WHEN THE GRASS WITHERS
We all want comfort and glory.
Not in an obviously selfish way. We just want lives that work — relationships that hold, reputations that are respected, health that cooperates. We want things to go up and to the right. And when they do, we quietly take some credit for it.
Israel wanted the same thing. And Isaiah, standing at the edge of their coming doom, was told to speak comfort to them. Which is a strange assignment, because the comfort he announces sounds impossibly far away. Everything will be stripped. Nothing will remain. And yet: "Comfort, comfort my people, says your God."
It's spoken in the present tense. As if it's already done. As if God is so certain of what's coming that he announces the end of a story that hasn't been told yet.
But before we get to the comfort, we have to pass through the cry.
Actually, two sets of three cries — judgment first, then salvation.
The cry of judgment begins with preparation. A voice cries: prepare the way of the Lord. Every valley lifted, every mountain brought low, every crooked place straightened. This isn't a welcome parade. This is the path of a conqueror, and you don't want to be standing in the wrong place when the train comes through.
Then comes the cry of desolation. All flesh is grass. Its beauty is like a wildflower. When the breath of the Lord blows on it, it withers. It fades. God is the judge here, and what he judges is the vanity of human life — our grasping, our self-congratulation, our carefully constructed reputations. The breath of judgment levels all of it.
The cry of completion: the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. His purposes will not be frustrated. His law, his plan to deal with wickedness, his justice — none of it goes away. When everything else is stripped down, the word of God remains.
So be warned.
But the passage doesn't end there. Because the first readers of Isaiah weren't the last readers of Isaiah. We come to this text on the other side of something they couldn't yet see. And that changes everything.
The cry of salvation also begins with preparation. Every Christmas we read these same verses, because we know how this part of the story goes. A voice crying in the wilderness — repent, make straight his paths — and then, just when you expect judgment to come down that road, here comes Jesus. God in the flesh. He came not to condemn the world, but to save it.
The cry of desolation in salvation was the cry of Jesus from the cross. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And then, "It is finished." The wrath that belonged to us, the desolation that was ours by right — he took it. He cried out so that we wouldn't have to. The grass withered, the flower faded, and it was him.
The cry of completion in salvation is the empty tomb. The word of our God stands forever — and Jesus proved it when he walked out of death on the third day. He stands now as King of Kings. His glory has not yet been seen by everyone, but it will be. All flesh shall see it together. No one will be able to ignore it. The whole world will see the glory of the Lord, whether they welcome it or not.
That glory — the glory you were reaching for when you wanted your life to go up and to the right — is actually coming. Not a self-manufactured glory. A reflected glory. Christ's glory, shining in you and through you, on full display to a world that couldn't look away.
This Ash Wednesday, instead of the traditional words spoken during the imposition of ashes — "from dust you are, and to dust you shall return" — I said something different over each person. I said: "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever."
Those words appear twice in verses 7 and 8. The first time, they are the cry of judgment. The second time, they are the cry of salvation. Same words. Different music.
Stand in that for a moment. The comfort spoken to you in the present tense, as if it's already done, is the comfort of a God who never loses track of the story he's telling — or the people he's telling it through.