Sermon: Second Week of Advent
By the Rev. Emmanuel K. Akyeampong
Minister for Worship and Formation in the Memorial Church
Ellen Gurney Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Dec. 7, 2025)
Lord God, I thank you for this opportunity to bring your word to your people. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you. Amen.
Our Old Testament reading today is from the Book of Isaiah. I have long been fascinated by the ministry of Isaiah the Prophet, and by the book that bears his name. To begin with, Isaiah's ministry provides me with one of my powerful examples that God does change his mind in response to prayer.
In 2 Kings 20, King Hezekiah of Judah is sick. The Lord sends Isaiah, the son of Amos, to go and tell Hezekiah to put his house in order as he's going to die. Isaiah departs. Hezekiah turns to God in a tearful and anguished prayer, reminding the Lord of his faithful service. God changes his mind even before Isaiah had left the palace grounds and tells Isaiah to return and inform Hezekiah that the Lord has added 15 more years to his life, and Isaiah provides a medicinal remedy that healed Hezekiah. I love that story.
Hezekiah's reign, just opposed to that of his father, Ahaz, and Hezekiah's son, Manasseh, also shows me how the reigns of sons can turn out very different from their fathers. I've just told you the story of Hezekiah's faith. His son, Manasseh, goes in a totally different direction. Manasseh's reign was terrible in his ungodliness, and 2 Kings tells us that he worshiped all the host of heaven and served them. Rabbinic tradition has it that Manasseh ordered the execution of the prophet Isaiah. After Manasseh's rule, God was resolved: Judah would be destroyed; Judah would go into exile.
Then I go to seminary to discover that there is not just one Isaiah, but three. The book of Isaiah comprises three parts written or put together by three different authors or compilers from different historical periods that scholars have called First, Second, and Third Isaiah. This is the only prophetic book in the Hebrew Bible that has received this kind of attention and treatment.
What makes Isaiah so special? Isaiah is a book that prophesies judgment on Samaria, Judah, and the surrounding nations, but also salvation and the return of a Jewish remnant from exile back to Israel. His prophecies concerning the destruction of Samaria, the northern kingdom, Syria, and Assyria were fulfilled in Isaiah's lifetime. This gave credibility to his messages of salvation and the return of the remnant, even if these lay in the future.
Jews and Christians have approached these messages of salvation differently. Several of Isaiah's prophecies point so clearly to Jesus Christ that some biblical scholars have called the Book of Isaiah the fifth gospel. The prophecy about a virgin giving birth to a child and calling his name Immanuel, the passage regarding the suffering servant, which is our window unto Jesus' crucifixion, and other notable verses come from Isaiah. Indeed, Jesus announced his ministry in the synagogue in Nazareth by reading from Isaiah 61. It is not surprising that for every Sunday in Advent, for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, the combined lectionary recommends a passage from Isaiah.
A New Testament reading is from Matthew, a gospel noted for its extensive use of Isaiah. Indeed, Matthew is considered a bridge between the Old Testament and the New Testament, as the author shows that prophetic citations from the Hebrew Bible were fulfilled in the person of Jesus. Thus, although Mark is the oldest gospel, it is Matthew that opens the New Testament.
In the days of Isaiah, there were two superpowers in the Near and Middle East: Egypt and Assyria. A reading from chapter 11 is part of a longer story that begins in chapter seven with an expansionist Assyria. The kings of Samaria and Syria approached the king of Judas, Ahaz, to join them in a military alliance to resist the advancing power of Assyria. Ahaz declines, and Samaria and Syria attack Judah.
The Lord sends Isaiah to King Ahaz to tell Ahaz not to worry, but to stand in faith, and that the threat from Syria and Samaria will amount to nothing. The Lord invited Ahaz to ask for a sign that would assure him that the Lord will stand with him. Ahaz declined to test the Lord, so the Lord himself offered a sign: "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and call his name Immanuel." But Ahaz's refusal to demand a sign was not a mark of his faith in God, for he then took the treasures from the Lord's house and the king's house and went to give them to the king of Assyria to request military assistance against Syria and Samaria. The king of Assyria came to Ahaz's aid, and Judah became a vassal of Assyria, a sad turn of events.
