Isaiah 35:1-10
“Return Journey”
December 15, 2019 — Third Sunday in Advent
Flowers in the desert. Isaiah pictures it for us in verse 1. Anyone from the American southwest will tell you it does happen. When our Arizona Highways magazine lands in the mailbox in the spring, the cover or a spread across two pages in the middle often shows something like Isaiah describes, “the desert shall rejoice and blossom.”
I’ve seen it with my own eyes in California. One April on a Boy Scout trip camping at Joshua Tree National Monument, I saw beautiful yellow flowers cover the desert floor as far as I could see. But Isaiah was not talking about our American deserts where rain falls enough that poppies and lupine and desert lily and verbena can grow, not to mention all the cactus flowers which pop out. No, Isaiah was picturing his people coming home from exile, the direct route between Babylon and Jerusalem, across the flat, truly empty desert of what we now call western Iraq or northern Saudi Arabia.
Babylon was 60 miles south of where Baghdad is now. Steve Moore tells me there, the shortest way back to Jerusalem, is desolate. “It’s like the moon,” he said. On rare occasions rain falls, and plants spring up. But in a few days they are dry and dead. There is a modern highway now between Baghdad and Amman in Jordan, but there were no roads then. People in ancient times did not take long journeys across such deserts. They went around. Travel between Israel and Babylon would have arced north to follow the Euphrates or Tigris rivers as much as possible.
Isaiah wrote about this return through a desert long before it happened. As he wrote, it was about 700 B.C., more than a hundred years until his people would start being carried off to Babylon, fifty more before they came home. But Isaiah set the stage for that exile in chapter 39 as he wrote about King Hezekiah welcoming Babylonian visitors and showing them all his house and riches. He warned the king of the disaster which would come after he died, but first he prophesied God’s redemption from that disaster.
Deserts have spiritual significance in Scripture and in Christian life. God had Moses lead his people through the desert before they came to the Promised Land. Jesus went into the desert to be tempted before beginning His ministry. And in our Gospel we read about John the Baptist who preached to people out in the wilderness to prepare for Jesus’ coming. Later Christians went to be alone in the desert so they might draw closer to God.
Yet even familiar deserts like I visit in Arizona are forbidding places. There are rattlesnakes and scorpions to bite you, sharp cacti and jagged rocks to bump against, and the constant sun to burn your skin and dry you out. My cousin who grew up in Arizona learned that again on a short hike with a friend. They missed a turn and ran out of water. It was another couple hours before they found their way back to the road and someone gave them water and a ride to their car. Their little walk in the desert could have ended badly.
Here in western Oregon we have desert to the east, but we don’t worry too much about water, except in summer. Yet, as those early Christians knew very well, the driest and most desolate deserts are more spiritual than physical. We eat and drink and have all sorts of little pleasures along our journeys: entertainment, recreation, friends and family. But where are we going? If it all simply comes to an end at some point, if dying is the end of the journey, then you and I may also be crossing a desert.
As he enjoyed the pleasures of his life, the poet Andrew Marvel wrote:
But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged Chariot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast Eternity.
So, he says, “Let us sport us while we may,” let’s have all the fun and joy we can wring from life. Let’s avoid that vast desert of eternity as long as possible.
Some of us don’t even have it that good. It’s not just eternity that seems like a desert, but the present moment. Some have no jobs to go to. Some can’t afford even little pleasures. Some get no vacations. And many, many of us live in a psychic or relational wasteland. We have all the flowers of technology and prosperity in our lives, but in spite of all those pleasures we are bored and lonely. Life right now is still a desert.
In verses 1 and 2, Isaiah predicts the desert will bloom. Beauty and joy will come to the parched land. The desert will burst open like the first flower of spring, the crocus. It will be filled with glorious cedar trees like those of Lebanon. It will be crowned with splendid mountains like Carmel. Roses like those that grow in the valley of Sharon will spring up and bloom. The desert, he says, will rejoice and sing.
It’s a literal promise, I’m sure. Some day, God will work a miracle of transformation on the physical world. All that is damaged and ugly will be made beautiful. The deserts will be watered, flowers will spring up. But at its deepest level, this is a spiritual promise. Isaiah predicts material splendor, but it will happen, he says at the end of verse 2, because of a spiritual transformation: “They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God.”
