“Isaiah’s Hope: from Aberfran to Toronto”
By Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 1, 2026
Reading: Isaiah 35:1-10; Matthew 11:2-6
It is a day that will go down in the annals of history. It was a day when I can honestly say, as a child, I felt the chill of death, and I had a cold pit in my stomach. I felt empty and alone. The news had just come on. It was October the 21st, 1966, two days before my eighth birthday, when the principal gathered our school around, a junior school in Suffolk, and told us that the BBC had just made an announcement. In the coal mining town of Aberfan, in Wales, there had been a slide of the coal slip. It had crushed an entire school. One hundred and sixteen children were dead. Twenty-eight adults, from teachers to custodians to dinner ladies, dead. It was one of the single greatest tragedies of a generation. We all looked at each other, hardly able to take it in, such a tragedy. But as we looked around the students, we realized it could have been us. An entire school destroyed. Children hiding under desks only to be crushed. Bodies that ended up in a church morgue days later. It was devastating.
One of the men who was there made a comment, his name was Dai Beynon and he said, “In the silence after it all finished, you couldn't hear a bird. You couldn't hear a child”. There was just nothing. Complete and utter devastation was Aberfan.
I remember our principal and teachers taking us to one side the very next day after it had all happened and we could digest precisely the enormity of it. They said to us: “Don't worry, everything will be all right. Everything will be all right.”
Hardly the kind of counseling that you would get today. They simply dismissed what had happened with a solitary and banal phrase. “Everything will be all right.” But it wasn't all right and we knew it. No, everything is not all right.
Throughout history, there have been those who have sought to deal with tragedies and death like Aberfan. It's almost as if it's a default position to say when you don't know what else to say that everything will be all right. You'll have said it, I've said it. It sort of comes out as a natural response to grief and misery or disaster. Everything will be all right. Sounds like a plausible response, but it isn't.
It's no wonder that Voltaire in his incredible work, Candide, made fun of the idea that everything would be all right. He had a character called Dr. Pangloss, who believed constantly and for every occasion said, we live in the best of all possible worlds. Everything will be alright. Voltaire wanted to make fun of that. He knew it wasn't true. He knew it wasn't right. You might think you live in the best of all possible worlds if you're climbing Mount Snowdon and looking down on North Wales. You might feel it's the best of all possible worlds if you're sailing on Lake Joseph. You may feel it is the best of all possible worlds if you're golfing in Bermuda. You might think it is the best of all possible worlds when your bank account is full and your family is healthy.
Not Aberfan. It does not work there. It is not the best of all possible worlds. Everything is not alright. Which brings me to the wonderful text from the book of Isaiah that was read so beautifully this morning. Isaiah is a text that has often been misunderstood, misquoted by cynics and skeptics and agnostics alike, who have said, see, look, even in the Bible, there are those who say everything will be all right. Look at Isaiah.
It's almost as if this passage is a tribute to the phrase. But that’s not true. For there is no sense in Isaiah that he glibly would say, everything is all right. What he did say was in the wilderness of suffering. There is a reality. He knew to whom he was writing and prophesying. And the people to whom he was prophesying were living in exile. They were removed from their land and their country.
Now there is often a debate amongst biblical scholars as to when Isaiah was written, this portion, was it written in the eighth century when the Assyrians came and plundered the nations and destroyed Judah and Israel and took them captive? Or was it later in the sixth century when the Babylonians came along and did exactly the same thing and took them into exile and forced them to live outside their country?
It seems to me that even when I talk to our biblical scholars within the Bible society though, there is a sense it really doesn't matter because Isaiah was speaking to people who were living in exile, people who were suffering at the hands of an enemy and a foolish and dangerous people. And he describes what that is like. He uses language as if the whole of creation has been broken. That living in exile, the deserts were dry, there were no springs of water. The deer were not able to leap. People were not able to walk because they were lame. They had no road back to their country. The blind, often made blind by their persecutors, could not see. The deaf could not hear. The poor had no justice. The land was taken from them and there was no way home.
Isaiah in some of the previous chapters had already told the people that they needed to repent of their sins (and repentance is a theme that you're looking at right now, isn't that right, Jason?) That they needed to get on their knees and confess their sins even in the midst of their suffering. But now he is simply naming the desert, the wilderness and he's not hiding from it. Nor should one. One should never say simply, “everything will be all right.” You have to sometimes name the suffering. In Aberfan afterwards, when there were memorial services and dead bodies were taken out of the morgue that had been in the church, (which is the great irony), you have to name the suffering.
People were not saying everything was all right at Tumbler Ridge just recently. We've gone through the horror of children not going back to their schools because the building reminded them of everything that had happened. Everything was not all right.
To the people in Iran, this morning our hearts turn. It's not as if everything will be all right. We don't know. To our Nigerian brothers and sisters in Christ, who have suffered, had their churches burnt down, and been driven from their homes, everything is not all right. Sometimes you have to say that in the wilderness of suffering. There is a reality and let's not overlook it. But Isaiah was a prophet of hope, not a prophet of misery. He was someone who believed that there would be restoration in the land, that there would be a return, and he talks in this passage glowingly about it. He says, “crocuses will grow even with the dryness of the desert. The deer will leap; your people will sing again; the blind will see; the lame will walk; the deaf will hear. Even those who are the fools will be able to return home. There will be a highway made for them”.
