Pasadena Presbyterian Church
Sermon • 12/4/11 • by Robert D. Thomas
“What Shall I Cry?”
Scripture: Isaiah 40: 1-11
Elder Robert D. Thomas is chair of the Personnel and Music Committees and produces the church’s weekly bulletin. He is presently completing the Commissioned Lay Pastor program at Dubuque Theological Seminary.
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“Comfort, O comfort my people,” says your God. “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.”
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, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
A voice says, “Cry out!” and I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.
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, “Behold, your God!’”
See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.
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.
(Isaiah 40: 1-11)
Last night at Totality, Ted Bruins remarked that we were reading the wrong Isaiah scripture today; given the widespread power outages after Wednesday night’s windstorms, we should have chosen Isaiah 9: 2 (Those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them has the light shined).
Nonetheless, today’s lesson is among the most familiar texts in the Old Testament; the 23rd Psalm and The Ten Commandments are better known but these come close. The first eight verses are the basis for today’s processional hymn, Comfort, Comfort Ye My People, and the passage is also used in our final hymn, Prepare the Way.
Of course, this scripture is particularly familiar to those who love classical music. Librettist Charles Jennens used verses 1-5 and 9-11 in the first part of Handel’s oratorio, Messiah, and Brahms set verses 6-8 in the second movement of his German Requiem. The texts sound a mite different from what Mary read this morning because Jennens used what we now call the King James translation and Brahms used the German Luther Bible.
Nonetheless, this is VERY familiar scripture and, as often happens, our eyes tend to glaze over when we hear it read or even sung. Of course, if you really want your head to spin, try reading the 15-page introduction in The Interpreter’s Bible to what we have for centuries called “Second Isaiah. The commentator spent three pages trying to find a diplomatic way of saying one of his predecessors didn’t seem to have a clue about the subject of the authorship of multiple Isaiahs.
However, I think there are three things about Isaiah Chapter 40 that speak to us here at PPC today.
A word — a BRIEF word — about the three Isaiahs. I say “brief” because you could probably construct an entire seminary class out of this issue. For the greater part of the 19th and 20th centuries, most scholars believed that two or possibly three different people or even teams of people wrote the book of Isaiah. In the last two decades, there has been a swing back to the concept of one author or perhaps editor, only, despite the generally recognized belief that the first 39 chapters and the last 27 chapters appear to have been written in different centuries.
Dr. George W. Stroup of Columbia Theological Seminary and others believe that “First Isaiah” (i.e., chapters 1-39) was written in the eighth century before Christ’s birth, during Assyria’s attack on Israel, and that “Second Isaiah” (i.e., chapters 40 and beyond) was written in the last half of the sixth century during the exile from Judah.
More importantly, writes Stroup, are the theological differences. “What is announced in First Isaiah is God’s judgment by means of Assyria on Israel’s sin. Hence the news in First Isaiah is not good … The news in Second Isaiah is altogether different: not bad news but good. The message of Second Isaiah is good news about God’s comfort, and God’s promise of redemption for a people who have lived in exile for 150 years! Theologically that means God’s judgment always serves the more encompassing purpose of God’s forgiveness and redemption of the sinful community.” 1
One should note that Dr. Stroup’s distinctions are not exact; the descriptions of the Savior who is to come in Isaiah chapters 9 and 11 are among the most hopeful verses in the Bible.
So the first thing to say about this passage is that the prophets are using very different language and thinking in the final 27 chapters of this book. Whatever the reason, it’s radically different from the earlier chapters.
Second, the message in chapter 40 begins with God offering to the Israelites words of comfort: “ ‘Comfort, O comfort my people,’ says your God. 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.” Some comfort! That sounds like pretty harsh judgment to me — Israel has received DOUBLE for all of her sins. How comforting is that?
But now, in fact, does comes the comfort, and a new commission: “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, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
What I find interesting about this message is the time frame. When the prophet proclaimed these words of hope, the residents of Judah had been in exile for at least 150 years. That means that they had never known anything BUT exile. Seen in this context, the words, “Comfort, O comfort my people,” seems like an outrageous statement — at best — even more so when you consider that it would take perhaps six more centuries before the one who embodied that hope would come to earth in the form of Jesus, the Christ.
This, I think, accounts for the inclusion of II Peter as today’s Epistle lesson in the Revised Common Lectionary. Last week, we heard apocalyptic words from the Gospel of Mark. Today’s lesson from II Peter 3:8 says: “Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise as some of you think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.” However long it takes, the salient point is that God was speaking words of comfort through Isaiah.
The third way this passage spoke to me as I prepared this sermon was the command beginning in verse 9: “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, ‘Behold, your God!’ ” (5) Our offertory anthem today puts it this way: “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be lifted up ye everlasting doors.”
That, I submit, is our challenge to meet at PPC in the year of our Lord 2012 and beyond. We need to find new and innovative ways to lift up our heads, our hearts, and our voices — both as individuals and as a congregation — and to do so in winsome ways, reaching out to people who have perhaps never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the unique way it is proclaimed here at PPC.
Our task is to say — not to the cities of Judah but to the cities of Pasadena, Altadena, Arcadia, Highland Park and throughout our region — “Behold, your God!”
That’s what the pledges will receive shortly mean. Our pledges are not simply ways to balance a budget; they are to help us to find and fund new, vigorous ways to prepare the way of the Lord, to make straight in the desert where we live (figuratively and literally) a highway for our God.
We do all of this trusting that God is in charge and that Christ will come again — perhaps soon, perhaps not — but in the fullness of God’s own good time. That’s what we will say again this morning as we lift the bread and cup in communion: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” That is the ultimate expression of God’s comfort to all of us. Amen.
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1 George W. Stroup, J.B. Green Professor of Theology, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decauter, Georgia. Quoted in Feasting on the Word. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. © 2011, Westminster John Knox Press. Lectionary Cycle B; Second Sunday of Advent.
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