Advent brings us a dizzying approach to time. On the one hand, we are preparing for Christmas, looking forward to the birth of the incarnate God, and revisiting those passages in Isaiah that most clearly reflect the person and life of Jesus. We fondly hear from Isaiah, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,” and “The virgin shall conceive” and we get a foretaste of the joy of the wondrous birth of God made man.
On the other hand, there is an eschatological aspect of this season in which we look forward to Christ’s second coming, that day when he comes to judge the world, when the skies are rolled up like a scroll (Isa. 34:4, Rev. 6:13-14), and when the world as we know it will be consumed in fire before the inception of a new and peaceful creation.
The one Advent seems joyous. The other seems terrifying. And we live in some sort of in-between place in which Christ has come and gone. The world of peace and harmony promised as a sign of the reign of the Messiah is elusive in our survey of the world around us, and we await the creation of a new heaven and earth in which we will dwell in the kingdom of God free from sorrow, pain, and death.
Isaiah 35:1-10 places us squarely in this in-between time. In Isaiah 34, the prophet writes of the judgment and utter devastation that the wrath of God wreaks upon the nations of the earth. Isaiah 35 then focuses on the restoration and reordering of both creation and the holy people of God as they are brought back to the land of Israel. The vengeance of God on the nations is cast in a light of salvation for Israel (Isa. 35:4), and the glory of the Lord is revealed.
The desert blossoms (Isa. 35:2), the knees of the weak are strengthened (Isa .25:3), the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf are opened, the lame leap as a deer, the streams break forth in the desert (Isa. 35:5-6), and the unclean are made holy (Isa 35:8). The salvation of God restores all that is broken in the world, even to the restoration of the places made desolate by God’s judgment.
The obvious fulfillment of this promise is the ministry of Jesus, as he confirms to the disciples of John the Baptist in Matthew 11:2-5. These signs, prophesied by Isaiah, herald the coming of God’s salvation and the restoration of Israel. The blind see, the lame walk, the unclean are cleansed, and God’s people are restored to holiness. Joy and hope abound in the right ordering of all creation. This passage and the knowledge of its fulfillment in the coming of Christ brings a feeling of peace.
And yet the blind and the lame still live among us. The poor are still among us, oppression still happens, and suffering still exists. It is very easy, especially in this strange dual chronology of Advent, to overlook the discomfort of this reality and to say “Oh, it will all be ultimately fixed in the second coming.” Yes, it will. However, we live in Advents in between the first and the last. What does this passage mean for this in-between time?
What does God’s divine ordering of the world look like in the in-between? What does an in-between Advent mean for the Church and the world we live in from day to day? Hebrews 12 may at least partially answer this question. In Hebrews 12, the author reinterprets Isaiah 35:1-10 in light of perseverance. He calls his readers to persevere and patiently endure the discipline of the Lord so that they might be purified. Allow the discipline of God to yield fruit of righteousness. Persevere. Be remade. Challenge sin in your life. Strengthen the weak hands and feeble knees (Isa. 35:3, Heb. 12:12) and make straight paths for your feet that the lame might be healed (Isa. 35:8, 6, Heb. 12:13). What Isaiah paints as a promise, Hebrews reframes as an exhortation to perseverance and an openness for God to mold and heal us.
The reworking of God’s promise in Isaiah, found in the Letter to the Hebrews, is an admonition to persevere in holiness, and it is predicated on the fact that Christ has come and established his kingdom, making us sons and daughters of God. Because Christ has redeemed us and made us holy, we are to continue to be fashioned into holiness. The first Advent is the foundation of this calling; the second Advent is its goal.
For we have come “to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant” (Heb. 12:22-24a). It is this gathering to which and by which we persevere, that we might be among those “ransomed of the Lord” who at Christ’s second coming shall “return and come to Zion with singing” with everlasting gladness and joy, when sorrow and sighing shall flee away (Isa. 35:10).
The Rev. Hannah Armidon, PhD is a priest in the Diocese of Albany. She lives with her husband, the Rev. Robert E. Armidon, many fruit bushes, and several carnivorous plants.
