The Redemption Mystery

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins. Isaiah 40:1-2

What could be more devastating than the Fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.? God allowed his own worship center to be wiped off the face of the earth. On this city and in its temple, the King of the universe had placed his holy name and most revealed his magnificent heart.

When those walls came down and smoke billowed out, people surely thought, “So it’s over? It’s really done?”

Isaiah had prophesied the event. As a people far from God, they had it coming.

I imagine in the smoldering ruins of Jerusalem, the few, the broken-hearted believers—the true Israel within Israel—opening the scroll of Isaiah. “Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God.

A single Hebrew letter turns the word “people” to “my people.” An astonishing thing. He claimed them for himself. He would redeem them. He would buy them back.

The words above include “three deep breaths” that preview Isaiah 40-66. This pain would not last forever. Their debt would be paid.

All they had lost would be restored beyond imagining.

How can such things be? You know.

Simeon haunted the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem some six centuries later, an old soul waiting for “the consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25). One day Comfort filled his arms. Holding the Christ Child, he prophesied the piercing of Mary’s soul.

When Jesus died in agony and shame, his friends surely thought, “So it’s over? So it’s really done?” If only they, so devastated, had the grace to lean on Jesus’ promise and wait in hope for Sunday morning. “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days” (John 2:19).

“Comfort my people” is the sacred impulse, the grand imperative, the new, mysterious thing released in the world by the rising of its Redeemer. He is making all things new. He has revealed our God to his very heart.

In classrooms and sanctuaries, nursing homes and funeral homes, at our supper tables and at the bedsides of our children: “Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God.

Holy Spirit, break our hearts over the evil within us that there might be true comfort. Heal us in the deepest place by the fact of our redemption through our living Lord Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen.

Dr. Mark Paustian serves Martin Luther College
as a professor of English and Hebrew.