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.

A voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare
    the way for the Lord;
make straight in the desert
    a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be raised up,
    every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
    the rugged places a plain.

The hero of the second two weeks of Advent is John the Baptist. We get a hint of how he fits in today with the original of the text quoted in the New Testament to introduce his mission as a voice of one calling, “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord.”

Before we get to John, though, this week marks a change in mood from the readings for the first Sunday of Advent. This second Sunday still looks in hope from a place of darkness to a future of light, but with increasing confidence that the light will not only arrive, but that it will be victorious.

The first part of the reading speaks of the mercy that will come to Jerusalem. Her punishment has been completed.

The city of Jerusalem held (and holds) a place in the heart of the Jewish people that doesn’t have an equivalent in the Christian faith. Even in Catholicism, Vatican City is the center of church life and history, but its role isn’t really comparable.

In Jewish tradition, both worship and God himself had a home in the Temple of Jerusalem. While Jewish scripture recognized that God was present throughout all creation, the Temple was still God’s home in a sense that no other location was. Even though the Temple no longer stands, its city does, and that city embodies the Jewish faith and people.

Jesus is recorded by both Matthew (23:37) and Luke (13:34) as saying, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”

That passage hints at the tension that defines the Advent season–and much of scripture. Even as he acknowledges humanity’s aggressive disobedience in killing and stoning the prophets, Jesus speaks of his tender love for his people.

Both God’s righteous rage and his unmerited mercy are visible throughout the season.