Comfort, O Comfort My People, TLC, NL, Isaiah 40, Advent 2, December 10, 2023

Grace and Peace from God, our comfort in distress, and from our Savior Jesus, who is our Christ. Amen.

“Comfort, O Comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid…”

How’re you doing as we come to mid-December? In a season that is anything but comforting to many people, we hear these words from Isaiah. “Comfort, O Comfort my people.” Do these words hit ya where you live?

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Are they BALM for your overstressed heart in a time when practices, programs, parties and preparations are non-stop, and will continue into the New Year? Do you have an endless list of work to pile into the next three weeks so you can take a week or even a few days off, which you’ve then stuffed with visits and activities? That sure describes my calendar!! Does “Comfort, O Comfort My People” prompt you to take a breather and care for yourself? Right now, that is a legitimate reading of these words.

Or,

Are those words SALT in your wounded heart today? Perhaps you are dealing with your own or a family member’s illness or situation. Your head is reeling from unexpected news that you cannot fix or change, but it is wearying and wearing, and those Christmas themes of hope, peace, joy, and love are nowhere in sight. “Comfort, O Comfort My People” may burn right now. And I empathize with you if that’s where you are.

Or,

Perhaps those words add to the STRUGGLE in your conflicted heart in this season. All of us wrestle with our beliefs, at times, but perhaps something has made you lose faith in a loving God that made you exactly as you are and nothing can come between you and that Love. Perhaps you have experienced the truth that as much as we try, sometimes we who call ourselves Christians don’t act like Jesus. If so, I am sorry for the hurt we have caused, and I realize it will be hard to trust again. ***

The world has enough bad news right now to make one want to crawl inside a blanket fort and wake up in January, or maybe even better -- a year or two from now. 

• Is the economy going to hold?
• Can we end the wars between Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Hamas, not to mention the less reported civil wars and violence in dozens of places around the globe.
• Can we dial back our impact on climate change?
• Can our elected officials work together to resolve long-term issues like the federal debt, dwindling Medicare and Social Security funds, racial divides, and healthcare challenges?

All of this seems like unceasing static. It’s like a constant background of conflict and uncertainty that never, never goes away. And I’m not alone. According to the CDC, nearly a third of Americans experienced symptoms of anxiety and depression this year. And don’t for a minute think our young people are immune. Among young adults ages 18 to 24, nearly one of every two people report significant anxiety and/or depression. For them, add on academic and job stresses, uncertainty about affording housing and starting families, and what their world will be like as they approach middle age.

So, “Comfort, O Comfort My People, says your God.”

I can’t see into each of your hearts right now to know for sure how those words resonate. But I think they sound hollow to many of us. As they must have to the Israelites, six centuries before the birth of the Christ.

Because Isaiah 40 and the following chapters were almost certainly written to the exiles of Judah, living in captivity in Babylon. It had been decades since the remaining Jewish people were overrun by the Babylonians, and taken from their land. And now a new power was rising, Persia. As they reminisced over two times of exile, first in Egypt, then in Babylonia, they must have wondered if they would ever be safe and secure in the Promised Land that God had given them. What next? Would the Persians be even worse?

“Comfort, O Comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”

The prophet seemed to be telling the people, “Hang in there. We’re going back. But not 40 years of wandering through the wilderness this time. We’re taking the express route!” The prophet describes a direct path for God, God who will lead them through the desert and back to Jerusalem. Prepare the way of the Lord. Make the journey easy and smooth, not dry, demanding, and dangerous.

But wait, it wasn’t that easy. It would take some time before Persian King Cyrus let the people return to Israel. The temple would be rebuilt, but the Jewish people weren’t free. They still were under Persian rule, and that would give way to Greek rule, and then Roman rule, leading up to the Birth of Jesus.

And just like before, the people would stray from God. Like grass, the prophet described. Like flowers that wither in the desert heat or the winter frost. They bloom for a season, and then they blow away.

The words of Isaiah 40 weren’t a celebration that the Jewish people’s troubles were over. Instead, they were the hopeful words of a prophet, that no matter what situation the people endured, God would never leave them. Go up, Jerusalem. Zion, climb that mountain and proclaim to the people, “Here is your God.”

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And where does that leave us?

I always find Advent a strange, slightly disorienting time of living in the Now, but Not Yet. It’s two millennia after the birth of Christ. It’s like we willingly submit ourselves to re-living this story, year after year, even as we know how it starts, in the darkness and poverty of a manger in Bethlehem, and how it ends, in the darkness and desolation of Good Friday, only to have God flip the story Easter morning. We, on this side of the resurrection, waiting for the return of Christ, go back to the predictions of a Messiah, and Jesus’ birth in a manger, as if? As if… 

• As if the world today is too techy and not personal enough.
• As if the world today is too consumerish and not rooted in goodwill and joy
• As if the world today is too fraught with worries and burdens, with no room for hope.
• As if the world today is too filled with wars and conflict, with no peace on earth.

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Take comfort, people of Trinity. Be comforted by this story, this season,

• Take comfort in a people under the rule of Caesar Augustus, a people living in the implausible hope, the promise of God that a shoot will spring up from the stump of the line of Jesse, a Savior from the House of David.
• Go back to a young, betrothed woman who turns up unexpectedly, embarrassingly with child, but instead of hiding, proclaims “My soul magnifies the Lord.”
• Go back to the magi, unbelievably drawn westward by a star, and their faith that something wonderful waits for them there.

We know this story. We take comfort in retelling it, year after year, hearing it told by our children, knowing that it leads to Emmanuel, meaning “God-With-Us,” fragile and helpless. Not rich. Not mighty, not even born in a home or with a midwife, but swaddled in whatever cloth two young parents could find.

We live in this story, somewhere in the midst of God-With-Us coming to live with us, God-With-Us this week and every week in the meal, God-With-Us in the mission we carry out from this place, and God-With-Us promising that Christ will return. All of these timelines strangely weaving and overlapping as we count down to Christmas Eve. God who was, who is, and who will be, God ever present with us.

Comfort. O Comfort. 

 

Amen.