God comes into our lives like flowers in the desert, like unexpected blossoms in spring. We heard Isaiah tell us how last week. Jesus is the “shoot,” the “branch” which sprang unexpectedly from the lineage of David. The way through the desert is to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, to ask Him to lead you from this point on and finally bring you home. If you do that, if you ask the Lord to put you on His road, your life will change. You will be on the way to eternal life.
As you trust in Jesus, the desert around you may blossom. Unexpected and beautiful flowers will line your path. But don’t forget this—Isaiah won’t let you forget it—you will still be in the desert. That’s why the rest of the text is here. We are on a journey that is not over. And because it is a journey through the desert, it will not be easy.
So verses 3 and 4 call for encouragement. Picture Jewish exiles coming from Babylon, a journey of six or seven hundred miles, all on foot. It had been fifty years. Some of them were old people captured as teenagers. There would be pregnant women, children. Hardly any of them would be prepared for this kind of grueling, difficult trek across the sand. So Isaiah says, “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.” We know about feeble knees pretty well at our house.
As I said, the desert is dangerous. It was even more then, with wild animals and bandits who robbed, even killed travelers. So Isaiah wrote “Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear!’” Then, “Here is your God… He will come to save you.” That’s what you and I are to say to each other when life’s journey gets long and hard.
Those returning exiles held the hands of little ones, offered a shoulder to lean on for older ones with bad knees. They comforted those whose hearts gave out from weariness and heat. It was a journey made in a community of travelers who encouraged each other.
Our Christian journey of the spirit needs the same kind of mutual encouragement. Christ has come to us, some flowers are blooming, but we’re still in the desert. We get tired. We grow afraid. As we discovered in the Gospel text this morning, that happened even to John the Baptist.
Last week we saw John standing strong in the desert. He challenged powerful people and called them to repent. Unlike spineless preachers and politicians today, he even called upon King Herod to repent of his adultery. But the king imprisoned him. Sitting there alone in Herod’s jail, John began to fear, to doubt what he had believed. So he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one?” John had told his disciples that Jesus was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. But there in prison, in the desert of his soul, he wasn’t so sure. He wanted to know if God really had come to save him.
In response to John’s doubts and fears, Jesus quoted to Him what Isaiah predicted in verses 5 and 6. Flowers were the least of it. “The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.” Jesus sent the messengers back to John saying, “Go and tell John what you see and hear, the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.” In other words, everything Isaiah predicted and more, Jesus has done. John need not fear.
John fully expected to die, to be executed by Herod. So Jesus specifically added an item to that report. In addition to healing the blind and deaf and lame, Jesus told them, the dead are raised. Both in the desert and on death row, there is hope. Jesus raises the dead. We will not face a desert of vast eternity. The water in the desert Isaiah says in verse 6 will “break forth” and “become a pool” in verse 7 is the water of life in Christ.
Like John the Baptist, you and I may feel trapped and alone, maybe just tired and a little fearful, doubtful there is any hope ahead. So God sends us a word like He sent to John, a sign like those Isaiah wrote about. He makes flowers bloom, He reminds us of the miracles He has worked in the past, He shows us we are on a road that leads somewhere. It happens in many ways.
Years ago, Beth and I used to travel a desert highway every summer. We would drive from Nebraska, down the middle of Colorado, and through Four Corners on Highway 160 toward Flagstaff. It’s bleak desert there, almost like the moon, as Steve said about Iraq, desolate, empty road. We drove it once when our daughter Susan was two. It was hot, 105 in the shade, and long past lunch time. Susan was restless and crying. We were tired and hungry and needed to go to the bathroom. And we knew what was ahead.
Kayenta. Back then it was a tiny town, barely a wide place in the road with a scruffy gas station and mangy dogs milling around. The only place to eat was a dingy little cafe full of locals who would stare at us. The restrooms… just use your imagination. And the only thing past Kayenta was Cow Springs. As you might guess, it was even worse.
So we drove, tired and discouraged, Susan crying, Beth and I without any real hope for rest ahead. But then we rounded a curve above Kayenta and looked down. There it was, like a miracle from God in the desert, an orange and red sign that read “Burger King.” Hallelujah! Burger King! Hamburgers. Cold milkshakes. Clean restrooms. Even a play area for Susan to burn off her accumulated energy. It was better than flowers in the desert.
