Isaiah 40:1-11
There is something inside every human being that gives him or her an innate desire to live, and to avoid death for as long as possible. Indeed, the quest for immortality is one of the recurring themes of the human imagination.
It is reflected in history. In the sixteenth century, Ponce de Leon engaged in a serious search for the mythical fountain of youth, which he thought might be in Florida. The quest for immortality has also been an oft-repeated subject dealt with in science fiction books and movies.
All of this resonates with the deep human instinct to stay alive. That’s why people run away from mortal danger. That’s why people who are drowning or suffocating struggle for air.
And even when people do acquiesce to the fact that they will have to die someday, they still try to put that inevitability off for as long as they can. Huge amounts of money and effort are invested in medical research and medical treatment, so that many diseases that used to kill people, today no longer do so, and people do live longer.
That’s not a bad thing. But even with the best of medical science, people do not live forever.
That being the case, people very often try to achieve at least a symbolic kind of “immortality,” through leaving a mark of influence on other people, on institutions, or on the larger society, that will endure beyond their mortal lives.
Authors and composers hope that people will still be reading their books, and listening to and performing their music, after they have died. Artists hope that people will still be admiring their paintings and sculptures after they have departed from this life.
And how often do we hear about the “legacy” that a president or political leader wants to leave – in the country and in the world – especially as his time in office is winding down?
And who does not find some satisfaction in the thought that after I have passed away, my existence as a human being will not be forgotten, because a monument will be erected in my honor; a plaque on the wall will bear my name; or a street, a building, or a ship will be named after me?
In today’s Old Testament lesson, through the Prophet Isaiah, God has something to say to all of this: to all of these fears and insecurities; to all of these proud aspirations and desperate efforts. And as you, too, in your own way, share in these fears and insecurities; and in your own life imitate these aspirations and efforts, God has something to say also to you:
“All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, because the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass.”
When is the last time someone told you that you are like grass – here today, gone and forgotten tomorrow? That might be taken as an insult, if another human being told you this.
But when God tells you this, you need to listen. And you need to understand why this is so.
Adam, our earliest ancestor, was created to live forever. He was given ongoing access to the tree of life, which would continually rejuvenate and preserve his life and health.
But Adam was also warned by the Lord that if he ever ate from a certain forbidden tree – the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – he would die. We know what happened. He ate from this tree, and he died.
Spiritually, he died immediately. Physically it took a little while, but he did eventually die in that way, too. And his body returned to the dust from which it had come.
In Adam’s death, we also died. As his future descendants, we were all in Adam, dying in Adam. And because of Adam, we die now. We all die. Adam is in us, dying in us.
The wages of sin is death, as St. Paul soberly teaches. The wages of Adam’s sin is human death: human suffering, human disease, human mortality. The wages of your sin – your own willful concurrence in your ancestor’s rebellion and disobedience – is your own death.
It wasn’t supposed to be that way. But it is that way.
Humanity was not supposed to be like grass: fading and withering, dying and perishing, gone and forgotten after only a few decades of toil and struggle on this earth. But humanity is like grass.
You, as a child of Adam, in your sinful nature, are grass. And nothing you do – none of your immortality projects – will change that.
Someday your heart will stop, and your lungs will be emptied of breath. Your flesh will rot, and your bones will disintegrate. And, your monuments will crumble, your books will gather dust, your music will go silent, and your name will be forgotten in this world.
Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away;
they fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.
We go on to read in Isaiah:
“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.”
Unlike fallen human nature, the Word of God will never falter or fail. God’s Word will never perish, crumble, or come to an end.
It might almost seem that in this passage, God is cruelly amplifying our misery, “rubbing in” our mortality and pushing our faces in it. But that’s not why God presents this contrast, between the death of sinful human existence, and the life of his eternal truth.
God’s Word is true and alive forever not just in itself, or for itself, but God’s Word is true and alive for you.
And when his Word – his life-giving message of regeneration and resurrection – touches you, enters you, and fills you, it makes you alive forever. You become immortal, not of yourself, or from your own proud designs, but in God.
Jesus Christ is the divine Word made flesh, through whose death and resurrection the sinful world has been reconciled to God. When God’s Word connects your mind, heart, and soul to Christ, you become reconciled to God personally. And in Christ you become alive personally.
Jesus once said:
“Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
Indeed, the whole thought expressed by St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, is this:
“The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
And St. Paul also writes these words, to Timothy:
“God…saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”
In the passage from Isaiah that we have been pondering, the Lord goes on to say:
“O Zion, you who bring good tidings, get up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, you who bring good tidings, lift up your voice with strength, lift it up, be not afraid; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Behold your God!’”
In the prophetic poetry of the Old Testament, “Mount Zion,” and the holy city “Jerusalem,” generally represented the Messianic church that was to come.
In Christ, this holy community, and dwelling place of the Lord, has been established. And we have been baptized into it.
This church is the confessing and worshiping body and bride of Jesus Christ, and is indwelt by the Spirit of Jesus Christ. And it is this church that God here addresses, and exhorts to be the herald of the good news that he wants the whole fallen world to hear.
It is not just the ministers of the church who proclaim the reality of Christ and his life, to a dead and dying world. The church as a whole – in what we together sing and pray, declare and share – bears witness to the Word of God, and to the hope that God’s Word brings to those who believe it.
The church, as it proclaims the message of the life and immortality that God gives through his Son, thereby offers true comfort to those who fear death, and who fear what comes on the other side of death.
The conscience does correctly impress upon people who listen to their conscience, that what they should expect after death is divine judgment, on account of their sins.
But the inviting message that the church proclaims to those whom it thereby seeks to draw to itself – a message that the church itself receives from God – is a message of pardon, forgiveness, and justification in Christ.
When God’s Word of peace envelopes you, and soothes your conscience, the judgment that is deserved, will not be the judgment that is pronounced and poured out. The death that is deserved, will not be the death that is experienced. As we read in Isaiah:
“‘Comfort, yes, comfort My people!’ says your God. ‘Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she has received from the Lord’s hand Double for all her sins.’”
The wages of sin is death. But when the sin is gone, washed away by the blood of the Lamb, and absolved away by the atonement of Christ, then the death – the deeper death – is also gone.
And those traces of death that do remain in bodily mortality – and that even Christians still taste at the end of their earthly life – will eventually be undone.
These remnants of death will be finally vanquished in the general resurrection – of which the risen Christ is the firstfruits – and in the new heavens and the new earth that God will establish for his saints, where only righteousness will dwell.
The crucified Savior whose coming is anticipated in the season of Advent, is the Savior who comes to bring life out of death. The risen Savior who comes here and now, whenever the Word of God comes here and now, is the Savior who offers this life to you, in the midst of your death.
This life – this immortality – cannot be known unless you know him. But when you do know him, through his ever-standing Word, you know this life. Jesus says:
“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”
Our God, our Help in ages past, our Hope for years to come,
be Thou our Guide while life shall last, and our eternal Home!
Amen.