Advent 2 in the RCL, Isaiah 40:1-11
Nothing makes me hum and whistle like Christmas and Advent music. "Comfort, comfort ye my people" gets me all excited and singing. I can hear those words in Isaiah and instantly, I'm ready for Christmas. "Comfort those who sit in darkness mourning 'neath their sorrows' load." Rocking. My being so suggestive is more of a problem for me in July when I find myself suddenly ready for Advent with miles of green season to go. But I hear them this week and I'm ready. Bring on the Advent! Bring on the Christmas!
"Comfort" is such a striking word for beginning a lesson, too. It's a definite 'speech-act.' Hearing "comfort O comfort my people" not only tells me that I should be comforted but also in fact comforts me. The very saying of it in Scripture is itself comforting. If only the rest of the passage kept on that same emotional note.
How interesting that 'being grass' is supposed to be comforting. Comfort, says the prophet, and then in the reading then the prophet turns back to God and asks: what's my line again? What am I supposed to say? It's like watching the local Christmas pageant, with Mary turning to Gabriel and saying: what's my line again? Oh right.
God replies: go with the grass bit. "Oh right," says the prophet. "Ahem. All people are grass . . .."
We'd almost expect the prophet to say: um, are you sure you want to go with that grass bit? It might not be that comforting for them to remember that they're grass, that their lives are short, that their lives are not really in their control, that they have less weight than the leaves on the trees or the dead leaves on the ground. Maybe, God, you should build on the whole 'comfort' theme before jumping to grass. I'm just suggesting.
But no, God apparently goes with the grass thing in our text. You people are grass, says God. I am not. I endure forever. These very things I say, my words, even they endure forever, which would be infinitely longer than you grassy people. And so let's celebrate! I'm like a shepherd, says God, I am strong to defend and quick to save.
So here is the emotional arc of the text, more or less:
1. Comfort, my people--all your badness is forgiven, you've served your sentence, your healing time is here.
2. Here comes the Lord! The Lord will see you now!
3. Um, so what should I say?
4. You are all grass! You're going to die!
5. God endures forever!
6. God takes care of God's people!
It's a pretty strange emotional arc. If we were all feeling like text-critical biblical scholars, I think we might be inclined to say that the redactor (editor) here must have shoved two different texts together. After all, this part of the chapter would stand just fine as two totally separate prophecies. The "Comfort" prophecy, and then to be read on another occasion, the "Grass vs. God" prophecy that begins when the prophet asks for a new word from God--thinking here of the better meaning of the word 'prophecy' with its social/critical connotations, not Nostradamus and crystal balls and predicting the lottery.
In fact, that's one way to deal with this passage. It's actually how the hymn "Comfort, comfort ye my people" deals with it--its theology is based only the 'Comfort' part of this passage. It combines a little of the language of the second part, the Grass vs. God part, with the first part, but skips over all the awkward Grass part of it and sticks with the 'comfort' theology only.
So we could walk away from this passage. We could easily say: great, I feel comforted! Back to shopping! Or not, as the case may be for many of us this year. Window shopping, perhaps. We could walk away and say: eh, redactor, do a better editing job next time! We could hear only what we want to hear through those great sieves on our ears. Selective hearing is a characteristic not only of children, spouses, and parents, but of everyone who has ever attended church.
Or: can we hear that we are grass? Can we bear that truth?
Isaiah seems to think so. Isaiah seems to think that the good news is that our comfort does not depend on us, we grassy people. Our being comforted comes from God, who is not grass. The way these two passages stack in our lesson today from Isaiah, the suggestion seems to be that our comfort does not come from us. Comfort comes from outside us. We gather to sing joyfully not because of we ourselves, but because God has remembered us.
That's the two-pronged message in Isaiah. In order to feel comforted, we'd have to recognize that we are finite, limited, weightless. If we recognize that we are grass, we can find our comfort outside ourselves--otherwise, we're always looking for comfort where comfort isn't.
Two pronged messages are so tricky. It's so much easier to be content with being comforted, or to relish the self-punishment of finitude. It's much more challenging to live into the whole passage--limited yet saved, worth little yet cared for much.
As we prepare for Christmas, we could state this two-pronged message another way. In order to hear God, I must not be God. It's just so easy to pretend that we are God and not humans. Aelred of Rievaulx, a perfectly delightful writer from the Middle Ages, very nicely says that our problem is that we are made in the likeness of God, but we try to be like God.
So as we prepare for Christmas, perhaps we should stop trying to be like God--all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent. That would mean we would have to stop running other people's lives, stop trying to pretend we understand why we are the way we are, and stop trying to live without sleep, private time, and quiet. That would mean we would have to own up to being grass--and not only own up to it, but embrace it.
Because once we embrace it, we can finally see from where our salvation is coming.
