Advent 2, 2023
Isaiah 40, 2 Peter 3, Mark 1
But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. Can you imagine a world in which righteousness is at home? A world in which no child is unwelcome, neglected, abused, unable to sleep at night for pangs of hunger? A world in which love is never betrayed? A world in which addictions and obsessions do not drive otherwise precious people to madness and the lives of their loved ones into chaos? A world in which greed gives place to generosity, suspicion to trust, and malice to goodwill? Where wars and oppressions shall cease? Our reading today from 2 Peter asks us not only to imagine such a world but to long for it with all our hearts -- and so we do, every time we pray with Jesus to his heavenly Father, the God of Israel, Thy kingdom come! Thy will be done!
The text from 2 Peter today tells us that God’s patience with our wicked world will not last forever, that God’s suffers with the sinfulness of this world in order to give time for repentance, that God’s repentant people therefore live by faith in his promise as those on the way to a new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.
This was also the message of John the Baptist, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Live, he demands, as God’s people on the way to a new earth, where righteousness is at home! Come out, then, from that unrighteousness world of the old humanity, take a bath in the river Jordan for all to see as if transiting from wilderness wanderings to a land flowing with milk and honey! Wash the dirt from your skins as a sign of turning from the filth of sin, with the hope and plea for forgiveness and inclusion on the great day when God’s new world arrives. People of God! You are not at home in the world of unrighteousness but rather yearn for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.
This is also message of the remarkable central section of the Book of Isaiah, chapters 40 to 55. Here the prophet preaches to exiles who had been uprooted from Jerusalem by invaders and for forty years now had lived exiled in foreign Babylon. Babylon was the most spectacular city of the world at this time, a monument to imperial glory, decked with slave-built gardens and juggernauts and the temples of many gods. But God’s people have not been at home here. They have not been able to settle down. For all the splendor of ancient Babylon, they longed for little Jerusalem, for Mount Zion and the Temple built by Solomon – how can they sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? They have longed for God to deliver them from exile – as might we all, exiles from Eden that we are.
So after 40 years of exile, the prophet suddenly preaches the gospel: Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, "Here is your God!" And what is the good tidings or gospel of God’s presence which the prophet proclaims to the exiles? See, the Lord GOD comes with might… He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep. God’s people, who cannot settle down in wicked Babylon, howsoever great and glorious! God’s people, who cannot be at home in a city saturated with idols! God’s people, who cannot go along with the wickedness all around you! Lift up your hearts! God comes. He is on the way. That is the gospel --He will gather you up to bring you to new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.
Are you ready for that? Are you really ready to leave behind this world of unrighteousness, no longer to hanker after its fleshpots but like Abraham to follow in faith to new heavens and a new earth? Would you leave the gilded cage of Babylon to return to broken-down Jerusalem? Would you wash away the privileges of our world of unrighteousness in naked hope for a world as yet unseen? A bird in the hand, they say, is worth two in the bush. Better the devil we know, they say, than the devil we don’t. For all its misery and wickedness, this world of unrighteousness all around us has the virtue of being visible and familiar; so we become accustomed to it, settle in and make peace with it. We learn to go along in it to get along and our hearts become attached to its bread and circuses. The season of Advent with John the Baptist wonders about us: Can we tear your hearts free?
In fact when the Jewish exiles in Babylon heard the good tidings that God at last would bring them home to Jerusalem, many resisted; they objected to the uncertainty of the promise and the long difficult travel through the desert through mountain and valleys – new wanderings in the wilderness, like their ancestors had once endured on the way from Egypt to the Promised land.. To this objection, the prophet cried out, in words that Martin Luther King Jr. often voiced to summon courage for the passage: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. In other words the LORD who calls you to His new world also promises to be with you on the journey to it. He will make your passage safe and make the road level. He will lead you on the way as a shepherd leads his flock, for He is not only at the goal waiting for you at the end, but guide present now on the difficult road leading you to that new world where righteousness is at home. So do not object that the way is too hard, do not resist because the trip is too demanding, do not doubt that the goal is uncertain. For the glory of the LORD shall certainly be revealed, and all people shall see it together.
Are you ready then for your Advent journey? Perhaps it is not the fear of the trip or the uncertainty of the goal, but something else, deeper and sneakier, that weighs you down and holds you back. Perhaps you are paralyzed not by fear or doubt but by guilt. Perhaps feelings of shame and unworthiness are such that secretly you do not want that new earth, where righteousness is at home, knowing that you yourself are not righteous, that you would not be at home there. Perhaps like Peter you would respond to the Lord’s call to follow him to a world in which righteousness is at home by saying, “Depart from me for I am a sinful man!” The prophet of the Babylonian exile sensed this same resistance when he preached the good news that God is coming. That is why he began his gospel of deliverance for sinners complicit with their exile announcing God’s majestic forgiveness: Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Never mind, in other words: no matter how bad you feel or how guilty you may really be: God is ready and rich with mercy, ready to forgive and just so God makes you ready, just by saying so with divine enforcement authority. God’s Word does it all.
"See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'" Whether it is the prophet preparing exiles to march across the desert from Babylon to Jerusalem or John the Baptizer preparing the people of first century Judea for the coming of the Messiah, or your preacher today in our little corner of a world where righteousness is not at home, God’s Word does it all, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken. God’s Word makes us ready: it forgives sins, it makes us long for the Promised Land where righteousness is at home, it frees us from addictions to the unrighteousness goods of this world. God’s Word does it all. The people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.
The eternal gospel, the mighty Word of God spoken beforehand as in prophets like the second Isaiah, but once for all in the coming of Jesus Christ at his birth in Bethlehem makes us God’s people; it puts us on our Advent way to join true and faithful Israel, to await new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. There proud Babylon will be but a dim sad memory. “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!” says the Bible’s final book. But the word of our God will stand forever, just as we heard Jesus say last week, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will last forever.” Are you ready?
Lend your ears to God’s glad tidings, set your hearts on His promise of a new earth, where righteousness is at home. Pray fervently and mean it, Thy kingom come thy will be done on earth as in heaven! – and look, just so Lord has made you ready! Christ is born anew in your hearts. He is our righteousness, and He makes himself at home even in our wayward hearts, so that we are no longer at home in our world of unrighteousness. But with Abraham who left his home and family to go the place that God would show him, with the Hebrews on the way from the dark Egypt of this world through the wilderness trials and testings to the promised land, with the exiles returning through the desert, deserting the ill-gotten glories of Babylon to embrace lowly Zion, city of our God, so we too are set out on our Advent journey, looking for the coming of the Christ, the Messiah, the coming King of the new earth, where righteousness is at home. Grant it, Lord, to us all. Amen.