Third Sunday of Advent, December 11, 2022: Isaiah 35:1-10; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11; Psalm 146:4-9 or Canticle 15
A few days ago a friend and I drove up into the foothills of the Sierra for a day out. As we drove through grasslands that a few months ago had been dry and brown, you could see the green emerging. Yesterday’s heavy rain will further the greening of the land. Seeing the green makes me happy, and so when I read Isaiah saying that “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” I feel the joy. I have seen the almost miraculous greening of the land when the rains come.
Isaiah’s prophecy is one of bounty and goodness, a vision of the potential goodness of God’s world: the lame will walk, the blind see. Along the way, God’s people will not go astray. And finally, “Sorrow and sighing shall flee away”. It is hard, in our world, to imagine a world without sorrow; it was equally hard for those who heard Isaiah. This is magic. Isaiah is echoed in Psalm 146, where we hear of the Lord “who gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger”.
We have two choices for the psalm today: Psalm 146, and Mary’s magnificent hymn about the transformative work of God. Mary tells us that the waiting is over. God “has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.” The world is transformed. It has happened. The waiting is over.
This assurance that the waiting is over is picked up in today’s Gospel reading. John the Baptist, now in prison, sends his followers to ask Jesus whether he is the one whose coming John had predicted. Jesus, as he so often does, does not answer directly, but tells them to tell John what they see and hear. Again we hear the echoes of Isaiah: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” Jesus shows who he is by his actions, not his words.
In Advent we wait in two ways: we wait for the arrival of the baby Jesus, who becomes the Jesus who preaches and transforms lives. But we also wait for what will come, the future coming of Jesus. Jesus healed the sick, just as Isaiah had promised; his words and actions changed lives. We do our best to share Jesus’ transformative love in our lives. Yet we are still in the world, a world with sorrow and sighing, hunger, disease, and injustice. We are waiting for the world that Isaiah promised, and that Jesus embodied.