Isaiah 35:1-10
December 14, 2025
There were some good things, really
good things, about living in northeast Iowa like great neighbors and a great
neighborhood. Phoebe and Zach had lots of other kids to play with. We could
walk or ride our bikes to most places in town. There was a hatchery right in
the heart of town and in the Spring the kids and I would go and hold the baby
chicks. And I think in all 11 years that we lived there, we always had a white
Christmas. The first snowfall was perfect. Everything looked beautiful with the
fresh snow, especially with Christmas lights twinkling from every house. But by
January that first snowfall had turned into many, many snowfalls. There would
be so much snow that the plows would run out of places to put it and it would
get dumped into huge piles on the edge of large parking lots. And these were
not piles of snow that you wanted to climb and play on and slide down. There
were dirty, mucky, and icky. They were just gross.
And it was cold. I sound like the
proverbial old person whenever I remember the winter it hit 40 below for a
week. And that’s 40 below without adding in the wind chill. I don’t want to
remember how cold it was with the wind chill in the mix. Just believe me when I
tell you that it was bitterly cold, and I don’t think I fully thawed out until
the first two years I lived in Oklahoma before moving back to Tennessee. Iowa
was and is cold. Cold.
But sometime in those long winters,
usually in February, we would have a brief thaw. The sun would shine, replacing
the long days of gray. The temperature would rise above freezing, sometimes
even into the low 40’s, and if it happened on a Saturday, you could guarantee
there would be a long line at the car wash because it was the perfect
opportunity to get the sludge and salt off your car – at least for a day or
two. I remember feeling like I was coming back to life a little bit, and I
could believe that Spring would indeed come again. A thaw like this wouldn’t
last long. Winter would usually roll back in with a vengeance. But it was a
welcome interruption in a long, cold winter.
This passage, chapter 35, from the
prophet Isaiah might have had that same effect on its first audience as a brief
thaw did for me living in Iowa. It was a welcome interruption. Scholar Barbara Lundblad Taylor asks this
question of chapter 35;
“What
is it doing here?”
Taken on its own, it is beautiful
and compelling language. It is poetry at its most masterful. The imagery of the
prophet’s words and the visceral response they evoke are both beautiful and
amazing.
“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 … for waters shall break
forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall
become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.”
These are beautiful and powerful
words indeed. But hear these other powerful words from the mouth of this same prophet:
“For the Lord has a day of
vengeance, a year of vindication by Zion’s cause. And the streams of Edom shall
be turned into pitch, and her soil into sulfur; her land shall become burning
pitch. Night and day it shall not be quenched; its smoke shall go up forever.”
That is Isaiah, chapter 34:8-10; the
chapter and verses just before the one we read today. In chapter 36, the
chapter that follows our chapter, Isaiah tells of King Sennacherib’s capture of
the people of Judah. Sennacherib challenges them, demanding that they submit to
him. His representative denounces their king Hezekiah and tells the people not
to be deceived by Hezekiah’s promise that they will be saved from the Assyrian
conquest. So, these eloquent words of promise in Chapter 35, of creation being
reordered to reflect the fullness of God’s glory; words that tell of the blind
seeing, the deaf hearing, the lame walking, the speechless singing, are both preceded
and followed by words of judgment, vengeance, capture, and forceful submission.
What is this passage, this chapter
of beauty and promise, of expectations upended, of miraculous reordering, doing
here; stuck between prophecies and stories that convey the exact opposite? Some
of the scholarship about this passage claims that it is misplaced in the text.
Some unnamed copyist placed it here when it should have come later. Some
scholars believe that this chapter rightly belongs to Second Isaiah – which is
considered to begin at chapter 40 and contains words of new hope after the
exile of God’s people has finally come to an end. Our chapter, stuck between
doom before and gloom after, must have been mistakenly moved by that same
scribe from its original place to where it now resides. But perhaps it was not
a mistake after all. Perhaps it is where it is for a reason.
Again Lundblad Taylor wrote,
“Some things even our best
scholarship cannot explain. The Spirit hovered over the text and the scribes:
‘Put it here,’ breathed the Spirit, ‘before anyone is ready. Interrupt the
narrative of despair.’”
Interrupt the narrative of despair.
