Pastor Tom Johnson, December 6, 2020
Today we hear a voice crying out in the wilderness. It is Isaiah’s prophetic vision of John the Baptist. It is for the comfort of the people of God. It’s also a call for us to lift our voice up together and be the herald of good tidings. Comfort, O comfort my people...speak tenderly...cry out to her... And what’s the message? “All people are grass their constancy is like the flower of the field. ...The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.”
The word grass here is not referring to a specific type of field grass but vegetation in general. The class of vegetation are called ephemerals. They are any short-lived plant. They sprout up, grow, blossom, and die in a matter of weeks. In contrast, perennials are plants that live for two or more years. They survive through all the seasons and severe weather conditions such as freezing temperatures, the hot and dry sun, flood, and drought. The prophet reminds us of our ephemeral nature. Compared to the lifespan of a human being, ephemerals have a very fleeting life. Their vitality lasts only for a short season. Their floral beauty only lasts for days.
As a very young child, I have vivid memories of a large field down the street from my home. In the spring, golden yellow flowers would blossom. The field became a deep, green canvas with lots of yellow brush strokes all over. But then in just a matter of days, the yellows turned to grays and whites. As I walked into the field and plucked up the dead flowers, I enjoyed blowing the seeds away. Each seed had a miniature cotton parachute. By my breath, the little white helicopters would fly away in a tight formation. Even as a child, I seemed to stand outside and loom large over the short lifespan of this flower turned flying-cotton seeds.
Compared to the lifespan of God’s Word, humanity has a very fleeting life. Scripture says, “With the Lord day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (2 Peter 3:8). God stands outside creation and sees the whole of human history in a glance. He sees empires rise and fall...generations of families come and go like the dandelions that blossom into golden flowers that just days later fly away in grays and whites. Sadly, in these last months, we are reminded more than ever of our ephemeral nature. The pandemic is claiming record numbers of lives. We have already seen multiple seasons of surges and flattening. In addition to that, we still continue to have even more deaths due to heart disease and cancer. But because of the pandemic in these last months, we seem to stare at death more candidly. We are more keenly aware of our temporal and mortal nature. As children of God, we also remember that we are all plagued not only by death but also by sin and evil. And so, as the prophet Isaiah foreshadowed, John the Baptist cries out comfort and a reckoning for our sin, evil, and death in the world.
God does not wants us to live in denial of death but to recognize its reality in light of his grace. This is wisdom. By recognizing life’s brevity and frailty, we cherish our lives all the more. We step back and consider how our lives fit into God’s eternal plan. We repent; which means God changes our life’s path for the better. God wants us to redeem our lives and our time now. Our text from Isaiah says, God wants to gather us like lambs into his arms today, carry us in his embrace, and gently lead us as our Good Shepherd into our eternal future with him. Through John the Baptist, God calls us to the water, the river Jordan. By the washing of the water and the Word, we receive forgiveness, cleansing, and a fresh start. This new life is not a fleeting one of just water as John himself says but points to the baptism of Jesus who infuses new and eternal life by the Holy Spirit.
So the prophet Isaiah hears God’s cry out of comfort: “The grass withers, the flower fades but the word of our God will stand forever.” The Word of God is the seed God plants into the soil of our hearts. It is the tree in Psalm 1 that is planted by streams of water...“whose leaves do not wither and in whatever we do by the strength of the Word prospers us.”
The Word of God is the Word made flesh. He is the eternal Son of God, uncreated, without beginning, and will have no end. He is the One born of Mary in a stable. He was planted in Galilean soil and grew in stature before God and humanity. He is the one who is mightier than John the Baptist and more powerful than any mere mortal. He is the enfleshed Word who stands forever. And not only that, he is the One who hold us up and causes us to stand. As Scripture says in Romans 14, “[we] will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make [us] stand” (v. 4). And so we stand and live now by the Word made flesh in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
We hail Thee as our Savior, Lord,
Our refuge and our great reward;
Without Thy grace we waste away
Like flow’rs that wither and decay.
Lay on the sick Thy healing hand
And make the fallen strong to stand;
Show us the glory of Thy face
Till beauty springs in ev’ry place.
("On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist’s Cry," LSB 344, vv. 3-4)
May it be so quickly. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
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