William Yagel
Grace Radford
December 04, 2022
Advent 2, Year A
O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;
before you kings will shut their mouths,
to you the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.
Amen.
Lamentations 1:1-4. That is where we begin our ride today. And it is a ride, and I am going to ask that you hold on, because it may get a little bumpy. I suppose it is obvious since I am beginning with a selection of scripture, even more, a book of the bible, that we didn’t touch today, but my ramblings may seem a little off course. Please just stick with me.
I want to begin with Lamentations because that is one beginning of our Gospel today. It is at least part of the origin story for John the Baptist’s words this morning. As always, the ancient story of the Israelites is interwoven with our story today. Our Christian bible calls the name of this book Lamentations. But in the Hebrew Bible the name is translated simply as “How” and this is short for “How lonely sits the city.”
Chapter 1, verses 1-4:
How lonely sits the city
that once was full of people!
How like a widow she has become,
she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces
has become subject to forced labor.
She weeps bitterly in the night,
with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers,
she has no one to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her;
they have become her enemies.
Judah has gone into exile with suffering
and hard servitude;
she lives now among the nations;
she finds no resting place;
her pursuers have all overtaken her
in the midst of her distress.
The roads to Zion mourn,
for no one comes to the festivals;
all her gates are desolate;
her priests groan;
her young girls grieve,[a]
and her lot is bitter.
Clearly, it sounds like a profound and desolate cry, little wonder why we chose the title of the book. It is one of the great gifts we receive from our ancient, shared story with the Jewish people; we are reminded again and again that we can cry out in desperation and loss. We can cry out in our own anguish and know that God hears us and cares for us. We are invited to say, “this stinks and I don’t like it. I feel abandoned and lost and lonely and I don’t understand WHY.” Our Jewish brothers and sisters provide an honesty of relationship with God that reminds us that God can handle our anger, sadness, and bitterness.
This is not, however, a random cry of lament. Theologians and tradition tell us that this book is lamenting the loss of the first temple in Jerusalem, the center of the faith of the people of Israel. The temple, which was their identity, their seat for God, the center of their spiritual lives in many ways, was built by Solomon, son of their first king, David, and grandson of Jesse, centuries before. In 586 BC their temple was destroyed by the Babylonians after they defeated the Southern Kingdom of Israel called Judah. The people were in despair and historians place the writing of Lamentations, as would make sense, right in the midst of that despair. They fine themselves under the burden of a cruel empire. We know this not just because of the subject, which might be proof enough, but because of what Isaiah says in response to the book!
So, Isaiah, which we did read this morning, but a different section, is a little confusing. I am not going to explain it all right now, but the readers digest is that many theologians attribute the whole of the book of Isaiah to 3 authors or 2 authors and a redactor (kind of like an editor). There is little consensus on details, but lots of agreement on the divisions. So, we find 3 distinct voices in the book of Isaiah and often consider chapters 1-39 as Isaiah 1, chapters 40-55 as Isaiah 2, and chapters 56-66 as Isaiah 3. These the books of Isaiah were written over the course of 225 or so years beginning around 742 BC, with the last one completed before 515 BC . Tradition and our biblical canon has them contained in 1 book, but the evidence points to 3 writers.
So, Chapter 40 of Isaiah as we have it in our bible is what we now consider the first chapter of the second author or Isaiah 2.
I promise we are getting somewhere.
Isaiah 2 was written just before the Babylonians were defeated by the Persians. Why do we care? Because the Persians allowed the Jewish people to return from almost 50 years of exile to their ancestral homes. Hope returns to the people. Lamentations was written just after 586 and Isaiah 2 was prior to 539. Both are written within that 45 year window. I know the history lesson is a lot, but now you have a little bit of the back story of the time between the Babylonian Exile and destruction of the temple in 586 BC and the beginning of the Assyrian rule, which ended the Exile in 539 BC.
Now the connection between these two authors, with the help of biblical scholar Ellen Davis, Lamentations 1:1-4 and Isaiah 40 in response:
Isaiah 40, verse 1 Reads:
“Comfort O comfort my people, says your God.”
Remember that in Lamentations that she had no one to comfort her. Here, God is comforting God’s people.
Isaiah 40, verse 2
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.
In lamentations Judah went into exile with suffering and hard servitude. She had no resting place. The people are lost and broken under the weight of an empire that abuses them, abandoned by God. But now, Israel has served her term, the end of this exile is approaching, joy is on the horizon! She will receive double the good things for her term in exile.
Now these verses are still central to Jewish life still today. They mark the fall of the first temple in the Summer at the observance of Tisha b’Av by reading Lamentations during that first week, then they read from the Isaiah 40 the next week. This is a deep cycle of remembrance for people of the Jewish faith. These selections and their connections would have been well known to first century Palestinian Jews as well. They know well this sweeping story of loss and reconciliation with God. That is important and vital to honor as an element of the faith of our Jewish brothers and sisters.
BUT I am only telling you this part of the story so I can tell you something else!
And the key is what Isaiah offers in the next verse! Where Lamentations offers that the roads to Zion mourn because there is no Zion, there is no temple, there is no house for God?
Isaiah 40:3-5 says
A voice cries out:
“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.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.
Here is the Good News! As I read this to you, I ask you to remember the words from the Gospel of Matthew from this morning! When John the Baptist uses these exact words and credits them to Isaiah now we can hear a little more context. A voice cries out, prepare the way of the Lord. The reconciliation that the Jewish people know from Isaiah is coming to you, be ready! Isaiah spoke of a return to the Holy City and right relationship.
But John the Baptist is re-imagining the covenantal relationship between God and all of humanity. His prophetic voice from the very edge of civilization, from the margins of society is offering an alternative to this vision of a holy city. John leans on what the people understand from their history. They find themselves under the oppression of Empire again, this time the Roman Empire, and they are trying to understand how God will be with them.
This time, though, the promise changes. No longer promising Jerusalem, John, whether he knows it or not, is prophesying the coming of the incarnate God. He is speaking of changing the narrative forever, but he is translating through the scriptures that his audience knows in their very bones from stories that are nearly 600 years old.
So as John the Baptist changed the narrative we still live in that new reality of the incarnate God. Whose revolutionary arrival forever changed salvation. Forever provides Grace. Forever provides Hope. Forever grants peace.
This is why we are making the way straight. Lament this empire no longer, for the King is coming.
Come O come Emmanuel, God with us.
Amen