December 15, 2013 | 4:00 p.m.

Ugly Times and Beautiful Things

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Isaiah 35:1–10

Advent and Christmas is a time of year when we are surrounded by symbols. The Advent wreath, the Christmas tree, songs both sacred and secular filled with metaphors about weather and food, all intended to help us understand what the season is all about.

There’s a metaphor that comes up in several of the scripture passages we read during Advent—one I’ve never thought much about before this week. The prophet Isaiah says that one day, in land that today is dry and barren and forsaken, a highway shall appear. It will be called the Holy Way, and it will be a straight path, safe from any trouble, and on that highway not even the most foolish one of us will ever lose our way.

This afternoon I’m going to talk about that passage of scripture, hoping to teach a little about the background of this passage we hear year after year during this season we call Advent. The passage has to do with an ancient story about the Israelites and their neighbors, the Babylonians. It also has something to do with Jesus and much to do with us. I found a new adaptation of the passage earlier this week, and that’s what got me started thinking about it; it’s in a story by a writer some of you may know named Katherine Paterson (see “In the Desert, a Highway, in A Stubborn Sweetness).

The story takes place in China during the days of the Cultural Revolution and begins with a relationship between a young woman who was a university professor and an old man who was the night watchman. As a favor to the old man, who was unable to read, the professor had agreed to read to him. He had recently become a Christian, but he didn’t know the stories of the Bible, nor did he know how to read, so each morning the professor would read to him. He was so grateful that he never missed a day, and he gave the professor what small gifts he could, one time repairing her threadbare shoes because there were no new ones to be had.

Not long after the two began reading together, the Cultural Revolution began—religion was banned, as were books of all kinds, and the university was raided and closed. During the raid, the professor hid some of her most precious books under the mattress of the old man, believing that the Maoists would never look in his room expecting to find books. It was a miscalculation, though. The books were discovered, and the old man was dragged out into the courtyard of the university, the books were burned, and the old man was beaten mercilessly as the community watched, the young professor stifling her terror as she witnessed the pain she had caused the kind old man.

Both of them were shipped off to the same prison camp, the old man as a punishment for hiding the books, and the young professor because she had hidden a few other books in her own room. She was so wracked with guilt over the beating of the old man that she was almost relieved to receive a punishment of her own.

In the camp, life was hard for everyone, but the professor figured out that she could live a little more comfortably by going along with the philosophy of the Maoists and “confessing” her past wrongdoings as a scholar. The old man, knowing that he didn’t have long to live either way, saw no point in such confessions and kept his integrity while being subjected to backbreaking work from dawn to dusk. In the camp, which sat in the middle of a barren desert, the prisoners were building a highway.

The old man was worked to the point of death, hauling and smoothing loads of gravel for the foundation of the highway, until one day, unable to work, he was again beaten mercilessly by the guards. Knowing that he would die, and overcome with guilt, the professor brought the old man to her room to nurse his wounds. Just a few days before, she had made a discovery. The shoes the old man had repaired for her long ago had again worn all the way through to the soles, and in the bottom she discovered that the old man had folded up a few pages taken from a book. He had hidden them in between the soles of the shoes and the liners he had sewn. Taking out those precious few pages, all that she had left of the written word she cherished, the professor took up their old practice and began to read to the old man the words on those pages—words from the prophet Isaiah:

Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.
A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God. (Isaiah 40:1–3)

The young professor began to weep. She insisted to the old man that the next day she would confess all that she had done and would suffer whatever punishment awaited her for hiding her library in the old man’s room so long ago. But the old man insisted that she promise never to do such a thing. He said to her, “These hard times will pass, and then China will need you to teach again.” She asked the old man to rest, but he insisted that she continue to read, and as he breathed his last, they shared the words of the prophet Isaiah:

Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Isaiah 40:4–5)

I loved that story because it breathed new life into an old story for me. Each year during Advent, through these words from the prophet Isaiah, we hear about a highway in the desert. The words are poetry and, like many poems, can be applied to a variety of circumstances. The first time these words were written, Isaiah was talking about a real historical circumstance, one he was living through at the time.

Almost 600 years before Jesus was born, the people of Israel and the city of Jerusalem were attacked by the Babylonians. After a long siege, the city fell, the palace and the temple were destroyed, and many of the citizens were forced to leave—they became refugees in Babylon. In that same part of the world today, Syrians are forced to leave their homes and live in refugee camps in neighboring countries. In Babylon, there would have been no schools and no property, and the Babylonians suppressed the religion and traditions of the Israelites, hoping they would forget their own history.

After some two generations, the Persian Empire defeated the Babylonians, and the Israelites began to return home and rebuild their lives. But you can imagine that if you lived during two whole generations as a refugee in Babylon, it probably felt as if you would never go home.

The prophet Isaiah lived in that time, and he wrote these ancient words about a highway that would one day take him home. The words were so hopeful, so reassuring during a time when many had lost hope. The words were so powerful that they became one of the primary ways that Christians would one day describe what it is like to wait for the coming of Christ. Christ often seems so distant, so mystical to us that it is impossible for us to imagine that he really is coming in the form of a child in a manger. It seems impossible, as impossible as believing that the Israelites would return home, or Syrian refugees today, or that there would one day be a time when the Cultural Revolution would come to an end, when, as the old man said, “The hard times will come to an end, and China will need you to teach again.”

This is what the Advent season is about. It is a time of waiting, with the hope that the hard times will soon come to an end. We have all lived in the midst of hard times that we thought would last forever—perhaps you are living through one of those times right now. The promise of the coming of Christ is that, in the midst of these times, a highway is being built. It is a path so straight and clear that it will be impossible not to see and follow it, and it is being built in order to lead us home. And because I cannot describe its purpose any clearer than with the words Isaiah wrote 2,600 years ago, I will simply conclude with the way he said it. A day is coming soon, when, in the desert . . .

a highway shall be there,
and it shall be called the Holy Way;
the unclean shall not travel on it,
but it shall be for God’s people;
no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.
No lion shall be there,
nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;
they shall not be found there,
but the redeemed shall walk there.
And 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. (Isaiah 35:8–10)

Amen.