Isn’t that what we desperately need right now? Isn’t that what every generation
has needed? An interruption in the narrative of despair. Isn’t that what we are
preparing for during this season of Advent? An interruption in the despair that
seems to not only loom around us but is growing exponentially. How is God
interrupting us right now? How is God speaking words of hope, whether we are
ready for them or not, whether we can recognize them or not? How is God’s
interruption turning our expectations upside down? How is God’s interruption
like a blooming desert, like streams rushing through arid land, like waters
flowing recklessly out of a sparse and thirsty wilderness, like a Holy Way
where no harm can befall a traveler?
In
ecclesial terms, this Sunday is known as Gaudete Sunday – which is Latin for Rejoice.
On this Sunday, we turn from the deeper shade of royal purple to a lighter pink.
We light a pink candle on our Advent wreath, and joy interrupts us on this day
just as these words of joy interrupt passages before and after that are
anything but joyful.
For
the last two Sundays the prophet Isaiah has shared a vision of instruments of
destruction being transformed into tools for life, of predator and prey lying
down together in companionable peace, and today we read that all of creation
will sing forth God’s praises. All creation will be transformed and renewed.
There will be waters in the wilderness and streams in the desert. Burning sand
will become pools of clear water. Thirsty, dry ground will transform into
springs of water.
And
this will not be reserved for the natural world only, but all humanity as well.
Weak hands will be strengthened; feeble knees will be made firm. The blind
shall see. The deaf will hear. Those who cannot walk will leap like deer. Those
who cannot speak will sing for joy. The whole of creation will sing God’s
praises. The whole of creation will reflect the joy of God.
The
narrative of despair will not only be interrupted but rewritten. The joy of God
will be so pervasive, so ubiquitous that sorrow and sighing will no longer have
a place in the story. Everlasting joy shall be upon the heads of the children
of the Lord, of those ransomed and returned. They shall come to Zion singing.
Joy and gladness will be theirs. Sorrow and sighing will flee away. Forever.
In the weekly preaching group I participate
in, we talked about what it would mean for sorrow and sighing to flee away and
what that imagery evokes. It’s not just that sorrow and sighing will leave or
dissipate or disperse quietly. They will flee away. Sorrow and sighing
become personified in this description, and they will leave as though they are
being pursued or driven off or chased. Joy will not let them linger but will
actively chase them away – not just for a little while but for good and for
always.
How I long for joy to chase away
sorrow and sighing forever. Today is our daughter, Phoebe’s birthday, but it is
also the 14th anniversary of the terrible school shooting at Sandy
Hook Elementary. I remember that day too well. Even though it was Phoebe’s
birthday, it was also a school day and it was filled with the usual chaos of
getting them up and dressed and to school on time. I wished Phoebe a happy
birthday, but I also had to hustle her and her brother out the door and out of
the car and there was little time for hugs and the “I love yous” were quickly
and carelessly said. I had so much to do and so much to prepare, that I didn’t
hear about the shooting until I got home. But when I heard what was happening
in Connecticut, my other plans seemed foolish. I watched the news and I cried
and cried – for everyone affected, but especially for every parent who hustled
their children off to school just as I had but who wouldn’t welcome them home
again.
And with the news yesterday of the
shooting at Brown University and the mass shooting at a Hannukah celebration in
New Zealand, it would seem that sorrow and sighing are permanent residents in
our world and that joy cannot easily or completely chase them away.
Yet that’s what makes this
interruption of despair that Isaiah offers us more necessary than ever, because
it reminds us that God is not done. The promise that our hope rests upon is
that God is not done; that the words of Isaiah represent far more than just an
interruption. One day creation itself will be reordered and realigned to God’s
purpose and intention. One day all of creation will be glad. One day the desert
will rejoice and the crocus, that first flower that blooms even in snow, will
rejoice and sing. One day, weak hands and feeble knees will be strengthened and
firmed. One day the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the lame will leap for
joy. One day there will be streams in the desert. One day there will be water
in the wilderness. One day there will be a highway that runs straight and true,
and it will be a Holy Way. And travelers on that Holy Way will not go astray or
walk with fear. But that Holy Way will take them and us back to Zion, back to
God. We will walk that Holy Way, singing for joy. And behind us, sorrow and
sighing are fleeing into the distance, into the past, into what was but will
never be again.
The promise of Advent, the promise
of God, the promise we cling to is that one day joy will be more than an
interruption. It will be the fullness in which we live and move and have our
being. It will be the paving stones of the Holy Way, the way that leads us to
God. One day joy will send sorrow and sighing packing. One day they will flee
away. Thanks be to God.
Let all of God’s hopeful, peaceful,
joyful children say, “Alleluia.”
Amen.
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