Messiah Time by The Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
Posted on
Advent 2, December 7, 2014
The Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
It’s Messiah time again. Yes, Jesus the Messiah time – that’s most important. But also, Handel’s Messiah time. For me, there’s no one thing that epitomizes this holy season more than the wonderful oratorio by George Frideric Handel, one of the most frequently performed musical works in Western music.
So, you’ve got to know how happy I am with just hearing the opening verses from our Hebrew scriptures this morning from the prophet Isaiah as appropriated by Handel:
“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
And then the portion that John the Baptist borrowed from Isaiah in announcing the coming of Jesus the Messiah, “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight, and the rough places plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”
Brothers and sisters: It’s Messiah time again on planet earth! Hallelujah! Whoops, that comes later.
Now, did you notice that the text from Isaiah begins with the admonition of God to the prophet to “comfort” God’s people? Who doesn’t like a good comforting? So are you ready for some good comforting?
First, though, please permit me a couple of minutes of historical background. We need to know or remember that in 587 BCE the Jewish nation had been defeated by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia. Thousands of Jews and their king, Jehoicim, were then taken captiveand carried off to Babylonia, a country that encompasses much of modern day Iraq. Some were even forced into slavery. And what separated Babylonia and their homeland? The same thing that separates Iraq and Israel today: a desert wilderness.
Long story short, some 40 plus years after being taken captive, a man, Isaiah, stands among the people and proclaims that he’s received a word from God. “Gather round,” he says. “Listen up: God says that we have suffered enough. We’re going to get to go back home! Soon!”
Talk about words of hope, of promise, of comfort!
So, how was God going to pull this off? Well, Isaiah says poetically: through a divine road construction program. More than 500 miles of highway, so to speak, would be built across the wilderness – a new infrastructure that would alter the natural features of the land. By God’s hand mountains would be leveled, valleys lifted up, crooked ways made straight, rough places be made smooth. All for the sake of the people of God who could then go home after nearly 50 years in exile.
And it came to pass. God made good on God’s promise: through the pagan King Cyrus of Persia who would conquer Babylonia. Not surprisingly, this rescue from exile by God would eventually become the talk of the Jewish world: What a God we have!
But then more troubles came. Political troubles. First Greece, then Rome. Now, they were often treated as servants in their own land. They could not imagine a future – unless God intervened again.
So along comes a man named John who caught God’s vision same as Isaiah had some 500 plus earlier. Taking Isaiah’s words, he applied them to what the Messiah, Jesus, would do for the Jewish people in their time.
In effect, John says Jesus will comfort them. Not by patting them on the back and saying, “Now, now, don’t cry.” But by helping God’s people reaffirm their first loyalty to God and God’s way of life. For this, you see, is the way to genuine, lasting comfort and peace.
As in Isaiah’s time, so in John’s and Jesus’ time: this would be a time of coming home. Coming home to the way, the truth, the life that is God’s clear intention for humanity. A way, truth and life that you and I have been blessed and privileged to know in Jesus of Nazareth whom we call Christ, Messiah.
Accordingly, our scriptures today are an announcement of returning, of coming home, coming home to our true home following God’s way.
Dan Wakefield is a man who took 40 modern years in the wilderness before he found his way home. In his book "Returning," he describes how he wandered away from God, how his life as an adult became total chaos.
But then, he writes, "I cannot pinpoint any particular time when I suddenly believed in God again. I only know that such belief came to seem as natural as for all but a few stray moments of 25 or more years before it had been inconceivable. I realized this while looking at fish.
"I had gone with my girlfriend to the New England Aquarium, and as we gazed at the astonishingly brilliant colors of some of the small tropical fish -- reds and yellows and oranges -- and watched the amazing lights of the flashlight fish that blinked on like the beacons of some creature of a sci-fi epic, I wondered how anyone could think that all this was the result of some chain of accidental explosions! There had to be a God! Yet. . . to try to convince me otherwise even 5 years before would have been hopeless. Was this what they called 'conversion'?"
He continues. "The term bothered me because it suggested being 'born again' and, like many of my contemporaries, I had been put off by the melodramatic nature of that label. Besides, I didn't "feel" 'reborn.' No voice came out of the sky nor did a thunderclap strike me. . . I was relieved when our minister explained that the literal translation of 'conversion' . . . is not so much 'rebirth' but 'turning.' That's what my own experience felt like -- as if I'd been walking in one direction and then, in response to some inner pull, I turned."
I don’t think Wakefield’s story is unusual. No doubt there are several among us this morning whose story might sound much the same -- a story of being in exile, in wilderness, being lost, and of returning. Coming home. Coming home to ourselves. Coming home to God.
According to Bishop William Willimon, "Wilderness is that place, which is no place, where we lose our way, wander from the path, get lost. Exile is that time when we become enslaved to false gods, serve an alien empire, sell out, forget."
Professor Emeritus Fred Craddock of Emory University's Candler School of Theology remembers a little girl from one of his pastorates. Her parents sent her to church, never came with her. They would pull in the church's circular drive, the little girl would hop out of the car, and they would go out for Sunday brunch. The father was an executive for a chemical company, upwardly mobile, ambitious.
The father and mother were known for their Saturday night parties. I guess everybody got drunk, stoned. But every Sunday, there was the little girl in church.
One Sunday Craddock says he looked out over the congregation and thought, "There she is with a couple of adult friends." Turns out it was mom and dad.
At the end of the service, the invitation was given to come forward and join the church – a practice of churches of his denomination. Anyway, here came Mom and Dad to the front to confess their faith and join the church. After the service, Craddock asked them what had prompted their decision to start a new life. They replied, "Do you know about our parties?" "Yes,” he said, “he’d heard.”
"Well, we had one last night. It got a bit loud, a little rough, everybody was drunk. And it woke up our daughter, and she came downstairs and she was on about the third step. And she saw the eating and drinking and said, 'Oh, can I say the blessing? ‘God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food. Amen. Goodnight, everybody.’ And she went back upstairs.
“The guests were stunned,” the parents said. “People began to say, 'It's getting late, we really must be goin,... Thanks for a great evening,... Thanks for a good... whatever.' And within about two minutes the room was empty.
"So my wife and I picked up the crumpled napkins, the spilled peanuts, the half-eaten sandwiches, the overflowing ashtrays, and the empty glasses and took them into the kitchen. “And then we looked at each other and my wife said what I was thinking: 'What on earth are we doing? Where do we think we're going with our lives?'"
In the midst of the ordinary that had come to pass for real life for this mother and father, they were met by God in a nightgown clad little girl.
Not bad people. I’m sure these folks weren’t bad people. Just people who’d gotten lost in ways like – well, like any of us can become lost: little by little, just wandering away, chasing this false god, then that, selling out, forgetting.
It’s not that the past is unimportant. It’s only that the future is all important. Accordingly, the hope, the promise, the comfort of advent, this advent, is that wherever we are personally, with whatever past we have, we can be sure that a way home exists. Can be sure that God will make that way and lead us even if it takes leveling mountains, lifting valleys, making crooked paths straight, smoothing the rough places. Hallelujah!