC pastor and author, sheds light on where/how Jesus’ call to alertness clashes with the Christmas culture that surrounded us this time of year: With all there is to get ready for the holidays, secularly and sacredly, nobody needs to tell us to “keep awake.” … But let us be clear that while the world’s busyness may seem to be pointed toward Christmas, it is seldom pointed toward the coming Christ child. … These days we are startled into extra hours of wakefulness in a liturgical season that annoyingly presumes we might be asleep. No wonder we tune it out, like teenagers hearing a parent’s repetitive lecture and knowing that mom simply does not understand. But of course, God does understand. In this way, the Scripture from long ago reads us, not the other way around. In Advent, we are indeed asleep to much of what matters. … Amidst the holiday parties and late-night shopping trips, the gospel reminds us to be awake to God in the world. This is a way of being awake that might actually be restful, and give us peace.[10]
• This, friends, is how we are to wait for Christ, both as we enter again into the ancient stories of that first waiting and as we contemplate our own 2^nd-coming waiting. It’s not a calculating kind of waiting – a waiting in which we are called to go through mental acrobatics to try to discern the exact date and time. Jesus specifically says, “Don’t do that! You can’t ” It’s a wide-awake kind of waiting – a waiting that looks for God active in the world around us, the people around us.
  • Central element to that waiting = HOPE
    • Reason we’ve switched to blue as our liturgical color for advent
      • Color of anticipating/preparing
      • BUT also color of hope
      • And it’s critical that we remember hope this season.
    • Keeps waiting tinged/twinkling with possibility and God’s goodness
    • Keeps a sense of anticipation and expectation in the waiting → When we are hoping to see God and expecting to see God, it’s easier to find God working in the world around us. Think of it this way: it’s the kind of waiting that lifts our eyes to our surroundings as we walk, noticing what’s going on around us, instead of focusing our eyes on our feet. It’s the kind of hope that finds ends in beginnings … the kind of hope that finds beginnings in endings … the kind of hope that finds God working through it all: past, present, and future together. Amen.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/science/time/Cyclic-view-of-time-in-the-philosophy-of-history.

[2] Howard Morphy. “Australian Aboriginal Concepts of Time” in The Story of Time. (Santa Fe: Merrel Holberton, 1999), 264, 265. Found at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282818866_Australian_Aboriginal_Concepts_of_Time.

[3] Mk 13:24-25.

[4] https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/faq/destruction-second-temple-70-ce.

[5] Martin B. Copenhaver. “First Sunday of Advent – Mark 13:24-37, Homiletical Perspective” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Year B, vol. 1. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 21, 23.

[6] Mk 13:32.

[7] Mk 13:28-29.

[8] Mk 13:34.

[9] Mk 13:33, 35-37.

[10] Lillian Daniel, “First Sunday of Advent – Mark 13:24-37, Pastoral Perspective” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Year B, vol. 1. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 20, 22, 24.