The prophet of hope

Over these last three Sundays of Advent we have been walking our way through the book of Isaiah who is the prophet who is always full of hope. Now, what happened when the exiles returned to Jerusalem turned out to be less smooth, less accomplishable than they had expected. Arriving from Babylon where they had been used to magnificence and sophistication, they found desolation and ruin. It would take over twenty years for even the foundations of the second Temple to be laid. The exiles were trying to fulfill the prophecy they had been given:

“They shall build up the ancient ruins 
They shall raise up the former devastations 
They shall repair the ruined cities
The devastations of many generations.”

But they found themselves living “in between times”, between the promise and the fulfillment - when wold the Lord return to the Temple? With the difficulties they face the people needed strength in adversity and to give them that, Isaiah reminds them who God is:

"For I the Lord love justice
I hate robbery and wrongdoing
And I will make an everlasting covenant … 
Their descendants shall be known among the nations 
And their offspring among the peoples. "

Which would have reminded them directly of God’s covenant with Abraham. 

Jesus himself used the words from Isaiah which we heard introducing our reading when he read in the synagogue:

"The spirit of the Lord God is upon me
Because the Lord has anointed me 
To bring good news to the oppressed
To bind up the broken hearted "

And Luke writing  in his Gospel concludes this section of it with Jesus’ own words;

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

In so many ways we too are in the “in between times.” We feel this particularly now in the middle of a pandemic, a plague among us, with the promise and now clear signs of a vaccine before us, a light of hope, yet like the Israelites on their return  have devastation before us - loss of loved ones, loss of economic prosperity and I think especially for the young loss of opportunity. Estimates by the pundits of a return to “normal” (if that is what we want) vary but are always counted in numbers of years. 

The disciples expected Jesus to return quickly and it is a characteristic of the Gospel of John an early part of which we heard this morning, that we hear most clearly of the four the realization that we are living in the in between times waiting for Jesus to come again. 

And so how to cope with the messiness of a destroyed Jerusalem? How to cope with the uncertain time to wait for the parousia? And how to cope with the uncertainties of our present epidemic.?The answer was  identified by Isaiah, the prophet of hope, who began  by reminding us who God is - for God is faithful, immutable and steadfast and we need always to hold onto that both in good times and bad.