God brings us exiles home – Isa 40:1-5,9-11, Mark 1:1-8

2nd Sunday of Advent, Year B; Holy Infant parish

To exiles, comfort is spoken, comfort is tenderly spoken.  The Israelites heard this comfort after living for well over a generation in Babylon, after the Babylonians had razed Jerusalem and brought them captive to Babylon.  So many had grown up with talk of their Land, their own king, their own Temple being foreign to them, being something almost unimaginable, something they had never known, something that they know engenders a sparkle in the grandparents’ eyes, but not something they had ever touched or seen for themselves.  They were Israelites who had not known Israel, but only Babylonian captivity.  They had only known lush gardens they were shut out of.  They had only known themselves as foreign, as alien, as unwanted except as cheap labor.  They tried to sing their people’s songs in a strange land, but the melodies had never been wrapped around their tongues in their homeland.

Christ meets us in our offering – Isa 63:16b-17, 19; 64:2-7; Advent I collect

Advent I, Year B; Holy Infant church

Our readings today began without could have been understood as a formulaic profession of faith, “You, God, are our Father.” But it’s not just a statement of fact. Actually, in the Hebrew that verb “are” isn’t there, the reading would just begin with a list of titles for God: “You… God… our Father! Redeemer! (so named for ever)… Why do you make us stray from you, God?” It’s a long introduction to a question, a long crying out to God, to God whose absence is felt very keenly.