December The Visions of Isaiah III. The Desert Will Rejoice Isaiah 35:1-10 Dr. William P. Seel Easley Presbyterian Church Easley, South Carolina Where does Christmas begin? For some of us, myself included, Christmas each year begins in nostalgia, memories of Christmases long, long ago. The Christmas season is fairly awash with sights and sounds and smells which open up for us swift portals back to the persons and places and experiences which have graced our lives, and graced this particular time of the year, with such a warm sense of love and delight. Christmas nostalgia is a major theme in the music of the season: I m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know... (you thought I was going to sing that, didn t you!). For me, Christmas doesn t really begin until I have watched the annual airing of Charlie Brown Christmas a tradition that goes back to my earliest childhood. Until I have entered into Charlie Brown s Christmas malaise, and heard Linus recitation of the true Christmas story, it s just not Christmas yet. But for others of us, Christmas perhaps begins not in looking back, but in looking forward. Christmas begins in the excitement and hopes and plans for what this coming Christmas shall be. For such folks, Christmas is all in the preparations finding the right presents, sending out the cards, decorating the house and the tree, baking the cookies. All that perspiration of preparation only serving to heighten the imagination and expectation of what a wonderful Christmas this Christmas shall be! Blessings upon every one of you who labor so hard to make Christmas special for your family and friends may your efforts be truly rewarded with joy and gratitude! But, of course, we can take this too far too much nostalgia can leave us depressed, but too much labor and too high of hopes for a perfect Christmas can leave us crazy and in tears! Let s face it perfect Christmases only exist on television, in magazines, and on highly doctored and utterly misleading Facebook posts. Well, whether we are on the side of Christmases past or on the side of Christmas to come, Isaiah offers us an entirely different account of where Christmas really begins. Think of it this way: whether Christmas begins for us in the joy of Christmases past or in the joy of preparing for the Christmas to come, we are rooting our Christmas beginning in the experience of joy. But Isaiah tells us that Christmas truly begins not in joy, but in its exact opposite that true Christmas begins in our fears, our unfulfilled yearnings, our failures, our frustrations, our despair. For Isaiah, Christmas begins not where all is merry and bright, but rather where all is bleak and forlorn. For us, Christmas begins with a cheerful song; for Isaiah Christmas begins with a sigh, a tear, with an ache in our hearts. For, according to Isaiah, the place where the real Christmas begins is in the desert.
2 The desert. The place where everything is dried-up, barren, and dead. The desert is where bad things happen, where water is scarce and life is fragile. And for Isaiah s Israel the desert wasn t just a place, a landscape just outside Jerusalem to be avoided. The desert, for Israel, was a symbol deeply rooted in some of Israel s most difficult memories. If the strong storm upon the sea was the ancient symbol of chaos for the Israelites, then the desert was an equally ancient symbol of hopelessness, lostness, despair. Forty years wandering in that Sinai desert, even with God s faithful care of them, had deeply imprinted upon the imagination of Israel the idea that the desert is a place without purpose, a place without hope, a place where you are lost and likely to die. And yet, it is in the desert, says Isaiah, where Christmas begins. But in Isaiah s day, the desert had become more than just a symbol of hopelessness and despair. In that day, the desert was providing Israel with an altogether too real reason for hopelessness and fear it was the route being taken by the Assyrian army to reach Israel. Remember last week how we talked about the prophets being more concerned with the near future than with the far. Well, Israel s near-future at the time of this prophecy in Isaiah 35 was that the Assyrian army was at that moment crossing the desert to once again lay siege to Jerusalem all because King Hezekiah had refused to listen to Isaiah and had instead made a deal with Egypt to revolt together against Assyrian rule. And now the Assyrian army was coming, the chariots of Egypt were nowhere to be seen, and the people of God were about to be slaughtered yet again. And this whole sorry desert saga wasn t going to end until the Babylonian Empire had overrun the Assyrians a hundred or so years later and thoroughly destroyed Jerusalem and dragged the better part of Israel s population across the desert into slavery in Babylon. 1 Talk about a desert moment both literal and symbolic! And it is in the midst of all this mess, all this horror, all this barren and desiccated and tumbleweed-rolling desert of human despair that Isaiah lifts up his eyes to the distant future and begins to speak of a most unexpected and profound Good News of Great Joy. That one day, this same desert of Israel s defeat and despair would serve as the starting point for the renewal of Israel s joy. That through the grace of Almighty God, a day would come when even 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. In that day, says Isaiah, Israel s salvation will begin in the very desert of their deepest despair. Do you remember that old Wonderful World of Disney movie entitled The Living Desert? The best scene in that movie comes after a long time spent with the camera exploring the dry, barren landscapes of the desert. All of a sudden, the sky above turns dark. Rain begins to fall on the desert sand softly at first, then a downpour accompanied by thunder and lightning. And then, following the storm, through the wonders of time-lapse photography, we see that dry, barren desert suddenly springing into life. Green stalks push through the sand, cacti in full bloom, seeds bursting forth into flowers. And the dry, barren desert suddenly is gloriously alive. And that is what God is going to do for Israel, says Isaiah. One day God is going to take that desert of Israel s suffering, take that desert that lives in the heart of every human being one day, says Isaiah, God will cause
