Escape from Babylon

Isaiah 40:1-11

Mark 1:1-8

Psalm 85




Before I begin, I would just like to wish everyone a happy New Year.

Yes, I know that January 1 is roughly a month away, but I'm getting started early on a resolution that I have been contemplating for the last several months. I am currently teaching an introductory course on Judaism and I have been impressed with the way that Jews have for centuries celebrated the coming of a new year with the High Holy Days. Beginning with Rosh Hashanah and concluding with Yom Kippur, this ten-day period is a time of deep reflection and repentance for past wrongs committed against God and neighbor. More importantly, the High Holy Days provide an opportunity for members of the faith to be reconciled with those whom they may have offended in the previous twelve or so months. I can imagine that, with the final Day of Atonement, many Jews approach the year that lay ahead of them with a sincere sense of hope and expectation, not unlike the feelings that Christians profess during the season of Advent.

So here's my question: why don't Christians celebrate the coming of the new year at Advent? It seems like such a natural progression, from Christ the King Sunday – an affirmation of Jesus' divinity, sitting at the right hand of the Father – to a time of quiet reflection on his coming, both past and future. Why have we allowed the secular calendar to mark the beginning and the ending of our days, with celebrations and resolutions that carry very little in the way of religious meaning? The apathy with which we slide into this season of the church calendar only suggests to me that while we profess our allegiance to Jerusalem, our true spiritual mailing address really lies somewhere in Babylon.

I can understand, then, the despondency on the part of Second Isaiah upon receiving his call from God to "cry out" (Is. 40:6). "What shall I cry?" is his exasperated response, as if to say, "What can I possibly tell this people who have become so thoroughly assimilated into this new culture?" The Israelites had by this time been living in Babylon for over a generation. They were speaking the language of their captors, participating in their commerce. They were comfortable in their workaday lives, despite the fact that a "quiet desperation," anticipatory of Ecclesiastes, had set in. Though many had come to terms with the transitory nature of their existence – "the grass withers and the flower fades" (40:8a) – Isaiah is called to remind his people of what appears to have been forgotten in the years since their deportation from Jerusalem: "…the word of our God will stand forever" (40:8b).

And the erstwhile people of Judah could expect that this word would come to them in a new way – not along the now familiar banks of the Chebar River, but in a place that seemed a remnant of their fading past: the desert. It was in the wilderness that the early Israelites received God's covenant through the prophet Moses, and it was here that they came to know the One who had called them out of Egypt. Now, according to Isaiah, history was repeating itself. God was beckoning God's people back into that empty place, that barren unknown pregnant with possibility, to commence their journey on a straight and unencumbered path toward the city that had been lost to them, Jerusalem.

It is an open question, of course, whether these words of comfort were received as such by those who heard them. It takes a lot of faith, not to mention enthusiasm, to pick up your belongings and venture off to a place you've only heard of in old men's tales. It was certainly more convenient to stay in Babylon. The Israelites had grown accustomed to its face. There was only one problem: this was not where God was calling them to be. So the people of God had a choice: they could stay with what they knew, or they could take a chance on the God of their fathers and mothers. Some chose the first option; others set out on "the highway through the wilderness," seeking the voice of their redeemer and a place that they could once again call their own. Perhaps this time they could, with God's help, succeed in establishing a kingdom where "faithfulness springs up from the ground and righteousness looks down from the sky" (Ps. 85:11).

Five hundred years later they were still working on it, and with disheartening results. But Isaiah's words still rang true in the ears of many who scratched out a meager existence in Roman-occupied Palestine. It was the hope of the prophet that seems to have informed the preaching of John, the voice in the wilderness, as people from all over the Judean countryside repaired hopefully into that arid landscape to hear his orations.


It is easy to overlook the geographic symbolism employed in John's ministry, but if we do so we risk losing sight of the connection between the Baptist's message and Isaiah's vision of a redeemed Israel. It is significant that John nearly always preached "on the other side of the Jordan," a point emphasized in Matthew's gospel. As a result, those who chose to turn away from their sins and be baptized were subtly directed to retrace the footsteps of the men and woman who had preceded them in faith and hope into a land where God alone would be king. The political ramifications of their repentance were therefore quite clear: though they came to the wilderness as dispensable inhabitants of some far-flung Roman colony, they returned to their promised land as their forebears had, from the ordeal of the wilderness, through the healing currents of the Jordan. Through their faith and through their baptism they were demonstrating in no uncertain terms that "Babylon" would no longer be their home. Rather, it would be the Kingdom of God whose Messiah would soon be anointed and pass through these very waters. All that was left was to await his arrival.

As we begin the Advent season, I wonder if we too might need some sort of symbolic reminder of our own need to escape from Babylon, to cross into the wilderness in reflection and prayer and re-emerge into a world that no longer recognizes us as its own. It is painfully evident, I think, that we have not done enough to emphasize the importance of this time of anticipating the birth of Christ and its significance for the world. We have allowed ourselves to become distracted and absorbed by the concerns of a culture foreign to our spiritual values. While Jerusalem beckons, we heartlessly immerse ourselves in the trifling preoccupations of our captors. Is it so difficult to see where our loyalties truly lie?

On Saturday morning I awoke to the news that on the day prior – Black Friday, as it is often called – a Wal-Mart employee on Long Island had been trampled to death by impatient shoppers rushing through the doors to snatch up their Christmas bargains. Think about that for a moment: a person was killed – trampled – by zealous consumers, and all in the name of Christmas. On the other side of the country, in Arizona, shooting broke out at a Toys R' Us store as two shoppers got into a heated dispute over an item on the shelves. The news media were quick to point out, however, that this case may have been gang-related, as if this revelation offers us a reprieve from our indignation. But still the point can be made: we place so much faith in our consumer lifestyles that some are willing to kill for it, and they feel justified in doing so.

And this is Babylon, from which we need most desperately to escape. This is Babylon, the antithesis of all that Advent compels us to hope for.

So let me end where I began, by wishing you all a happy New Year. And I'd like to invite you to join me in a resolution. This year, and every year hence, I hope to live and order my life – not just my religious commitments but the entirety of my being – by the spiritual seasons of the church, by the colors of the liturgical calendar, by the insights and meanings these have conveyed to Christians throughout the centuries.

This may seem like a wilderness path indeed, but as Isaiah reminds us, it is a straight highway, where every valley is lifted up and every mountain is made low. Yes, it means saying goodbye to the felicitous Santa Claus of consumption that we have all come to know, but in this we open our arms to the Saint Nicholas of spiritual abundance. Yes, it means turning in early on December 31 each year while the revelers make merry, but it also introduces the possibility of creating new rituals in the church – a Watch Night for Advent, for example, where congregations meet to welcome in the new liturgical year. More than anything, though, it means passing through the waters of Jordan into a new life amidst a world that is foreign to our religious sensibilities.

So happy New Year, and may this season offer you the fulfillment that comes from your own escape from Babylon.

Choice Quotes

I'm grateful to one of my students, Nathan Tramp, for alerting me to this prescient quote by Upton Sinclair:

Consider Christmas—could Satan in his most malignant mood have devised a worse combination of graft plus bunkum than the system whereby several hundred million people get a billion or so gifts for which they have no use, and some thousands of shop clerks die of exhaustion while selling them, and every other child in the Western world is made ill from overeating—all in the name of the lowly Jesus?

Of Related Interest

See Paul O. Myhre, "Has Advent Succumbed to Consumerism?: Reflections on an Embattled Season," Word & World 27.4 (Fall 2007): 407-413.