They are going home after all. Why? Because God is with them. This is not fatalism. This is faith. And he reminded them that there would come a time when they would see the Lord's glory, that they would return to Zion, that there would be singing and praise and glory, and that the people will know their God, and God will bring them back home.
What a glorious vision. Far be it from the critics and the cynics who say all it is positive thinking. This is not positive thinking. This is belief in the very power of God himself to redeem his people. And nowhere do we see this more acutely, more personally, more incarnationally than in the person of Jesus Christ himself. For those who saw Jesus for the first time, there was this belief that everything that Isaiah had prophesied was fulfilled in the coming of the Messiah. That this Jesus was the one who would bring his people home. John the Baptist talked about a road, a highway in the wilderness when the Messiah has come, but even he had his doubts. Even he sent a message as we read in the Gospel of Matthew, to the followers of Jesus and to Jesus himself. Are you really the Messiah? Are you the one that we've waited for? Are you the fulfillment of Isaiah? Are you? And he was like, Jesus said, watch me. The lame will walk, the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the poor will have the gospel. Watch me. Then Jesus' entire ministry, from the birth to the ascension, was one of redeeming the people, of bringing them back home, of restoring what was broken.
In an incredible book entitled Reading the Bible on Turtle Island by Dr. Daniel Zacharias of Acadia Divinity College, a friend colleague of mine. As an indigenous writer, he has talked about how Jesus Christ comes and transforms that wilderness and takes that which is sort of broken and restores it. In his book, he says that the whole of creation even will be restored by the power of Jesus Christ and the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah. I quote him:
Looking to the story of Jesus in the gospels, we see that the work toward restoring Shalom for the more than human community of creation is evident in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Prior to Jesus' ministry, the wilderness, which was so often spoken of as a wasteland, becomes the place where God's prophet John spends his days. And it's in the wilderness and in the waters of the Jordan that John prepares the way for all flesh to see God's salvation. This shows that the time in the wilderness was also a time of communion with the more than human creation around him, including the spirit world. Consider also how Jesus speaks words of healing and peace, not just to people, but to the wind and the waves, signaling his relationship with creation and creation's own agency. The creation itself laments Christ's death as darkness and covers the lambs and the sun ceases sending its light.
For Zacharias, the whole of creation is restored in Jesus Christ. So, what Isaiah saw as a barren land with no water and no life and death, was fulfilled and redeemed and changed by the coming of Jesus Christ the Messiah. He is the Lord. He is the one who opens the highway. But what then is required of us? What are we to do? Who are we to be in the face of so much of the wilderness of the world? If we are not to go around saying ‘the best of all possible worlds, everything will be all right,’ what are we to do? Well, we are to be patient. We are to be patient in the wilderness.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who you know I quote frequently, once said, “We live in a penultimate time”. The time between the death and the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus and the time when he will come again in glory. We will sing that. He will come again in glory. But in that time, Jesus through the Spirit is at work. But still, we have to be patient.
Very often we are quick to speak our words, quick to give an account of what is happening, quick to judge God. We need to slow down and let God do His work, just like He did with Isaiah's people.
My mind turned (and my cousins who were online today will hear this) when I visited my uncle who lived in Wrexham and was a wonderful man. He decided one Easter when we visited from England to have a gift. I was excited that he would give me a gift. My uncle, this is lovely. I thought a soccer ball maybe, or a Wrexham football club shirt. Maybe something that had been written in Welsh. Instead, he presented me with a sack and in that sack, there was mud. And in that mud was a little round thing. He was overjoyed to give this to me. I thought he'd lost his Welsh mind. I really did. Is this what they give in Wales? I'm not coming back, brother. I'm not coming back. Anyway, I took it. I thanked him for it. He seemed excited to give it to me. And he says, “now you look after it.”
So, I said, “Fine.” I'll look after the mud in the sack. Sure.
Then he said, “Now you're to take it home and you're to bury it.”
This is great. I don't even get to keep it. I have to put it back in more mud, I thought. But I did, as he said, I was about 10 years old, and I did what I was told. I put it in the ground in our home in Suffolk. And I waited and I waited and I warded it and it was still mud. It remained mud for months. Until one day there was a shoot and some green. Then there was a flower. It was a daffodil. A daffodil. A Welsh daffodil.
He'd given me this most beautiful gift. But at the time, I saw it as nothing. I had to wait. And then I saw it was beautiful. Isaiah in the wilderness is saying when you're there, wait. There's a highway home. There's a redemption to be had. You wait patiently on the Lord. And Lent is a time of waiting. It's a time of waiting on the Lord to act. But it is also a time to praise. I mean, this is most of all a doxology. It is a hymn of glory by Isaiah. And I never saw this more clearly than a couple of years ago when I was preaching at an Iranian church in Richmond Hill.
I preached in the afternoon and in the evening to a large crowd of Iranians, I preached in English and it was interpreted into Farsi. After my sermon, and a glorious worship service, we sang a piece of music from Isaiah 35. I had no idea when I wrote this sermon what today would be. We sang these words:
And the ransomed of the Lord shall return
and come to Zion with songs
and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads
and they shall obtain joy and gladness
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
“Sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” For people who live in darkness, says John, we see a great light. In the moment of wilderness, we hear the word of God. And when everything is silent, like Aberfan, and you cannot hear a bird, and you can't hear even a child; the word of God is still at work. This is the best of all possible worlds. Amen.