Everlasting joy will crown their heads
Isa 35:1-10; Ps 146:5-10 (or Lk 1:46b-55); Jas 5:7-10; Mt 11:2-11
Daina Mežecka, LLSTA
What do this year’s third-Sunday-of-Advent texts bring us? – From the very first one onward, they illuminate a vast “stage” before our eyes.
Isaiah, depicting the Lord’s liberated ones returning home to Zion, addresses all who are present and calls out to them: “Let the wilderness rejoice and the parched land be glad, let the desert exult and bloom [..], let it bloom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing!” – Yes, yes, he truly addresses all who are present, not only the people. And so creation, which is without eyes and ears, is called to strengthen and address us in our weakness, we who at that moment have “weary hands” and “feeble knees” (Isa. 35:1-3). At that moment. Perhaps also at this moment.
The prophet promises that the lame will leap like a deer and the tongue of the mute will sing for joy. That in the wilderness waters will surge up and streams in the desert. They will burst forth! Turn green! Flourish! – What a thundering hymn, what a wild dance of joy! How staggering and incomprehensible it is to imagine that human rejoicing will one day ring out in a single song with all of creation!… – That creation which we call the forces of nature, before which we feel awe and which often terrifies us, just as it did people in Isaiah’s day or even earlier times. Yet in this word-painting we rejoice together. In that deep unity and understanding that draws us to remember the unrememberable and to think of a certain Garden. Unrememberable and deeply longed-for. A Garden in which the human being had not yet become estranged from its Creator and the rest of creation. In which it rejoiced together with them.
It seems that not only did the words of future prophecy come pouring eagerly from Isaiah’s lips, but the translators, too, nearly competed in describing this scene: where some emphasize that the waters will burst forth and surge up and the grasses and reeds will flourish, others – in the earlier translation – proclaim that all of this will happen in the scorching sand. And that in these swirling transformations… a level and safe road will come to be. The road of God’s people, on which not even the simplest can lose their way. – How encouraging, is it not!
And the prophet continues to illuminate the road and its destination – Zion, to which the liberated ones will hasten with rejoicing, and “everlasting joy will crown their heads” (Isa. 35:10).
Stop here and consider what it might really be like – when joy crowns the head? It must be a good feeling – since we are speaking of joy. That much is clear. But what exactly might these sensations be?
Back then, the Israelites in the desert heat perhaps imagined it as refreshing shade over their heads? What sensations come to your mind, in damp and dark December?
For me, joy is more associated with warmth. Like feeling the sun on your face on a winter’s day. Long absent, long awaited. Or in summer, riding a bicycle, feeling a gentle, warm wind flowing over your head. As for my black kitties – little brothers, it seems joy can mean for them both hours of lying curled around one another and turning into a whirlwind “Octopus,” tearing at a mad speed over anything and everything with the aim of catching the other brother.
The prophet promises something even more than a powerful momentary thrill. He proclaims to people with despairing hearts and feeble knees an everlasting joy over their heads. – Over ours.
“Everlasting joy will crown their heads; gladness and joy will overtake them.” (Isa. 35:10b)
Can you imagine yourself, this promise being fulfilled? How would it manifest for you, if it came true here and now?
Try for a moment to imagine your friends, crowned with everlasting joy, overtaken by gladness! – The most introverted of your friends or relatives. And – the most tempestuous.
What is it that will pour out over us when we have come home to the Promised Land? When we have reached the Fulfillment with God, who came to save us – on the first Christmas and comes still every day (Isa. 35:4b). How will everlasting joy crown us? With what will it resonate in each of us?
From what is read in the book of Isaiah, it seems that this joy will come over our heads from outside. And yet… – Well, it cannot be something merely external, for which of us could everlastingly walk about with a foreign object around our head?! However incorporeal it might be… – What within me will be the thing that responds to this everlasting joy, recognizes it, and merges with it into a single whole?
“Forever.” – This is the thread that weaves together several of this Advent’s texts. We find it both in the book of Isaiah and in Psalm 146, and Mary sings it in her song of praise, as her soul magnifies the Lord and her spirit rejoices in God her Savior (Ps. 146:6b; Lk. 1:55). It is the mark by which we recognize our Heavenly Father, the everlasting God: the good that comes from Him will remain forever. Will remain in force forever.
There have been times when this promise “forever” was carried in a way visible to all, guarded and cherished in the Ark of the Covenant. Yet the Ark of the Covenant was one day stolen away.
This Advent’s texts, by contrast, testify to certain other little arks, little treasure chests, that were safeguarded and passed down from generation to generation. Like small lockets that can be hidden in a pocket, that no one can take from you because they go unnoticed. Or like a gold coin from the times of the Russian tsar, called a “nikolai,” which, the story goes, a woman of my family once braided into her hair as she set out on the refugee road. – And in each such locket, a word of promise, a seed of good news, was passed down from generation to generation and, with God’s help, safeguarded even through all the deserts and scorching sands.
What the everlasting God has promised remains in force forever. This inherited good news, everlasting, safeguarded by the Spirit of God and by people, allows Mary, still a very young woman, to speak on behalf of all generations – both those past and those to come, who “from now on” will call her blessed (Lk. 1:50, 55, 48b).
In Mary’s song of praise resound the voices of the messengers of all the previous generations, the guardians of the good news, and we too join in it. For it is truly so, that
the Lord comes to save us,
He brings justice to the oppressed,
gives bread to the hungry – yes, “fills them with good things”!
He sets the prisoners free,
opens the eyes of the blind,
looses the tongues of the mute,
opens the ears of the deaf,
makes the lame leap for joy,
lifts up the downcast,
loves the righteous – those he himself has made righteous.
He protects the stranger,
raises up the orphan and the widow,
exalts the humble,
scatters the proud in the thoughts of their hearts
and casts the mighty down from their thrones (even if for now this has not yet been fully realized).
“As He promised to our fathers, to Abraham and his descendants forever.” (Isa. 35, Ps. 146, Lk. 1, including Lk. 1:55.)
Give us, dear God, seeing eyes to behold Your works, to notice the moments of Your joy and in gratitude to take part with You – in this Advent and always. Give us, the exhausted, the rushing, the restless, that level road on which not even the simplest can lose their way. Until everlasting joy crowns our heads, and gladness and joy overtake us.
Come, Lord Jesus!
…
Illustration: Arta Skuja