On December 6th, the second Sunday of Advent, Lisa Thornton spoke to the lectionary passage of Isaiah 40:3-11— Isaiah’s call to make straight the way of the the coming Lord — and Mark 1:1-8, where John the Baptist points to the one to come.
Advent is a season of preparation — doing the work of getting ready for the Lord to come.
Lisa loves preparing: planning, details, to-do lists, and getting things ready. This is where she shines. She jokes that this is even her love language. And she loves advent.
Yet this year planning for advent has felt really tough, and the stakes for what’s coming have never felt so high. Lisa says, “Isaiah 40:3-11 feels tailor made for someone like me. It’s basically a to-do list of everything that needs to be done before the Lord arrives.” Isaiah is talking about the barriers and obstacles that are currently in the way of our ability to allow the Lord to show up in an unhindered fashion. Maybe it’s our love of material comforts, gossiping, or reluctance to really give ourselves to the fight for justice and righteousness. It’s not that we’re in control of the Lord’s return, or whether the Holy Spirit has the ability to freely move in the world, but we have a part to play in preparing our own hearts to allow God to move and fully act in glory.
What Isaiah is asking us to do can be overwhelming. This year has been so hard. The pain of this year isn’t just personal, it feel like it’s at every corner, everywhere, all the time, and about everything. Our time may not be unique in terms of hardship, but our communication systems put hardships before us constantly.
And then December hits, and a sanitized version of the nativity and the season don’t make sense in the tsunami of darkness. The effort needed to prepare the road for the Lord’s coming can seem beyond us — as they must have to the exiles he was addressing.
Yet Isaiah 40:26-31 points us toward God and his strength and presence in weariness — and our weariness is okay. The Lord is already here helping us with the preparations needed. And in Mark John the Baptist describes Jesus as “one stronger than I am” who is coming. Our hope is in the messiness of human weakness. And even the effort of being hopeful is enough.
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Pasadena Mennonite Church 