The season of Advent in the Church is meant to be a journey (in contrast to a shopping spree). The journey began last week with a lament – crying out “how long O Lord?” and a prophetic call on God to remember and to be accountable to God’s people. In other words, we are in a mess, O God, and You (O God) are not off the hook. As I mentioned last Sunday, our Advent lectionary starts near the end of Isaiah and near the end of Jesus’ life story according to Mark. This week, we hear the first verses of Mark (the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ) and the middle of Isaiah, with a little from the second letter of Peter on the side, which offers a lovely explanation of the extraordinary patience of the Holy One, Who longs for every single one to be received into God’s tender compassion, not wanting any to perish!

The Gospel of Mark quotes Isaiah – although the English major in me wants to deduct points for that because Mark actually conflates Exodus, Malachi and Isaiah and attributes it all to Isaiah. Either he didn’t know, or he thought that his hearers wouldn’t know, that the words “see I am sending a messenger out ahead of you to prepare the way” aren’t in Isaiah. Maybe his point is that if John the Baptist is fulfilling again God’s promise to God’s people made to Moses, and made to Malachi, surely the promise exists in Isaiah even if it’s not explicit. (1)

Perhaps Mark is indicating that for his audience, no prophetic work was more important than the book of Isaiah. The book of Isaiah was compiled over an enormous period of time -- some 300 years. And between the last verse of chapter 39 and the first verse of chapter 40, at least 160 years pass. Think about that. That’s ten years longer than Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston has even existed. Between the last verse of chapter 39 and the first verse of chapter 40, the Kingdom of David has come completely undone. Jerusalem and its surroundings have been utterly crushed, and many of the people have been exiled in Babylon. It’s been a political, sociological, economic, theological, spiritual disaster. For Mark, it was not so different from the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 of the Common Era. For Mark, I imagine, it was just like that. And so we might hear the words of Isaiah, and the words of the Gospel of Mark this morning with particular attention to suffering and disaster being experienced by people today -- politically, sociologically, economically, theologically, and spiritually.

Now, I want to say something about pronouns in Biblical narrative – and it’s not what you might expect me to say – it’s not about gendered pronouns referring to the Holy One or to people. It’s about the second person pronoun that in English we translate as “you.” Our inability to distinguish the singular and plural (in the northern anyway) causes us to mix up you singular and you plural (you and y’all). Combine that with the fierce sense of individualism in our culture, and we tend to hear prophetic biblical testimony as intensely personal rather than intensely corporate. It’s one of the biggest translation problems we face with regard to interpreting scripture.

I notice this most clearly in Advent each year because the prophetic calls for repentance, for forsaking sin, for expectation and preparation, are calls to a people – not to a person. They are calls to and about institutions and economies and nations – and if we want to downsize a little, to cities, to communities, to collectives. The prophetic calls for repentance we hear in Advent are calls to move, as a people, from exile to home, from disintegration to integration -- to strengthen the integrity of the whole. They are calls from disease to health -- to increase the well-being of all: all people everywhere. As far as I can tell by reading scripture, salvation is not an individual enterprise when it comes to the Holy One. And by the way, did you notice the definition of salvation in 2nd Peter? The patience of our Lord. “Regard the patience of our Lord as salvation,” says the second letter of Peter.

So what difference might it make if we hear the passage from Isaiah as the emphatic, intensive collective imperative that it was intended to be -- to comfort the people of God, to speak tenderness and mercy, to cry out or proclaim that people come and go like grass, like flowers, but the Word of God – the revelation of God – is ongoing and enduring, and to imagine that the mighty hand of God is nurturing, loving, and gentle? A powerful gentleness.

I’m going to offer you all a series of questions – something of a meditation this morning. The risk of asking a lot of questions in a sermon is that any of you might hear a question and get lost in thought and miss the rest. And I want to say, that’s perfectly fine if that happens. Let the questions lead you where you need to go deeper into the heart of God. (And if my questions lead you to nod off or to make your ‘to do’ list, well so be it). (2)

In our reading, what way forward is being hoped for or promised for those who have suffered immensely? Isaiah says that the city has become a wilderness rather than a fortress of safety – an urban wasteland of rubble and danger. What do we know of this kind of perilous territory in our own time? What do we know of the wilderness of homeless shelters or of gated communities? Of food stamps or of five star restaurants? Of Bradston Street or of Newbury Street? Why might we hesitate to go to any of those wildernesses as a herald to proclaim God’s consolation?

Where have we as a people been in exile for generations? When have we as a people left behind our home, or been driven out or carried away from our home? How have we experienced exile in relationships that have demanded that we leave behind parts of ourselves that define who and Whose we are? What would it take for us to return to the place where we started and own what we left behind in spite of the ruins and the rubble? This is not an invitation to indulge in nostalgia. It’s a reckoning with eyes wide open.

Why would we want to get up to a high mountain to proclaim the end of exile with the words, “here is your God,” but not proclaim that in the shadow places, in the low places? How might we proclaim God’s promise of tenderness and mercy in the face of arrogance, or of despair, in our primary relationships, in our workplaces, in our communities? How might our lives be different if we were to honestly believe that all who have suffered immensely have served enough time, that exile can be over, and that it’s possible begin again in a home waiting beyond the wilderness?

A poem came across my computer desk on Friday as I was reflecting on all of this that seemed like one answer to these questions. It’s written by Dawna Markova and is called “Fully Alive.” With no permission whatsoever, in the spirit of Advent, I played with it and made the first person voice plural instead of singular and I’m going to close by reading it to you that way – as a bold claim of the people of God: (3)

We will not die an unlived life.
We will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
We choose to inhabit our days,
to allow our living to open us,
to make us less afraid
more accessible
to loosen our hearts
until they become wings, torches, promises.
We choose to risk our significance;
to live so that which came to us as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to us as blossom
goes on as fruit.