3 that desert to burst into bloom. The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert will rejoice and blossom like a crocus. And Israel shall at last be rescued from the desert of her despair. And not only rescued, but truly and completely redeemed, restored, renewed. All that human brokenness, all that human barrenness, all that human desperation, frustration, pain and suffering, hopelessness and sin and sorrow all of it God will overcome in that day. All of God s people shall be brought back into life just like that desert landscape after the rain. All of God s people will again know reason for hope, reason for living, reason for joy. For, in that day: The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water. Living water, our Savior called it there shall be living water 2 and If anyone thirsts, He said, let him come to me and drink. 3 In the deserts of human brokenness, in the deserts of the human heart, in that day, in that desert, that is where the healing will begin, that is where the joy shall arise. And that promise, that prophecy was fulfilled at long last on that night in Bethlehem, when the angels sang of Good News of Great Joy which should be for all the people. 4 On that night, when Christ our Savior was born into the desert of this world, and the angels sang, Glory to God in the highest. 5 That is what Isaiah was seeing Christmas. Christmas, God s salvation of His people, begins in the desert. I told you a Wendy Wright story last week, about shopping in the grocery store just before Christmas this is another of her wonderful stories. She tells of how it has become a family and church tradition to go Christmas caroling each year at a nearby homeless shelter. She describes this tradition in an interesting way she says they don t go so much to spread Christmas cheer, as to raise our voices together with our forgotten brothers and sisters in wonder at the mystery God gives to us each year. By that she means that they don t sing many silly songs about snowmen and sleigh rides because such songs can t hold up against the desert of a homeless shelter, among people whose lives are so full of sadness, so desert-empty of hope. Instead they sing the great hymns of Christmas, songs that truly speak to God s grace as it meets the hopes and fears of all the years. Anyway, this is the story: There is one gentleman from several Christmases ago whom I will never forget. Our little choir had been singing long enough in the smoke-filled, noisy shelter to be ready to wind up our sing-along. Then a disheveled man of about fifty in a soiled jacket, whose perceptions of things, due either to ill health or some chemical substance, seemed doubtful, asked me to sing his favorite Christmas song. It was O Holy Night, he said; would I do it with him? I
4 agreed and began. The crowded room gradually grew silent as he and I raised up our two voices together. He leaned on the edge of a tattered sofa about three feet from me, his eyes closed, the tired creases of his street-weary face softening as he intoned. We moved deeper into the melody, exploring the accelerated tempo and rising pitch that evoked the Christmas miracle. Long lay the world in sin and error pining, til he appeared and the soul felt its worth. A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices as yonder breaks a new and glorious morn! As he strained his gravelly voice to give wings to the song s words, his face shone and tears fell gently from his lowered eyes. I knew, at that moment, that his longing and mine were one, and that the burning for the fulfillment of the promise that I felt was not only mine, it is etched on the human heart. It is our shared longing, our same desire, our common life. 6 And it is into this shared longing, this same desire, this common desert life of ours, says Isaiah, that the Good News of Great Joy to all people comes. Into this weary world that this thrill of divine hope is given, as yonder breaks a new and glorious morn the morn in which Christ our Savior is now born. And because that glorious day has now come, because He has now come even now the eyes of the blind are being opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame man may leap up like a deer, and the tongue of the mute bursts into joyous song. Into our desert, Christ has come. And even now streams of living water have begun to flow into the desert of our sadness and longing. And then, best of all, says Isaiah, there is now to be found a highway in the midst of that desert wilderness where we are lost a highway which is even now bringing the people of God home from their exile, home from their lostness, home from their suffering and sorrow and sin. Home to their God: And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. Exile is ended, the curse reversed. For a highway has now appeared the Way and the Truth and the Life is now before us. 7 And we will follow Him home. Home. Home from out of the desert. Home into new life, abundant life, eternal life home, safe and enfolded in our Heavenly Father s love. Christmas begins in the desert, says Isaiah, as he lifts up his eyes to the far horizon of God s plan and purpose. Christmas begins in the desert. So, perhaps, amid all our nostalgic reveries for
5 Christmases past, amid all our excited preparations for this Christmas to come, perhaps we would do well to take a few moments to do one thing more. To think about, to name, to enter into that desert landscape which is within us. Where and what is that desert in your heart, this Christmas season? Where and what, in you, is that place of desiccated barrenness, forlorn sadness, hopeless struggle and unyielding despair? Because that is the place where Jesus most wants to come to you. That is the place where true Christmas can truly begin in us. That desert is the place where Christ most wants to bring us the Good News of Great Joy, that our salvation has now begun that the sorrow and sighing might truly flee away. Jesus is coming. Jesus has come. Jesus will come again. And the desert will rejoice. And the desert will be no more. 1 See Isaiah 36-39, II Kings 18-25. 2 John 4:10-14. 3 John 7:37. 4 Luke 2:10-11. 5 Luke 2:14. 6 Wendy M. Wright, The Vigil: Keeping Watch in the Season of Christ s Coming (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1992), pp. 45-46. 7 John 14:6.