By the Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan
Have you ever wanted something so badly, maybe even been so full of anticipation that you were practically giddy, and then had your hopes dashed?
There is a particularly bitter disappointment we feel when an experience does not live up to our expectations. It can be something as simple as a meal at a restaurant that’s gotten rave reviews, or a movie with a stellar cast piloted by your favorite director. Even if the meal is pretty good, or the film is above average, that gap between your vivid expectations and the cold, hard reality can feel like a body blow. For me it calls to mind being a child and having someone pop your birthday balloon, or watching helplessly as your favorite scoop of ice cream topples off the cone and onto the sidewalk. Honestly, it’s crushing.
While these are fairly trivial illustrations, the Bible offers us more serious examples of people experiencing deep disappointment. Today’s passage from Isaiah, for instance, is set against the background of the Babylonian exile and what happens when it ends and the people of Israel return to Jerusalem.
This community spent two generations in exile, banished from the center of their cultural and religious life, and through it all had somehow kept hope and faith alive. They believed in the promises God had made them, believed that they would return to Jerusalem some day, and they were right. And yet, when the long-anticipated homecoming finally happened, it was not what they had expected.
They arrived home to find Jerusalem a city in ruins, the Temple destroyed. While they did their level best to rebuild, they were not at all happy with the results. As one writer puts it, “their attempts to rebuild the city and the temple in 515 B.C.E. had resulted in a paltry imitation of their memories of the grandeur of the place. […] Reality had not begun to match their fervent desires” and the result was a “keen disappointment.”* The experience of being home, which should have been cause for celebration, was instead disheartening and disillusioning.
Isaiah’s job, the work given to him by God, is to step into this situation of distress and disappointment and help a community face the reality of unmet expectations while at the same time reminding them that their story is far from over. The prophet was anointed to proclaim good news, to bind up the brokenhearted, and to comfort all who mourn. Most of all, the prophet’s work is to bring hope, by showing the people that a new way is still possible, that renewal and restoration are on the horizon, no matter how things might look at the moment. Isaiah has a word for the people of Israel, and that word is that God is not done with them yet.
It would be hard not to see the parallels to our own situation these days. For months and months, we have been living in a kind of exile. This past week, though, marks a real turning point. It is true that we lost a record number of lives to the pandemic, hitting one tragic milestone after another. At the same time, though, we learned that a COVID-19 vaccine has been approved for immediate, emergency use. Shipments began today and will start arriving in hospitals tomorrow. This is amazing good news, something we have long hoped for and anticipated.
The pandemic is not over, but at last! there is light at the end of the tunnel. As long as we can make it through the forbidding winter that experts tell us to expect, we too will have the opportunity for return and homecoming. We can’t know for sure exactly when, but perhaps by next summer or fall, our doors will reopen. All of us will begin the process of returning to our normal routines, including gatherings for worship and fellowship and formation.
Or will we? I think it’s very important for us to begin to ask whether our old routines are really what we want to return to. The story of the people of Israel returning home from exile offers a cautionary tale—but perhaps not in the way you’re thinking. I would argue that what Isaiah is trying to communicate to the people is not that their hopes were too high, but that they weren’t high enough. They were dreaming of going back to something that no longer existed, instead of being open to the new future that God was offering them.
The truth is, life doesn’t run in reverse. We can’t go back, we can only ever move forward into something new.
Isaiah’s use of natural imagery, vivid snapshots of creation at work, illustrate the point perfectly. “For the earth brings forth its shoots, and a garden causes what is grown in it to spring up.”
If you think about a California hillside that has been brown and gold for several dry, hot months and how it can seem to turn green overnight after a good hard rain, you can see in your mind’s eye what Isaiah is talking. That hillside that was green last winter may be green again now, but it is not because it we have magically returned to last winter. New rain has brought new life, new shoots, new buds, new creation. The grass withers and the flower fades, but if we are willing to be fertile soil then new life is always ours for the asking.
My brothers and sisters, my siblings in Christ, this is the time to be pondering the possibility of new life as we begin to envision what we want our own return from exile to look like. Every Advent is a time in between times, but perhaps none more so than this Advent, when both the reality of tremendous loss and the possibility of a new beginning are so evident in our lives. Each one of us has hopes, dreams, and expectations about what our new beginning might look like. Let’s not forget that God has hopes and dreams for us, as well.
That’s right: God has dreams, too. Bishop Michael Curry, exploring the phrase “the dream of God,” says, “The idea is that God has something better in store for every one of us, for every society, for the global community, and for the entire human family.” This was true before the pandemic and it is true now—that God wants something better than the status quo or the way we’ve always done things. In a statement that speaks a profound truth to our lives today, Curry writes, “Dreams are love’s visions—the boundless faith that the world can be remade to look more like what God hoped for his creation.”
God has a dream and we have a chance to be part of that dream, to be part of remaking the world so that it more closely mirrors what God wants for us all: to be part of a liberating, interconnected, loving community, always open to new life and new possibilities.
Let’s dream big, not rejecting everything that came before, but bringing forward with us only the best, the truly good and holy beliefs and practices. Let’s release ourselves from old habits and patterns that no longer serve us or serve God. We don’t want to recreate a paltry imitation of what we had before. We want to co-create, with God, a more just, more faithful, more joyous church and society, a truly beloved community.
God’s call on the people of Israel, uttered through Isaiah, can be heard clearly today as a call on us, on our hearts and souls and, most of all, our imaginations. Like the prophet Isaiah, we have been anointed to find hope and to share it. It is part of our calling as Christians. to make sure that those within our church and those outside hear that call and respond to it. Then we will be like those who dream, and we shall say once again, “The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad indeed.” Amen.