This is the context of today's reading from Isaiah and the reference to the stamp of Jesse, a diminished Davidic dynasty, a reflection of Isaiah's disappointment. But Isaiah also held out hope that a shoot would come out of the stump of Jesse and a branch would grow out of his roots, that this root of Jesse would stand as a signal to the peoples and nations would inquire of him.
Our New Testament reading today underscores Matthew's role as a bridge between the Old and New Testaments. The last book in the Old Testament is Malachi. And in Malachi 4:5, we read that the Lord will send the prophet Elijah before the terrible day of the Lord comes. Matthew announces the ministry of Jesus in chapter three by introducing his herald, John the Baptist, whom Matthew later identifies through the words of Jesus as Elijah who is to come.
A Matthew reading also connects to Isaiah. In Matthew's description of John the Baptist, John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, "Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near." Matthew, in common with Mark, then describes John the Baptist as the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'"
In both readings, there's a call to repentance and to judgment. John the Baptist warns, "Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees. Every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." Both readings provide a foretaste of the Messianic era.
In Isaiah, the Advent of the Messiah or king ushers in paradise where the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion, and the fattling together, and the little child shall lead them.
John the Baptist announced in Matthew that, "I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." The ministries of Isaiah, John the Baptist, and Jesus unfolded in difficult political times. They were all executed, but they held out the hope of salvation to those who waited on the Lord.
This has been a challenging year: the conflicts around the world, the plight of immigrants in the United States, Harvard's travails. Earlier in the year, I worried about our foreign students and whether they'll be able to stay on. Watching the news has been distressing. I felt helpless. Two incidents lifted me from my despair and turned me to the scriptures that have renewed my sense of purpose. I share them with you and hope that it may encourage you.
This year's Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture was delivered in October at Memorial Church by Darren Walker, former president of the Ford Foundation. A comment he made made me sit up right. He opined that, and I quote him, "Today, impunity has allied with indifference, resulting in pervasive grief." He challenged us to choose moral leadership and reject indifference if we are to save the idea of America.
That was my wake-up call, but a plan of action came from a conversation with my colleague, the landscape architect, Gareth, who is a member of a faculty climate adaptation research project on West Africa that I lead. For our final workshop in West Africa in June 2026, we plan to include two exhibitions, one showing how the West African shoreline has changed since 1970 through erosion. The second would provide models of what a stable, developed coastline could look like, a more hopeful projection drawing on examples from around the world.
As I explained my vision, Gareth caught on quickly and exclaimed, "That is like anticipatory anthropology," and referenced its founder, Robert Textor, who I had never heard about. Textor had written that the best way to realize a preferred future is first to visualize it in concrete enough terms to provide the motivational basis for appropriate action needed for its realization.
I responded, "That reminds me of a story I heard about Walt Disney." Disney World was opened on October 1, 1971, with the Magic Kingdom. At the opening, someone commented that it was a shame that Walt Disney did not live to see this. Lillian Disney, his widow, replied that he did see it, or it wouldn't be here.
I was reminded of how we are made in the image of God, who by his word created the world we see from things that are not visible. "This is what I need to do," I told myself. I am motivated by an example from the New Testament that looks ordinary, but had profound effects, and tells us that there is something we can all do to make our worlds better places.
The apostles in the Book of Acts, nicknamed Joseph Barnabas, meaning son of encouragement. He was among the first to sell land that he owned and gave the proceeds to the apostles for the use of the early church. He was one of the first to reach out to Saul in Saul's early days as a Christian convert. And he went and fetched Saul from Tarsus and brought him to Antioch, where together they established the first church in the Gentile world.
Barnabas and Saul worked together until they fell out over Mark, as Mark had once left them on a mission, and Saul, unlike Barnabas, was not ready to give Mark a second chance. Barnabas chose Mark as his evangelical partner, and Saul chose Silas, and they went their separate ways. Barnabas's mentoring of Mark allowed the restoration of Mark.
In 2 Timothy, Paul, formerly known as Saul, in prison and feeling abandoned, would write to Timothy to get Mark and bring Mark to him, for Mark is useful in ministry. Mark wrote the first gospel. Barnabas was committed to encouraging people to kindness and mentoring. It had profound effects for the future. What can you do to anticipate better futures in the worlds you inhabit? That is the spirit of Advent. Amen.