Comfort My People

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

December 7, 2008

Text: Isaiah 40: 1-11

(An expanded version of the sermon preached on December 7.)

THEIR EXILE

Isaiah envisions God as in the heavenly court, with heavenly hosts gathered around. God has decided that Israel has suffered enough, that it is time for them to be freed from exile and brought home to Jerusalem.

Not all suffering is a result of our sin. Suffering is no respecter of persons: it comes to the innocent and to the guilty. And yet we all know that we sometimes reap what we have sown. And God leaves us to our own devices.

Grace is underneath all of life. And God never lets us wander so far that we cannot come home. But this does not mean that we will not have to suffer in the meantime.

Israel’s leaders saw their defeat and forced march to Babylon 50 years before as God’s “No.” They had worshipped other Gods and they had not upheld justice for the people.

So they had to live for over 50 years in a foreign land; their temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. They were ridiculed by the Babylonians with the taunt, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion now!” Their voices were silenced: “How can we sing the Lord’s songs in a foreign land?”

They were homesick. They dwelt, as one has said, “in unforgiven past tenses.” (Richard Ward, Feasting on the Word, Advent, Volume One))

Our identity is formed by structures: National anthem at ballgames, Gloria Patri at worship, The Lord’s Prayer to close off our prayers; Thanksgiving Dinners, the annual UT versus A&M game; dressing up for Halloween; and customs that are specific for your family or your ethnic group. The legal system is a structure we come to depend on being in place. To have all of these taken away and to be forcibly marched to a foreign land where the language is different and the landscape and food is strange is devastating. The homesickness can be paralyzing.

In 1838, Andrew Jackson got his way. Thousands of Cherokee were forcibly removed from their lands in Georgia and marched westward to the Oklahoma territory. More than 4000 died in route. Their grief, symbolized by the Legend of the Cherokee Rose: 7 petals around a gold center, for the gold in North Georgia that others wanted and the 7 tribes of the Cherokee nation. It is said that wherever a tear from a Native American woman was shed, a rose would grow and that all along the Trail of Tears, these flowers are found, even to this day.

We can imagine what it is to be forcibly displaced, and how we would long to go back home! Enormous displacement, bitterness, depression would be the result.

OUR EXILE

There are places on this earth even now where such forced geographical exile is carried out. But since we personally have not endured such a traumatic experience, how can we relate to the ancient Israelites?

The feeling of exile may be more prevalent today that we have considered. Do you know people who seem to be at-home almost anywhere and others you are not at home any place? Some seem to carry their homes with them like a turtle; others are like nervous Chihuahuas, seeming to fly apart at the least surprise.

And we are often made to feel like exiles or captives by the subtle but effective drumbeat of the prevailing wisdoms in our worlds.

Is there exile in our current economic crisis? Could it be that we are being reminded that no person or nation or segment of the world can afford to go it alone anymore? That we are interrelated and independent on cooperative structures and decision-making? That God has made all nations that live upon the earth?

In stressing our freedom to do whatever we choose to do, have we forgotten that we are embedded in a community of caring by virtue of our creation by a heavenly Father?

On a more personal level:

We may be persuaded that appearances matter most in life; or acceptance by this in-group or that and we are out of place if we do not fit in;

 or by the philosophy that we are valuable only to the extent that we are productive as some one else defines it. (Sierra Vista man and the $10,000.) We are in territory foreign to us.

As those who follow the Rabbi Jesus, we should feel ill at ease with the constant diet of violence in our entertainment media.  Harry Belafonte was asked a few years ago what he thought of the current slate of movies. He said that in too many of them, so many people are killed and no one cries.

Or we may have begun worshipping at the shrine of personal self-fulfillment narrowly conceived, a kind of self-preoccupation.

We may have filled up our souls with junk-food, covering over our longing for God’s presence. We may believe that constant communication with others is necessary to happiness.

God’s people, in many ways always live as exiles in cultures that are antithetical to the principles of Jesus’ teachings. “Refugees usually make adjustments to new surroundings.” (David Gowan, Interpretation, October, 1981)

“The world is too much with us,” Wordsworth wrote. Not the natural world, but the artificial world. Henri Nouwen wrote:

“Each day our society bombards us with a myriad of images and sounds….each image or word demanding our attention in all sorts of sizes and colors and with all sorts of gestures and noises. The words scream at us: ‘eat me, drink me, buy me, hire me, look at me, talk with me, sleep with me! [Be safe here, protect yourself with this weapon Whether we ask for it or not is not the question; we simply cannot go far without being engulfed by words and images forcibly intruding themselves into our minds.

