Isaiah 11:1-10

“If only.”

This past week, I recalled a Thanksgiving from almost a decade ago. I had messed up at work and ended up stuck with a pile of papers over the holiday. Not knowing how to admit fault and ask for help, I was caught in a cycle of self-blame, wishing for a way out.

“If only I were somewhere else,” I thought to myself, “If only I were doing something else.”

I’m sure each of you has had your own “if only.” A desire for escape, for something new, for greener grass. A looking ahead and hope for a better future.

I can’t help but think there’s an “if only” lying behind our readings from the psalms and Isaiah this evening. Both foretell an era of justice and prosperity, of deliverance and redemption, of wolves living alongside lambs. If only we had a righteous king.

Both passages have traditionally been interpreted as referring to the coming messiah. Who else could be this textbook-perfect?

Jesus came as the messiah, but as a humble servant, not a conquering king. But if a servant, then still the son of God, greater than the prophets could have hoped: “no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Lk 10:22).

But even so, Jesus’s first advent did not to fulfill the “if only” of the psalmist and Isaiah. It yet remains unfulfilled. There’s still injustice and corruption and scarcity and conflict, and wolves still eat lambs. We still look ahead, we still hope for the promised future of our savior’s second coming, but in this in-between time, what are we to do?

I think it’s significant that Jesus’s revelation in tonight’s Gospel comes shortly after one of the earliest appearances of the word “repent” in Luke’s gospel (first appearing as a verb at Lk 10:13; noun form, “repent” appearing earlier, at Lk 3:3, 3:8, and 5:32). Jesus as messiah doesn’t lead an army but calls us to repentance.

In this season of Advent, we recall our savior’s first coming and we wait in hope and expectation for the “if only” of peace and justice and prosperity and deliverance of his second coming. But in this not-yet time, we can also follow our savior’s call to repent, to admit our fault and ask God for help. To turn from the “if only” to the “even so,” continuing to live into the invitations and challenges that we encounter. And to be consoled, in the traditional words of the Advent Prose, by God’s promise to us, here and now: “my salvation shall not tarry. . . . Fear not, for I will save thee: for I am the Lord thy God . . . thy Redeemer.”

Amen.