Dear Faith Family,
"Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, 'Hear the word of the Lord of hosts: Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord.'" (Isaiah 39:6)
Last week we began building our stamina for the upcoming season of Advent. A season that ironically is named "arrival," but is really about waiting.
Waiting is not easy for us, but it is formative. So our goal in the days leading up to Advent is to build our expectation. To enter into the story of humanity and discover, feel, rest in, and live from the awaited hope of what was expected and still is. To do this, we began looking at the familiar words of Isaiah, but in the unfamiliar context in which they were first spoken.
More than any other prophet, Isaiah most explicitly builds the expectation of the Christ, of Jesus. This is why, in nearly every tradition, Isaiah is the most often quoted "Old Testament" writer during the Advent season. But there is a slight irony in this. Isaiah, as we learned, is not writing about the Messiah at the peak of Israel's reign, the height of God's people's faithfulness, but rather at the pit of their own making.
Having aligned with foreign powers, mingled with foreign gods, and abandoned the telos of the law, the so-called "children of God," "bride of Yahweh," were rebellious, adulterous, self-absorbed, and doomed by their own lust to be like everyone else. And yet, amid the worst, the ultimate depravity that would lead to ultimate destruction, Isaiah speaks a word of hope from God.
God, through Isaiah, calls out his people, yes, but also instills in them a sure hope, building an expectation that their end is not the end, but the beginning of the end of all that has led them to this point. And that is where we started: hope in judgment.
Judgment, the end of evil, including our own, is necessary. True good cannot exist while rebellion and arrogance, lust and violence remain, whether in us or in the world we inhabit. Judgment means an end, an end for us who are rightly judged. Still, there is hope in this judgment. The sure hope that God judges not merely to end, to destroy that which is against the very good of existence, but also to save, to restore, to reestablish His very goodness in us, through us, and for us—to His glory, yes and amen, and for the good of all those judged.
This is our hope. That sin (and sinners) will be judged. An end to what brings death and the curse will be brought about, and yet, somehow, by sacrifice and grace, what is destroyed is not us but only that no-thing which keeps us from the true thing, from life.
And so, we need not fear judgment, seeing the necessity of all that divides and destroys—including within us—ended. For as uneasy as it is to witness the just conclusion of evil within and without, we expect something on the other side of judgment; we hope for the life after the end, and so we endure.
However, as we discovered this week, the totality of judgment does not immediately lead to what comes next; it only levels the ground for a way to return.
"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. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken" (Isaiah 40:3-5)
Judgment's totality ends not in immediate restoration, but in exile. There must be not only an ending, but a leaving before a return to something familiar yet new.
To be in exile is to be forced to wait in the lostness of what was. It is both a consequence of what has been judged and a grace for what is to arrive. For exile is a waiting that strengthens our devotion. At least it did for the generations after Isaiah, and can do so for you and me as well.
From judgment to exile, I warned you that Isaiah would not be gentle in his training us for Advent! Working out our faith is not easy exercise, but it is good work.
So I invite you to keep building your expectation with us. Here is how:
If you haven’t already, plan your Advent Season with these recommendations.
In community, consider and discuss:
Do I expect God to upholster or uproot? Why should I not fear the latter?
Do I expect God to make something better or a Way to return to what is good?
How can waiting strengthen me for today's (and tomorrow's) labor?
May we find that "those who hope [wait] in the LORD shall renew their strength..."
Love you, faith family. God bless.