Comfort for Creation

Isaiah 40:1-11 (NRSV) 1 Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. 3 A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 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. 5 Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” 6 A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All flesh is grass; their constancy is like the flower of the field. 7 The grass withers; the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. 8 The grass withers; the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 9 Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” 10 See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him and his recompense before him. ​11 He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom and gently lead the mother sheep. Picture It is difficult to read Isaiah in a strictly monolithic manner. It is a book both deeply embedded in the historical situatedness of the Israelites, and timeless, serving as inspiration for a variety of communities and contexts. Indeed, after the Psalms, it is the second most quoted Old Testament book in the New Testament. Especially in this season of Advent, it is nearly impossible to read Isaiah 40:1-9 without associating the voice in the wilderness as John the Baptist preparing a way for Jesus, and without conjuring images of the Shepherds who are the first to receive the good news about the coming baby Messiah. However, because of Scripture’s role as the intentional medium of continuing divine revelation, a multi-level reading is not only appropriate but required for serious theological reflection. For the people of God living in the Anthropocene, Isaiah invites us to redefine our expectations of power and way of being in the world. ​ The text opens with a striking tone of attachment and intimacy from the mouth of God: “Comfort, O comfort my people.” Chapter forty of Isaiah is known as deutero-Isaiah, written during the exile of the Israelites. Jerusalem has been destroyed, the people are without a home. Who would dare hope for comfort? Yahweh is the one responsible for their pain, for this exile. Yet, God’s heart breaks, there is an aversion to this affliction that echoes Lamentations 3:32-33: “Although he causes grief, he will have compassion, according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.” God is rushing to comfort Her people, She is coming from the unexpected place of the wilderness to make the “rough places a plain.” The text concludes with divine power impressed via tenderness. God comes with the might, not of military prowess, but of a nursing mother and caretaking shepherd. We are the sheep gathered at His breast, suckling milk, finding true nourishment and comfort. The way these divine metaphors contaminate each other is quite stunning, all at once God is a warrior, mother, and attentive sheep keeper. In these three different manifestations of power, as my supervisor Derrick Weston reminded me, the power of a warrior is obvious to us, but less so that of a shepherd and a mother. Yet, these models of feminine and agrarian strength are core to how the Kingdom of God is expressed; there is no separating out creation, and the inherent femininity of creation, from our understanding of God’s power. Everywhere God is, so is the land, as the channel through which God comes in the wilderness (v.3), as the lens through which He sees His people as flowers and grass (v. 6-8), as the very foundations of His lamb's well-being (v. 11). God comes with the might, not of military prowess, but of a nursing mother and caretaking shepherd. We are the sheep gathered at His breast, suckling milk, finding true nourishment and comfort. Picture Isaiah 40:1-9 reminds us that the Lord’s compassion is a well with depths unsearchable; it stretches our imagination and challenges our presumptions about the triumphant powers in the world. There is also a call to action: if the heart of God breaks for a disobedient people, how much more must it break for an innocent Earth? Out of the wilderness, our contemporary ears can hear this voice: Comfort, O comfort my Earth, says your God. The chapter instructs us in a countercultural kind of hope. In our globalized economy, for example, we practice loving our desires and are ingrained in the story that we are first and foremost consumers rather than sheep. Comfort is dispensed in the ability to purchase goods in our homogenized marketplace the instant we want it. Yet, we know the cheap, shallow nature of this comfort; it is a distraction from our deepest longings, an alienation from people and places, and a form of domination on our planet. Isaiah invites us to a reorientation of our desires, a turning towards the gentleness of God that makes all things new, that gives life and gives life abundantly to all nursing at His bosom. The power of God is that of a mothering animal. May we seek the nourishment from God that always transforms us into Her likeness, so we too might imitate the divine as a motherly shepherd, offering comfort to creation so desperate for healing.