"make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain."
As I look at our glorious mountains, I can feel the mighty power that lifted them up from the bowels of the earth, so many millions of years ago. I can imagine the roar of rock against rock, the breaking, the pure force of geological change. And I can imagine what force it would take for the barrier before me to come crashing down. What a fearsome sight it would be, to see the majestic mountains sink back into the earth, like water draining from a tub.
I can picture the pioneers heading west, stopping near what is now Barcelona Street. They are full of dreams for the future, dragging all that they own in a heavy, lumbering wagon. I can imagine them looking up at our front range of mountains, wondering how they are going to get through, wondering what unseen obstacles await on the other side. How they would have rejoiced at Isaiah’s miraculous leveling, at seeing the valleys embrace the peaks, at finding a path open up, straight to their dreams. What relief they would have felt to watch their hardships and fears simply melt away.
This Advent, I wouldn’t mind seeing our hardships melt away, either. If only God would come to wipe away our troubles, to open for us a straight path to a whole and healthy world. It’s not just the image of mountains that resonates more with me this year. It’s also the anguished cry for comfort. There is so much death raging across the land, so much fear and privation all around us. I feel the need to join the people of ancient Israel in a heart-felt cry, imploring God like never before: “Haven’t we suffered enough now? When is our term over?”
Today’s texts promise us that comfort is coming. We have Isaiah’s beautiful picture of salvation for the exiled people of Israel, for a people longing to go home. Isaiah shows us a God who acts both in strength and in compassion, a God who levels mountains and who cradles baby lambs in his arms. Our psalmist paints us a picture of the healing of all creation: we see our longings take on flesh and dance. Truth and mercy turn and sway, together with peace and right relationship. They join in a holy embrace. And when the beautiful images no longer suffice, when we’ve had it up to here with sin and evil, Second Peter give us God’s fiery justice, burning away all that is broken.
These beautiful readings still leave us asking, “When, O Lord?” It’s St. Mark who offers us something of an answer to our impatience. Scholars believe that the first line of Mark’s Gospel, “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, Son of God,” isn’t the first line at all. It’s really the title of the entire Gospel of Mark. (You see, ancient scribes didn’t have room for fancy spacing and punctuation in their manuscripts. Words and sentences all run together, and scholars have to figure out how to divide things up.) If this theory is correct, chapter one of the Good News of Jesus Christ is the story that we read in Mark’s Gospel. The whole book. Chapter one of Jesus’ story contains an account of his life and death on earth, followed by the resurrection announcement to the fearful women at the empty tomb.
Chapter Two of the Good News contains all of our reactions, our response to what we read in Mark’s Gospel. The middle of the story is how Christian lives are lived in the light of resurrection. The middle involves our attempts at righteousness, our attempts at repentance, our attempts at courage, our attempts at justice and transformation. But all of this good work that we do in our lives is just the middle of the story. All stories have an end, as well. The end of the story of the Good News doesn’t depend on our best attempts or worst failures. The end of the story, Chapter Three, is the new heaven and the new earth: the salvation, healing, and forgiveness that are God’s doing.
Today’s readings all remind us that the story of the Good News in Jesus Christ, is directed toward an end. We can dress that end in the language of the Day of the Lord. We can drape it in the images of Christ’s Second Coming. We can paint it in the pastel colors of a New Creation. But because Christ rose from the dead, the ending of his story remains one in which goodness triumphs. It is an ending in which Evil does not have the last word. It is an ending that gives hope to the middle.
Standing here in the middle of the story, looking up at the imposing mountains, we in Boulder are surrounded by grass. Isaiah talks about “the grass that withers.” I’ve always found this image of our sin and mortality to be devastatingly true, yet far from a comfort in despair.
"All people are grass, [writes
Isaiah]
their constancy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower
fades,
when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
surely the people are grass."
Grass. Fragile. Short-lived. Soon brown and broken, ready for the burning. It’s not a cheerful picture at all. Living here on the Front Range has helped me with this vision, as well, though. Every day, I take a walk through the Open Spaces around my home, and I am surrounded by brown grass. Tall brown grass blowing in the wind, short brown grass covered in dust. When I first drove out here last August, I was rather dismayed by all of this brown grass. I was used to dark, deep greens, velvet in the shadows. How was I ever going to get used to all this brownness, I wondered. What I soon realized, though, was the beauty of the brown grass. All it takes is a hint of sunlight, and the brown turns to silver and gold. On gray days, the landscape is pretty sad. But with a little light, the fields suddenly fill with golden splendor. They become a rich tapestry fit for kings. The dry, fragile grasses shine like treasure. Already, I have come to love the brown grass. It lifts my spirits higher than the deep greens ever did.
In this most challenging Advent, perhaps we are indeed the brown grasses. Fragile. Mortal. Here for only a short time. We are rooted in the plains, where we can only gape at the high mountains that surround us still. We long for Chapter Three of the Good News, still far away on the horizon. Yet God shines the Light of Christ upon us every day. As the Light touches each of us, God asks us to cry aloud in golden voices for all to hear. To shout in the wilderness that health and wholeness will prevail, that Evil will not have the last word. To cry aloud that God’s Good News will stand forever. We don’t have to bring down the mountains to reach our God. God comes down to us in resplendent light that cries in the wilderness:
“Comfort, O comfort my people … Lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear. Say to the cities … ‘Here is your God!’"
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