The Highway of Holiness: The Third Sunday in Advent (December 11, 2022)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

This summer, I bought some bonsai trees for my office at home. I thought it would be nice to get some greenery in my office space. Of course, between my lack of green thumb and Rowan…being Rowan, none of the three plants that I bought ended up growing. My office is a desert that will kill anything that tries to grow.

This morning, we read Isaiah 35, a prophecy given to the exiled people of Israel that anticipates their restoration after their great exile. While there is wrapped up in the passage, a certain expectation of return, especially towards the end as the prophet looks to a highway. But more important than the idea of returning is the idea that God will come to be with the people and that his presence is salvific. God’s coming is a promise for the exiles. He will transform the wilderness, he will save us and transform us. He will guide us home.

One of the foundational Christian beliefs about God is that he is omnipotent, all-powerful. Isaiah promises us that God’s coming brings with it a power that transforms the wilderness. The desert “shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing.” This imagery transports us back to Eden: it is the renewal of all things, the restoration of the way things were supposed to be. And in this act of restoration, God creates life where there is no life; he makes what was sterile fruitful; he turns stone into flesh. If God can transform the desert into a garden, then he can turn a desperate situation into a situation that reflects his glory, and he can even turn a sinner into a saint. He may even be able to grow a bonsai tree in my office. It means he can work in our lives through his love and grace.

The power of God doesn’t leave us as it finds us. “Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: Behold, your God will come with vengeance, Even God with a recompence; He will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, And the tongue of the dumb sing.” Isaiah 35 anticipates the coming of Christ and the salvation he brings. That salvation is transformation. Here’s the cool thing about the transformation he brings: it is always corresponding to our weakness because that shows his strength. We can think about Moses and how he was slow of speech yet God used him to deliver and lead the people of Israel through speech; we can think about Gideon the judge who was the weakest man in the weakest clan of Israel who was called to deliver the people of Israel from their oppression by the Philistines; we can think about Jeremiah who was called to be a prophet in spite of his age or Isaiah who was called to be a prophet in spite of his unclean lips. St. Paul was a violent persecutor of the Church who became instrumental in spreading the Gospel. So if he can make the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the mute sing, then we know that we aren’t so special: he can even transform us; he can bring the streams even into the parched deserts of our souls.

And so God places before us two ways. We can travel the path to salvation or go down the road to perdition. God invites us to travel the path to salvation, the “highway called The way of holiness” that leads to heaven. But this way comes with a warning: “the unclean shall not pass over it; fools shall not err therein.” To travel this road require our complete and total surrender to him, it requires us to be committed to obedience and faithfulness. The way is demanding but rewarding. “No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon.” The way God calls us can be perilous, it can be scary, it can be demanding but ultimately he keeps us safe. Just as lions and ravenous beasts may pose imminent threats against travelers, so we know the devil roams as a roaring lion, “seeking whom he may devour.” But being in the path is the safest place we can possibly be; doing God’s will, while scary sometimes, is the only way to be secure.

And so we come away from Isaiah 35 with three exhortations this morning. The first is that we have to walk in the path. We have to persevere. Things get tough, the road twists and turns, the slope gets more and more severe but our job is to stay on the path. We do that by calling upon him while he’s near, as the we read in Isaiah 55 last week, and letting the Word speak to us and guide us as we follow him: “thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” Like any path, however, there is a constant looking forward to the destination. When we’re in the middle of a long journey, we think on where we’re going and that’s how we get through. When we do this in the spiritual life, this is the virtue of hope. Right now, things aren’t as they should be. You have your own cross to bear. But we know that one day God will come, one day the desert will be fruitful, one day, Lord willing, we will reach our destination. And this conditions our present resolve to consent to and participate with the Gospel as it transform us into who we are supposed to be.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.