Isaiah 40:1-11
‘Console my people, console them.’
Today’s text from Isaiah is perhaps one of the most familiar of the all texts used during Advent. Handel’s Messiah has surely played a part in making this part of our collective scriptural psyche. The words of comfort come from the beginning of the Second Book of Isaiah. This is a different thought world to the First Book of Isaiah and likely is written some 160 years later. By the time of writing and redacting one of the most defining moments in Israel’s history has taken place; Jerusalem and its Temple have been devastated and the people deported to Babylon. Exile in Babylon was a time of soul searching for Judah. Stripped of everything that gave them identity as God’s people, they feel abandoned and wonder why God has been so silent. Isaiah’s prophecy breaks this silence and offers some hope.
Isaiah paints the scene of a triumphant homecoming for Judah with their time of exile ended. The now familiar theme of reversal is used and we picture a landscape where valleys, hills, ridges and mountains are transformed. It’s likely that image of ‘a straight highway’ will have reminded the hearers of this prophecy of the triumphal journey of the Israelites through the Red Sea and of the entry into the Promised Land. The language of triumph continues as a messenger shouts the joyful news: Here is your God!
I have heard people talk of their experience of the pandemic as ‘exile’. There are certainly similarities in that people were cut off from so many of the ordinary things that gave meaning and purpose to their lives. Many were forced to find new meaning in a daily routine that quickly became monotonous. I have a sense that like the exile for Judah, the pandemic is a defining moment in our history. Perhaps our memories are fading a little now? Perhaps we feel we will always bear the wounds? Whatever your experience of the pandemic, can you hear Isaiah’s words addressed to you: Here is your God. Can you look back and see where God has led you triumphantly back to your homeland?