And What Shall I Cry? : Advent Week 2

Continuing last week’s theme of Isaiah’s prophesies, this week we will follow the official lectionary recommended reading and focus on making straight the way of the Lord. One might ask that if the Lord is so mighty, and so many scriptures tell of Him razing the mountains, why would He need straight paths?

Isaiah 40 tells us that it’s not so much about preparing the physical way of the Lord, but proclaiming comfort and hope to His people that the Lord is coming. It begins
“Comfort, comfort, my people.”

God’s people were in a bad way: They were besieged on every front, they were scattered and disillusioned. Isaiah has just told Hezekiah that all he knows will be carted off to Babylon, the den of heathens. How apt, then, is the next chapter. Isaiah tells of a voice calling, “In the desert, prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.” Isaiah reminds us, as well as Hezekiah, that while our material world seems to be falling apart, we can be comforted because there will be restitution. The Lord will come and redeem his people. How will he redeem us? Through Jesus Christ, of course.

But before Christ can come and offer a straight path of salvation, he must be heralded. And who does the heralding? Why, a man wandering in the wilderness and crying out in the desert. Mark 1:1 quotes this prophesy in Isaiah and tells of John, a wild man in the desert who baptized and told of one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit, instead of simply water. He proclaimed. He cried out. He called.

Back in Isaiah, he goes on to explain how we cry out:

“A voice says ‘Cry out.’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ . . .

Isaiah tells us that we who bring good tidings to Zion, are to go up on a high mountain, lift our voices with a shout, and say, “Here is your God!” And then he spends the rest of the very long chapter explaining God’s majesty. He explains that God has marked off the heavens by the breadth of His hand and that the nations are less than dust. The repeated motif of “Do you not know? Have you not heard?” reminds us that this is what we are supposed to cry out. When we are discouraged and feel like the Lord does not remember us, or that “our cause is disregarded by the Lord”, we need to remember we are ever in his thoughts, and that he cannot grow weary. The chapter ends, as it began, with comfort.

“But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

This was Isaiah’s cry. This was his proclamation to a desolate people that their God hadn’t forgotten them and that comfort could still be theirs. We can go even further in our proclaiming because we know that God’s salvation is at hand. It is not some future event to be hoped for, but the ever-new salvation of the Christ. Mark 1:1 tells us that after John was put into prison for proclaiming, Jesus himself went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God.

And we can go even further. We can proclaim with Isaiah the sheer majesty and bigness of God, and we can proclaim the messiah that came and died for our sins. So the next time we’re challenged to proclaim the good news, we should never have to ask, “What shall I cry?” It’s all laid out for us: Forgiveness and comfort, just what a troubled world like ours needs to hear.