“But do we really want our minds to become the garbage can of the world? Do we want our minds to be filled with things that confuses us, excite us, depress us, arouse us, repulse us, or attract us whether we think it is good for us or not….? Clearly, we do not, but it requires real discipline to let God and not the world be the Lord of our mind.” (In Joyful Hope: Meditations for Advent from the Writings of Heni J.M. Nouwen , Creative Communications, 1997)

The well-lived life under the rule of King Jesus is radically different than so much in our culture. And, as those who prize our independence, we are easy prey for the persuaders in Hollywood, Madison Avenue and Wall Street. We can be rounded up without a shot being fired.

If Isaiah 40 is not to be a mere Christmas ornament----if it be a lively is to, fresh word of the Lord to us----then we have to begin to recognize our own Babylonian-type captivity. Then we can turn and receive God’s healing touch: our guilt may be forgiven, for we recognize that we cannot live with God’s mercy and forgiveness.

Then we can hear “Comfort, O comfort my people,” as God’s liberating word spoken tenderly to our hearts. We have suffered enough from our captivities and our idolatries. It is time to come home.

PREPARE

The ancient peoples of God heard the message of God’s coming and one of them in the heavenly chorus says, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” so that God’s way will not be delayed. This is not an invitation, but a command. Remove the obstacles to God’s glory being revealed.

And not only revealed to the Hebrew people, but to all people.

How do we answer this call?

Blessed are those who are not a stumbling block!

Psalm 69:7---“Let not those who hope in you be put to shame through me, Lord God of hosts; let not those who seek you be disgraced because of me, O God of Israel.”

To prepare, we can live as people of hope, not despair. “You know as well as I that
when our words are full of warnings,

 our eyes full of fears,
our bodies full of unmet needs
and our actions full of distrust,

we cannot expect ever to create around us a community that shines as a light in the darkness….”

(Nouwen, op cit)

CRY

Then another voice of one of the heavenly hosts says “Cry!” or, more descriptively, “Shout!” (The Message) “Preach!” “Communicate!” It is a command: speak up and share what is happening, that God is coming to set us free and give us a future!

Now if the only thing we have to say to the world is that we are a church of “open hearts, open doors, open minds,” we really don’t have much to offer. If this is what we are shouting to people, we are saying nothing more than the local library may say---assuming they have a friendly librarian!

So we can identify with Isaiah when he asks, “What shall I say?”

And the messenger says this: That even though we human beings are weak indeed, and our love fades and withers and falls --like the leaf that fell off the plant in the doctor’s office as I waited; like the poinsettias the week after Christmas. Nevertheless, we can shout this:  that “The word of our God shall stand forever.”

The good news we have to tell is not that we offer this or that, or that we----mortals or church--- are just what everyone needs. But the word of the Lord is constant, freshly spoken, always given----not just words in a book, but God’s messages which judge and inspire and encourage us in the ordinary rounds of life.

 Isaiah sees what only the heart can see. If you don’t have a fertile imagination, don’t try to make sense of the prophets! And he is commended to be a herald, an announcer of what God is doing.

WHO IS COMING

God in glory is traveling on the freeway to Jerusalem, strong (with an arm like an NFL linebacker), and gentle (like a mother gathering up the little ones and carrying them to safety).

This is the God who is coming to you, to free you, to establish you, to give you a future.

We hear this message as persons in need of  a fresh start, a slate wiped clean, persons who long for a meaningful life and a place where we feel at home in this world.

We hear this message as a church, because we tend to get caught up in the zeitgeist of the times, full of fear and foreboding, or relying only on our own wisdom; and needing a fresh visit of the Holy Spirit so Christ may be born in us anew.

And to a bleeding and confused world, full of distractions and excuses, we preach this message with our lives and with our witness:

God is strong and loving and has come to save you and me and the whole floundering world from destruction.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him may not perish but have everlasting life. He came not to condemn the world but so that the world might be saved through him.”

JOHN THE BAPTIST

About 530 years later, a man dressed in camel skins with a leather sash around his waist; and whose regular diet was locusts and wild honey, came to the area of Judea. He preached “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” The gospel writers, with the wisdom of having been Jesus’ followers and fellow teachers and preachers, remembered old Isaiah’s message. All four record that John was the one “preparing the way of the Lord, making God’s paths straight.”

Yes, the ancient Israelites did come home to Jerusalem, as Isaiah prophesied. But this re-establishment of God’s people faded in time, when Israel was diverted and got diverted.

But was this the end of the story? No, “for in the birth of Immanuel, God-with-us, God comes again, in person, as a redeeming king,” strong in the ways of servant love. And God still comes to us again and again, like Jesus, through Word spoken and bread broken. ( Elizabeth Achtemeier, Feasting on the Word, Advent Volume One)

Later, John the Baptist sent word to Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” The days of preparing were over, and now even John is voicing his reservations about the nature of this Promised One.

This is always the question, isn’t it, every Christmas? Whom do we say that Jesus is? Is this one whose life is described by the earliest disciples the source of our comfort and our hope? When Christmas arrives, what will we say? What will you decide?