Posted by Darren:
1 Thes 5:16-24
Psalm 851-2, 8-13
John 1:1-8 1:6-8, 19-28
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
Song ideas for the week: Together To Celebrate
I’ve got to stop reading and thinking the same things as Larli, she’s written a great reflection on this week’s reading from Isaiah…
Anna suggests that the intended audience of the passage from Isaiah are those who left the lands of exile, where they’d become comfortable and used to and who now find themselves returning to a crumbled and sad picture of Jerusalem. After leaving the places where they had found refuge, comfort, family and friends they now find themselves in an alien space, and as one would expect they’re pretty down about it all.
This is a pep talk…
This is the speech that a Prophet has to make at least once in their life, it’s a call to not only get ones hands dirty but towards hope, towards the knowledge that their God is a God who has made a covenant with the people that they will not be forsaken, that God will not walk away from them.
I’m not sure how Isaiah would have done this, how does one give such a phenomenal pep talk? Images of movies like Varsity Blues, Friday Night Lights, Remember the Titans come to mind, was Isaiah like a football coach? Did he gather the people around, yell at them for a while and build their adrenalin? Or was he calmer, did he do it with small groups, how passionate would he have been?
No matter how he spoke to the people, the pep talk worked, people were inspired, just as we should be when we hear the verses spoken to us. We should be hearing Isaiah’s proclamation of a God who’s covenant with us is everlasting, who has called us to a place to build his Kingdom, to allow justice reign, to proclaim freedom to the captives. We, like the people who found themselves in a destructed Jerusalem need to be reminded and encouraged, we need to once again hear God’s word proclaimed to us in this way…
But here’s the catch…
I don’t think that we’re in Jerusalem, a part of me still thinks that we’re sitting in the nice and comfortable lands that we had moved to in a time of exile, we’re still sitting pretty, eating foreign foods that we now claim as ours, working in jobs that are now ours, living on land that we think is ours and worshiping a God who we think is happy with where we are.
As much as Isaiah’s message should be an encouragement to each of us it should also be a reminder for us to look back to the previous chapters when Isaiah had to encourage people to give up their jobs, families, house, friends and to walk into the desert again, to chance the barren land, to walk amongst the rocks and the sand of the wilderness like our ancestors did many years before that.
Advent isn’t just a time of waiting, it’s of preparation, just like John had to prepare himself and the world for Jesus’ coming we are to prepare, just as Isaiah had to prepare the people for what was ahead of them we have to prepare, just as Mary and Joseph had to prepare for the birth of their child we are to prepare…
But this reading, and the chapters prior to it remind us that preparation means we are to move first, we have to enter the wilderness first, we have to let go first, in John’s words we have to repent first and in Isaiah’s words we’re to re-enter the wilderness first…
Amen
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