The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY
Did you ever play the game called "Telephone?"
If you have, you remember how it is done. There is a long line or sometimes a circle of people. The first person in the line whispers something privately to the next person. That person whispers it privately to the next, and so on down the line or around the circle. The last person says out loud what he or she has heard from the one who spoke to her or him. And then the first person tells what was said at the beginning of the game.
Usually, what is said at the beginning of the game is not the same thing that the last person heard!
Each person has passed on the message they received, but some people may not have understood the message clearly. Other people perhaps did not pay attention, and so they passed along what they thought they heard, or what they hoped they heard. And so the message that starts down the line is not the same as the message at the end of the line after 10 or 15 people have repeated it with some changes or guesses.
I sometimes think that people listen to God the same way.
God tells his people something, or sometimes he tells one of the prophets something and the prophet repeats it to the people. That's what happened with our reading for today, from the prophet Isaiah. Let's check carefully and see what Isaiah was told to tell
God's people:
- The desert will become fertile, and the land will rejoice.
- All of Israel will rejoice and be glad, because they will see the majesty and power of God.
- God will come to make right what is wrong, and he will come to save his people.
- Miracles will happen when God comes:
- The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the crippled will be healed, the mute will sing;
- Waters will come into the desert, and the waste country will become a swamp;
- A highway will come into being, and it will be called the Holy Way;
- Only God's people will travel on it, no sinners;
- Nobody who travels on it will get lost or be attacked by wild beasts;
- The ransomed (saved) of God will travel on it.
- Those whom God has saved will return to Jerusalem, and be filled with joy; they will have no sorrow or sighing or sadness.
By the time that Jesus had been born and grown up, and been baptized by John, people had a completely different idea of what God had promised through Isaiah and the other prophets. Even John, who had pointed to Jesus and called him the Lamb of God, was not quite sure of exactly what Jesus' coming meant. From his prison cell, John sent messengers to double-check with Jesus: Are you the One Who Is To Come, or do we need to look for someone else coming from God?
John just HAD to ask. He knew that he would probably be killed very soon, because he had made King Herod very angry with him. Before he died, John wanted to be sure that he had properly understood what God had told him, that day when Jesus came to be baptized. John wanted the peace of knowing that he had not misunderstood God, and that he had passed on to the people the message God had given him: This man Jesus, who is coming to be baptized, is the One Who Is Promised. He is the One Who Will Save the People. So he sent his friends to make sure that he got it right, and so that he could die in peace.
The problem, you see, is that over the centuries between Isaiah and Jesus, the people had passed God's message to Isaiah around among themselves, over and over. What they thought they had heard was partly what God had said to Isaiah, and partly what the people hoped or wanted to hear, and that depended a lot on what was happening in Israel at that time: wars, droughts, famines, the army rebelling, and so on.
By the time of John and Jesus, most people thought that what God had said to Isaiah was a promise that the One Whom God Would Send was going to bring Israel back to the days of glory, the days of King David and King Solomon, who of course lived earlier than Isaiah.
But now, the Greeks had conquered Israel and Judah, and then the Romans had conquered the Greeks, and so the Roman army occupied Israel and Judah, and a Roman governor ruled in Jerusalem, representing the King of Rome. The people were heavily taxed. They had less freedom and could not run their own country their own way. And so,
what most people at the time of John and Jesus thought that God had told Isaiah was something like this:
God will send someone to save Israel, and bring back the glory of King David and King Solomon, and all of Israel will be happy and joyful. The people will be saved from the foreign army, and God will take care of them forever .
Now you know and I know that's not what Isaiah said. But I suspect that about 75 % of the people in Israel THOUGHT that was what God had promised to Isaiah!
And so, when Jesus came, and
- Gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf,
- Cured cripples and loosed the tongues of the mute,
- Proved that he could control the forces of nature, such as storms,
- Showed that he could multiply food and raise the dead,
- Dared to forgive the sins of sinners and tell them to sin no more
- Showed them how to walk in God's ways and follow the path of God's commands...
and these, of course, are the things that Isaiah had said would mark the coming of God to the people....
OF COURSE they expected him to raise an army and throw out the Roman army and government.
And when he didn't do it, they crucified him.
We need to listen very carefully to what God says to us, both in the Bible and in our own conversation with God in prayer. We need to be careful that we act on what God really tells us, and not on what we wish or hope he will tell us. When Jesus came as a babe to Bethlehem, we know that although he proved by the prophecies of Isaiah that he is God the Son, the people didn't believe...because he did not meet THEIR hopes and dreams and expectations. Now, in Advent, we wait for his coming again, to judge and to rule the world. We will be judged by what God says, not by what we hope and dream and assume.
Advent is a time to give some serious thought to this, so that we will be ready, when God comes again in power and majesty and great glory, as God the Son, Jesus...we will be ready to accept him on his own terms, not ours, with great joy and happiness. Amen.
