Advent 2025 : day fifteen

 

The Third Sunday of Advent has long been associated with joy. On it, we read the poet Isaiah’s joyous vision of a parched land transformed by the coming of the rains:

‘The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing…

‘Then…the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;
the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water…

‘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 traveller, 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 35.1-10

About thirty-five years before the birth of Jesus, Herod the Great built a fortified pleasure dome a parkrun’s distance (5 km, 3 miles) south-east of Bethlehem, with commanding views over the ancient road known as the Way of the Patriarchs. On a man-made hill, he raised four towers, the largest being his penthouse. Beneath them, a great reception room, and Roman-style bathhouse. Below that, an enormous pool – Hollywood did not invent the pool party – and ornamental gardens, the edge of the desert transformed by water brought in by aqueducts (‘What did the Romans ever do for us?’). At a superficial glance, this was a fulfilment of Isaiah’s vision, the burning sand become a pool. (I have stood in the bottom of that pool, now long dry, the burning sand reclaiming its own.) But Herod co-opts the vision of Scripture – of holy writing – to justify absolute power. It will become an early warning system against ambassadors sent from a distant court to pay homage to the ‘newborn king of the Jews.’

The co-opting of faith in service of authoritarian control, in favour of wealthy men who play out obscene excess behind closed doors while the common people struggle under the weight of injustice, can never bring forth joy. Joy is that profound experience of being caught up in something bigger than ourselves – of a deep sense of connection with our neighbour, with strangers, with nature, the universe, God. It is impossible to know joy whenever we intentionally separate ourselves from other people, from those who are different – inferior to us in our own eyes.

We live in days when, on both sides of the Atlantic, we see agitators promoting the anathema which is Christian Nationalism. This is the false fulfilment of Herod the Great (Make Herod Great Again). But joy has always waited to be found, just as clouds wait to pour out their precious rain on the desert.