Fear Not! For Christ is Coming, His Kingdom is at Hand, Empowering Us Beyond Measure – Thursday of the Second Week of Advent

For I am the Lord, your God, who grasp your right hand; It is I who say to you, Do not fear, I will help you. Do not fear, you worm Jacob, you maggot Israel; I will help you—oracle of the Lord; the Holy One of Israel is your redeemer (Isaiah 41:13-14), said the Lord to the Israelites in the Babylonian exile.

These are the opening words of the First Reading of Thursday of the Second Week of Advent (Isaiah 41:13-20). In fact, these words of encouragement and assurance of God’s redemptive providence to the Israelites reiterate the below words said before:

Do not fear: I am with you; do not be anxious: I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand (Isaiah 41:10).

In the darkness of the Babylonian exile, God spoke these commanding words to have courage and hope against fear because of His assurance of deliverance from Babylon.

Not only that God’s mighty right hand is victorious to uphold the Israelites (Isaiah 41:10) but God assures to hold their right hands with His powerful right hand for their victory over the Babylonian captors (Isaiah 41:13). So God illustrates how Israelites will be made powerful metaphorically (Isaiah 41:15-16).

This reminds and assures that we are made strong beyond our own strengths when God is with us and His power enters us, even though we think that we are like “worms” or it is how we are seen by the world.

God further said:

The afflicted and the needy seek water in vain, their tongues are parched with thirst. I, the Lord, will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will open up rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the broad valleys; I will turn the wilderness into a marshland, and the dry ground into springs of water. In the wilderness I will plant the cedar, acacia, myrtle, and olive; In the wasteland I will set the cypress, together with the plane tree and the pine, That all may see and know, observe and understand, That the hand of the Lord has done this, the Holy One of Israel has created it (Isaiah 41:17-20).

These words of God above address the post-exilic restoration of Jerusalem and its Temple, which were reduced to rubbles, desolated and desecrated, by the Babylonians (cf. 2 Chronicles 36:1-23), metaphorically, as well as, poetically, with an image of a new creation by God’s mighty hand (cf. Isaiah 35:1-10; 43:16-22; cf. Revelation 21:5).

When we are lost in the darkness of exile, being afflicted, we are like the Samaritan woman who drew water from the Jacob’s well (John 4:4-42). But, with God’s restorative new creation, from which the living water streams the new river, life is restored in fullness.

This is, in fact, not just a post-exilic revitalization but projected in what Christ brings to us. It is, indeed, the Christ, who restored the disordered life of the Samaritan woman in fullness by the living water (John 4:13-30). For this, John the Baptist became the voice crying out in the wilderness (John 1:23; Mark 1:3; Isaiah 40:3), to alert people to the imminent public appearance of the incarnated Christ and the coming of his Kingdom, by calling for repentance and baptism (Mark 1:4).

In the Gospel Reading (Matthew 11:11-15), we hear Christ’s testimony of John the Baptist, who heralded the coming of Christ and his Kingdom.

First, Christ said to disciples of John the Baptist, who came to see him if he was the Christ, whom John was speaking of:

Why did you go out? To see a prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written: “Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way before you”(Matthew 11:9-10).

With these words, Christ reminded that John the Baptist was the messenger ahead of Christ, as prophesized by Malachi (3:1).

Then, he expounded:

Amen, I say to you, among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force. All the prophets and the law prophesied up to the time of John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who is to come. Whoever has ears ought to hear (Matthew 11:11-15).

Through these words, Christ speaks of John the Baptist’s role, as the forerunner of Christ, in terms of the transition from the old covenant period to the new covenant period metaphorically.

Though nobody was greater than John the Baptist, among those worn of women, under the old covenant, he is considered “low” in the new covenant. This is not to belittle John but to illustrate the greatness of the new covenant over the old one in a hyperbolic manner. In this, the Kingdom that Christ brings is the essence of the new covenant that is established by him through his blood (Luke 22:20; cf. Hebrews 9:11-28). And the Kingdom is represented with the Church that he has built (Matthew 16:18), which has been violently persecuted, suffering violence, as Jerusalem had suffered the destruction by the Babylonians. But this is a transitional process for the new covenant, the Kingdom, the Church, to be fully and permanently established, for the Church to enjoy her heavenly nuptial union with Christ (Revelation 19:5-22:5).

John the Baptist, as the new Elijah, has prophesized the coming of Christ and his Kingdom. And this prophesy has an eschatological and apocalyptic bearing.

Now, we can see what John the Baptist, as the last prophet under the old covenant, prophesized reflects the ultimate image of what is addressed in the First Reading (Isaiah 41:13-20), projected into the new creation, the new heaven and the earth, apocalyptically revealed by Christ (Revelation 21:1-22:5). And this is where Christ, whose coming we are preparing during Advent, is taking us! For this,  Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit give us the power of God’s mighty hand so that we have no fear even we may have to suffer until the establishment of the Kingdom.