Please read this passage before reading the homily.
For the Israelites, it was a bleak time in the history of God’s people. The people had gone into exile and the nation had been crushed. The passage from home to the Babylonians had been through as harsh desert, a desert that had seemed as dry and as sad as the exiles’ lives. Isaiah, however, could see a return. The desert and the parched land would exult and share in the joy of the return from exile. Isaiah could say, “Your God comes with vindication!”
For us it is winter. The sun seems to be dying as we approach the solstice. Cold seems to be winning the semiannual conflict with warmth. What kind of snowstorm and fiercely cold weather will we have and when will summer come again, we seem to worry.
It is Advent. We are waiting. We are expecting. A new year will come. Christmas will come. Our deaf eyes and our blind ears will see and hear properly. This is the hope that the prophet Isaiah offers us when we hear that our God comes with vindication.
Our struggle, however, is not about heat and cold, or snow versus clear. Our struggle is within ourselves and our selfishness: we need saving. The Lord has come, once for all, in the eternity of a Bethlehem night. We, however, need assurance in this time in our lives. Will our spiritual and deeply human longings be satisfied?
Isaiah seems to say yes. He encourages us. Deserts will bloom, streams will burst forth in our deserts, the way to God is open to us and we have been ransomed. Just as God came long ago to save, and just as God has often intervened in our lives to save us, so God will continue to come to save us.
Despite the difficulties in which we live, there will be blooms on the steppes and strength for the weak. There will be eyes for seeing and ears for hearing. There will be return from exile, and God will be with us forever.