If He Built It, He Will Come
Scripture Reading: Isaiah 40:1-11
“If you build it, he will come.” Who can name the movie that that line is from? Award yourself a point if you said “Field of Dreams,” a much beloved and maligned movie about baseball, nostalgia, and second chances that came out in 1989. “Field of Dreams” stars Kevin Costner as Ray Kinsella, a struggling Iowa farmer who risks his family farm on what looks like pure insanity.
Roaming through his cornfields at dusk one evening, Ray hears a voice whisper the mysterious words, “If you build it, he will come.” He interprets the voice to mean that if he plows under a part of his cornfield and builds a baseball field on top, then the ghost of his father’s favorite ballplayer, Shoeless Joe Jackson, will appear. Shoeless Joe Jackson, one of the greatest players of his generation, was also one of eight members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox who were banned from baseball for intentionally losing the World Series that year.
At the risk of spoiling anyone’s enjoyment of a movie that’s nearly 35 years old, Ray builds the field, Shoeless Joe does appear, along with several of his teammates and other old-time players, who then play pickup games on the field that Ray built, much to the delight of Ray and his family.
There are also two subplots, one involving a disillusioned 1960s countercultural writer, played by James Earl Jones, and the other featuring Burt Lancaster as an elderly doctor who played minor-league ball as a young man but never got a chance to bat in the Majors.
Happy endings abound for everyone, especially for Ray, who learns that he built the baseball field not for Shoeless Joe Jackson but for his own deceased father, with whom he’d had a regrettable falling out. Ray’s dad is among the ballplayers who appears out of the cornfield. The movie ends with a game of catch between father and son. Yes, “Field of Dreams” is basically a Hallmark movie for men.
To most of us, building a baseball field in the middle of a cornfield in rural Iowa seems like a fool’s errand. So does building a highway in the middle of a desert that leads into a wilderness. Yet that is precisely what God does in today’s passage from Isaiah. When God’s people are isolated, exiled to the alien land of Babylon, God prepares a way to them through the desert and into the very heart of the wilderness in order to bring them home. And in Jesus Christ, God prepares a way to each one of us who languish in our own form of exile.
It’s been a long time since we read from the Old Testament. In fact, the last time we did it was also Isaiah. There’s plenty of material to cover in Isaiah. It's one of the longest books of the Old Testament, at 66 chapters. Biblical scholars divide Isaiah into three sections. Chapters one to thirty-nine, or part 1, are full of prophecies of judgment against Israel. The prophet warns the people of the coming judgment of God unless they repent. “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove your evil deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (Isa. 1:16-17). That’s just a brief sample from chapter 1.
But once you get to chapter 40, the tone suddenly changes, as we find in verse 1 in which God speaks a word of comfort to Israel. That’s because chapter 40 marks the beginning of part 2 of Isaiah. Quite some time has passed between the end of chapter 39 and the beginning of chapter 40. God’s warnings have come to fruition. Israel lies in ruins, having been destroyed by the Babylonians. There is no Jerusalem. No temple. No future. What’s left of the people live in exile in a foreign land, cut off from their homeland and their God.
One doesn’t need that strong of an imagination to see that exile is a powerful metaphor. While Israel endured a literal exile from all that was familiar—their land, their language, their customs, their food—and most important of all—their identity as God’s people, we also can suffer in a way that causes us to feel exiled from God, from neighbor, from family, and even from the hope that things will one day get better.
For us exile doesn’t occur over there in some distant foreign land into which we are forcibly sent. The wilderness—the biblical place of desolation and temptation to despair—is not only out there among the barren rocks and desert sands. It’s in here. It exists in us…in our hearts and minds. Financial distress, sickness, concerns over family, and self-loathing exile us in a wilderness of fear, anxiety, and hopelessness. “How will I scratch together this month’s rent?” “What do I do if the doctor tells me what I dread to hear?” “Why can’t my family be like other families?” “Will I just keep repeating the same self-destructive patterns over and over again?”
But it’s nearly Christmas. At least the lights and the decorations and the cheerful music that fills the air should distract us from all the thoughts that keep us awake at 3:00 AM. Yet while for many Christmas is a festive time spent with family and friends, a time of “making merry,” as Bob Cratchit would say, for some it is a season of sadness and melancholia.
Some of us are haunted by the ghosts of Christmas past that conjure bittersweet memories of loved ones who have passed on. Some of us may spend the holiday alone, longing to be surrounded by family and friends. And let’s be honest, some of us may dread having to spend the day with our broken, dysfunctional families, where Christmas carols give way to shouting matches and we’re less concerned with peace on earth than with trying to maintain peace at the dinner table.
Into this vast wilderness of pain and suffering a voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” You might associate this line with John the Baptist. If we had read from the Gospel of Mark this morning, we would have heard Mark directly connect John, the forerunner of Jesus, with this verse from Isaiah.
The experience of exile—whether literal or metaphorical—is the feeling of being cut off from all hope.
As it is, the verse itself speaks to the hope that we have in the one who is to come. The experience of exile—whether literal or metaphorical—is the feeling of being cut off from all hope. And without hope, we have no identity. Without hope, we’re left to question, “Who am I? Do I matter? Does God even care that I exist? If so, why am I stuck here, exiled from all hope?”
Hey! Come on, cheer up! Don’t give up hope! The sun will come out tomorrow. When people say such things, they probably mean well, but hope is not something that we can summon on our own through force of will. Our will is too weak and our imagination is too shallow. If we who live in exile are ever to find true hope, then it must come from outside of us. This is why God tells the prophet to speak tenderly, to speak words of comfort. Hope does not come from within; God must speak the word of hope to us.
This is when God announces his heavenly highway project. The land of exile has been officially rezoned for a highway of hope that will run straight through the wilderness of despair. We who are in exile don’t need to make our way to God; God will make his way to us. This is one of the distinguishing features of Christianity. Contrary to most other religions, we don’t need to climb our way up the ladder of good works to make our way to God. God is perfectly willing to humble himself by coming to us right where we are.
The way of the Lord is Jesus Christ, the one who makes his way to us.
In the very early days of Christianity—I’m talking first century—a nickname for this new faith, a way of distinguishing it from Judaism from which it emerged, was simply “the Way.” You may remember that in the 1970s there was a version of the Bible with that title (my mother had a copy; she still does). The Way was not a roadmap that helped these early Christians find their way to God. Nor was The Way about following rules and regulations, a set way of doing things. Rather, it referred to “the way of the Lord,” as mentioned here in Isaiah. “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.” The way of the Lord is Jesus Christ, the one who makes his way to us.
When we were lost in the wilderness and could find no trace of God, God found us and cleared a path through the desert to get to us. God has cleared every obstacle that stood in the way. Hear again the promise from Isaiah: “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.”
Note the future tense “shall.” Every valley shall be lifted up. The uneven ground shall become level. This word of hope comes to us from the future, a future that was unimaginable without God’s word. God’s word not only makes possible this future but indeed creates it. In Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh, that promised future has become a reality for each one of us, for God has made a way to us that goes straight through the valley of the shadow of death.
The way of the Lord, the way of Jesus Christ, leads to the cross. It is his death on the cross that undoes the power of death once and for all. “The grass withers; the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever,” Isaiah prophesied. The word of our God will stand forever, and that word spoken to us says, “Prepare the way of the Lord.” You who are in exile, get ready, because the Lord is coming to rescue you, to bring you home. The Lord will make his way to you, lifting every valley and leveling every mountain that stands in the way. If he built it, he will surely come.