That’s how the signs of God come to us as we travel through the spiritual deserts we face. Surprising gifts of grace appear: a dream, a friend, an encouraging word, a moment of beauty or peace, maybe even a little miracle. Like John the Baptist we are reminded that the journey has an end and that, through Christ, God is with us in the desert.
You’ve heard the saying “the joy is in the journey.” That was not said by someone traveling with small children. It’s easy to say when life is good and you have friends and a job and a happy home. But for those who are homeless, those who are lonely, those for whom life is full of fear, it’s often not true at all. What’s more, it’s not exactly Christian.
As I said, there’s a highway across Iraq now. I imagine it is still dangerous. But verse 8 promises “a highway shall be there,” “the Holy Way.” It’s a better road, a safe road through the desert of life. It’s not for the “unclean,” Isaiah says, but for God’s people washed clean in the living water of Jesus, with our sins forgiven. And it is a road anyone can take, no GPS needed, “no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.”
God’s road through the desert is safe. No lions, says verse 9, nor any other ravenous beast. There is nothing to fear along God’s highway, “the redeemed shall walk there.” That’s you and I who are redeemed by Jesus. No one who walks in His way will be lost. Nothing on earth can take away the salvation of a person who has decided to follow Christ.
It’s a good road, but it’s still in the desert. Jesus sent a message to John. He encouraged him, but He didn’t rescue him. He told John of miracles, but didn’t work one for him. He reminded John that flowers bloom in the desert, but he left him in prison. In effect, He told John, “This may look like desert, but you really are on the way home. Don’t give up. Blessed is he who does not fall away on account of me.” Jesus says the same to us.
We don’t believe in a pointless journey for the sake of journeying. We believe in a great day of arrival in God’s kingdom. Verse 10 proclaims, “the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” As we remember this third Sunday of Advent, we are headed for joy, the joy of coming home.
Our song for the Advent candles today was “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” The chorus was “Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.” But that song, that “rejoice, rejoice” is in a minor key. That’s another reminder of what our journey is like. We’re in the desert, but we rejoice as we look ahead.
The joy is not in the journey. The joy is going home. That’s the Christian hope. Jesus said, “I am the Way.” God made a way for the Jewish people to come home from Babylon 160 years after Isaiah predicted it. After another 500 years, He made a way for all of us to come home, the Way of Jesus, the Way of the Cross and His Resurrection.
You know how good it is to come home after a long journey. You pull into your own driveway, flop down on your own faded sofa, sleep in your own bed with your favorite pillow, and use a familiar bathroom! Coming home.
In his little book Manalive, G. K. Chesterton tells of a man named Innocent Smith who one day walks out of his house to look for home. He walks all the way around the world, only to come back to the place where he’s always lived, a little house with a hedge and a green lamppost. Near the end of that journey, Smith reflects on why we love places on earth when we are really traveling toward heaven. He says,
I think God has given us the love of special places, of a hearth and of a native land, for a good reason… if there be a house for me in heaven it will either have a green lamp-post and a hedge, or something quite as positive and personal as a green lamp-post and a hedge. I mean that God bade me love one spot and serve it, and do all things however wild in praise of it, so that this one spot might be a witness against all the infinities and the sophistries, that Paradise is somewhere and not anywhere, is something and not anything. And I would not be so very much surprised if the house in heaven had a real green lamp-post after all.
In other words, though we are on a journey beyond this world, it is quite all right and even good to love a place, a home in this world. Because that place too is a sign in the desert, a witness that the joyful kingdom of God is not just a lovely idea in our minds, not just a figment with no reality. It’s a destination as real and as personal as our own living rooms and favorite chairs. In Jesus Christ we travel the long road through the desert, but it’s a highway to a real home.
We do have joy in the journey whenever we see the signs of where we are going, whether it’s here in the words of Scripture, or in the music of the season, or in the smile of a Christian friend. There is a house at the end of the road which has been given to us by the grace of Jesus Christ, built on the foundation of His love and sacrifice on our behalf. Believe in Him and you are on the road. The sun is hot, the way is long, the road may be hard. But don’t give up. Like He said to John, don’t fall away. You will return. You will come to Him, because He has come to you. Through the desert, He is bringing you home.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2019 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj