Hopes and Fears of All the Years
Isaiah 35:1-10
Luke 1:46b-55
December 15, 2019
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Note: Photo credit to Chayene Rafaela, image at https://unsplash.com/photos/FIEc0HdCfZs
Many of us have either heard Handel’s Messiah performed so often or sung it ourselves that it may be impossible to read Isaiah without creating musical echoes in our minds. The reading from Isaiah 35 is one of those. It is a poem of joy and restoration, of homecoming and celebration. The song almost bursts off the page.
What is not so musical are most of the events described in the previous chapters. It is the time in history when the Assyrian Empire was on the rise. As it gained power and influence, it took over smaller nations on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, including Israel. The first part of the book of Isaiah offers images of doom, destruction and slaughter. There is anger, violence, catastrophe, much of which is attributed to God’s fury at the nations for their disobedience and injustice.
Scholars believe that what is now the book of Isaiah is a compilation of material from two or three different times in history. First Isaiah, chapters 1-39, is the time of the Assyrian empire’s subjugation of Israel, eventually taking the people into exile in Assyria. Second Isaiah, chapters 40-55, shifts its focus to the southern kingdom of Judah which was also taken into exile, not in Assyria, but in Babylon. This was 100 years later when Babylon had replaced Assyria as the dominant empire. Second Isaiah offers hope to those living in exile that they will return home soon. Some scholars refer to chapters 56-66 as Third Isaiah and see it addressed to a third group, those who have finally returned and are doing the hard work of reconstruction.
The point is that chapter 35 is out of place. It describes return from an exile that hasn’t happened yet, that won’t even begin for another 100 years. In chapter 34 we read, “The streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into sulfur; her land shall become burning pitch…Thorns shall grow over its strongholds, nettles and thistles in its fortresses.” Then, without a break and without explanation, Isaiah 35 interrupts devastation and despair:
“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad. The desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing…
Lutheran minister Barbara Lundblad says, “This poem comes too early. Who moved it? Some things even our best scholarship cannot explain. The Spirit hovered over the text and over the scribes: “Put it here,” breathed the Spirit, “before anyone is ready. Interrupt the narrative of despair.” So here it is: a word that couldn’t wait until it might make more sense.[1]
A word that can’t wait until it makes more sense. How we need such words! When we seem surrounded by sadness and sighing and devastation, when the pronouncements of those in authority are unjust and cruel and illogical, when children’s desperate pleas for help before they die are considered unworthy, when what is proclaimed into microphones or tweeted into cyberspace is the exact opposite of truth, how we need a word like this, a word out of order, a word that interrupts despair, a word that can’t wait for a better time.
Such words are spoken by prophets. Scholar Patricia Tull says that the vision of Isaiah 35 is for the future “when justice and only justice inhabits the road” and also for right now, “when we carry the insistent vision of what is meant to be.”[2] The word that is out of place interrupts the narrative of despair and insists that a different future is possible.
Sojourner Truth was a brilliant and indomitable enslaved woman who could neither read nor write but who was passionate about ending unjust slavery and second-class treatment of women – a word out of order in her time. At the end of one of her antislavery talks in Ohio, a man came up to her and said, “Old woman, do you think that your talk about slavery does any good? Do you suppose people care what you say? Why, I don't care anymore for your talk than I do for the bite of a flea.”
“Perhaps not,” she answered, “but, the Lord willing, I'll keep you scratching.” [3]
The word from Isaiah says “strengthen the weak hands, make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are afraid, ‘be strong, do not fear.’” Yes, beloved ones, this is a word we need today.
“Do not be afraid” is what the angel said to Mary, announcing news that would turn her world, and ours, upside down.
Of course, Mary was afraid. Even before the angels’ news, her life was hard. She was a poor adolescent girl in a village on the outskirts of the Roman Empire. Her best hope would be to marry someone who could provide for her. Her highest aspirations were probably to bear children who lived, to have enough to feed and clothe them, and to live long enough to see her grandchildren. Her fears were those of poor people everywhere: poverty, hunger, sickness, violence, widowhood and death.
And then the angel said that she would have a special baby. Didn’t her hands go weak, didn’t her knees tremble? Didn’t the adrenaline rush through her system? What would Joseph say? What would her family do? Would she be stoned to death for adultery? Would she die in childbirth? Who was she, to be singled out, chosen for this?
In spite of her very reasonable fears, she said yes, yes to the choice of God, yes to a different future than she would ever have imagined, yes to the possibility of joy.
And then, she goes to see Elizabeth, because the angel tells her that Elizabeth is also pregnant. She goes to find companionship and community, to offer strength for Elizabeth’s weak hands and find a steadying of her own trembling knees. There on Elizabeth’s doorstep, she bursts into song, the song we call Magnificat because that’s how it begins in Latin. It’s a song of justice, where the hungry are full and those who abuse their power are brought low, and the oppressed and abused are raised up. She sings of faithfulness and restoration and liberation.
It is a word out of order, a song that can’t wait for a better time. It is improbable that these earth-shattering words would come from a young peasant girl who held no power or authority in the world, but here they are.
A couple of years ago, Pope Francis did a TED talk. Here is some of what he said,
“Hope is the door that opens onto the future. Hope is a humble, hidden seed of life that, with time, will develop into a large tree. . . . And it can do so much, because a tiny flicker of light that feeds on hope is enough to shatter the shield of darkness. A single individual is enough for hope to exist.”
“And that individual can be you. And then there will be another "you," and another "you," and it turns into an "us." And so, does hope begin when we have an "us?" No. Hope began with one "you." When there is an "us," there begins a revolution. … The future is in the hands of those people who recognise the other as ‘you’ and themselves as part of an ‘us.’ ” [4]
Hope begins here with one individual, with Mary of Nazareth who says yes. But Mary also recognizes herself as part of an ‘us’. She sings that God’s mercy is great towards those who fear God from one generation to the next. She locates herself as someone who has been taught the faith from the older generation. At this point of potential crisis, this defining moment in her personal life and in the life of the world, she speaks from within her faith tradition. She speaks for herself, yes, but her words are echoes of the prophets’ proclamations and the prayers of ancient grandmothers, and so she speaks for all of us.
One of the most succinct poetic lines of all the Christmas carols is from O Little Town of Bethlehem where it says “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
That sums up the arrival of the Messiah. It also sums up Mary’s song. She is singing of the old hopes and fears of Isaiah’s Israel under Assyrian subjugation and of her own Israel occupied by Rome, the hopes and fears of all who have ever sung that Christmas carol, your hopes and mine, the highest hopes and deepest fears of human beings, passed from one generation to the next.
Mary of Nazareth is one individual who makes a place for hope to exist, long enough for an “us” to form, long enough to join God’s revolution where justice and only justice inhabits the road. Mary’s song is good news because it enables us to know where to align ourselves, our time, talents and resources. It is good news for us because we do not have to rectify all that is broken, because God is present and active, carrying out redemption. It is good news of hope in seemingly hopeless situations.
In their book on Protestant perspectives on Mary, Beverly Gaventa and Cynthia Rigby say this, “Mary is who we are. She is a person of faith who does not always understand but who seeks to put her trust in God. She is one who is blessed not because she sins less or has keener insights into the things of God. She is instead blessed, as we are, because she is called by God to participate in the work of God . . . To call Mary blessed is to recognize the blessedness of ordinary people who are called to participate in that which is extraordinary.”[5]
The Christmas song “Mary, Did you Know?” questions what it was like to be the mother of God incarnate and anticipates the events of Jesus’ life. Jennifer Henry is the director of KAIROS, an ecumenical social justice organization in Toronto. She has written alternative lyrics to that song, asking if Mary imagined the impact of her song on future generations. I invite us to listen carefully to these lyrics and respond in turn, with the words that will appear on the screen.
TL: Mary did you know,
that your ancient words would still leap off our pages?
Mary did you know,
that your spirit song would echo through the ages?
GS: Did you know
that your holy cry would be subversive word,
that the tyrants would be trembling when they know your truth is heard?
Mary did you know, that your lullaby
would stir your own Child’s passion?
RS: Mary did you know,
that your song inspires the work of liberation?
Did you know that your Jubilee
is hope within the heart of all who dream of justice,
who yearn for it to start?
*Congregation:
The truth will teach,
the drum will sound, healing for the pain
The poor will rise, the rich will fall. Hope will live again
KM: Mary did you know,
that we hear your voice for the healing of the nations?
Mary did you know,
your unsettling cry can help renew creation?
*Congregation:
Do you know, that we need your faith,
the confidence of you,
May the God that you believe in, be so true.[6]
Beloved ones, the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom, for the Mighty One has done great things. Therefore, strengthen the weak hands, make firm the feeble knees, Be strong, do not fear. The Lord is come. Amen.
[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1941
[2] Patricia Tull, Isaiah 1-39 (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys Publishing, 2010), p. 519
[3] https://www.childrensdefense.org/child-watch-columns/health/2013/we-must-never-give-up/
[4] Pope Francis in a TED Talk, 2017 http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2017/documents/papa-francesco_20170426_videomessaggio-ted-2017.html
[5] Beverly Roberts Gaventa and Cynthia Rigby, Blessed One: Protestant Perspectives on Mary. (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2002), p. 5.