Sermon December 4, 2011

Isaiah 40:1–11

Psalm 85:1–2, 8–13

2 Peter 3:8–15a

Mark 1:1–8

“Words of Comfort”

There are times in life when what we need is comfort. And then there are times in life where God's comfort may be less comforting than we'd really like.

Imagine, if you will, that you've lived in the same place for about 60 years. Your children were born in the same house you still live in—or just down the road. Your grandchildren were born here, too. You were just a child when you came to live here. Two or three generations of your family have called this place home.

But in addition to this, imagine, too, that your parents came here by force. They were from some distance away and their enemies took them prisoner and that's why you live where you live. This is a little harder to imagine for most of us in this time and place. Maybe it's easier to imagine that they came here because they needed a job or a safer place to live for their family. It may not have completely been their choice, but this place you have called home was where they landed.

And now God is calling you back to the place where your parents were born. You want to go home and be a real people again, practicing a faith that you had to leave behind. On the other hand, you'll have to pack up a lifetime and leave the only home you really remember. After 60 years in exile, your people can go back to the homeland. Are you going to pack up your life and go? Your children and children's children . . . Will they uproot their lives and move back?

Isaiah's words of comfort were written to those people—though they had lived in exile for at least one generation, Jerusalem was still the center of their identity. Isaiah described an incredible vision of home and God was offering it to them—many miles from where they lived. And not surprisingly, many in Babylon refused to move back. They chose to stay where they were, working their jobs, raising their families and living the lives they had always known. They stuck to the status quo—the relative comfort of a known situation. God wanted to give them more than the comfort of what they already knew—what kind of comfort comes through change? Where can comfort come when we are embracing a new vision of life with God and all that God has in store for us and for all people?

We are aware that people in exile, under the boot of an oppressor do look for freedom from that oppression—and that freedom comes at a cost. The oppressor must give up the power to oppress, by force or willingly, and the powerless have to take up the responsibility of power. This prophet writer, in Second Isaiah, reassures the people that though their lives had to change radically—which was what they wanted in some ways—their lives would be changed by a God who was powerful as he wrote in verses 9 and 10.

“Here is your God!’
See, the Lord God comes with might,
   and his arm rules for him”

And God was also gentle, carrying for the smallest and most vulnerable:

“he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
   and gently lead the mother sheep” (v. 11-12)

And so the prophet emphasized that however the freedom would happen, the people should know that God was the source of their freedom. In the long run, there was no comfort, no safety, no faith and hope without God's actions and work in their lives—and this action and work meant their return to Jerusalem because God was reclaiming them from their time of exile and punishment. Their salvation meant great upheaval and change for them—so you can understand why Isaiah wanted them to know that this was comfort, comfort straight from God's own hand. And this comfort, this security and safety came only from knowing that in the midst of all the confusion and mess, that God was there and God's love and God's word were eternal and forever.

This is the good news from God by way of Isaiah, “Shout it from the mountain top and cry out in the city streets, 'God's people are coming home!” And God's people are coming home because God has forgiven them for their unfaithfulness and their injustices committed against each other. God has forgiven the rulers for taking advantage of the ruled; God has forgiven the priests for thinking only of protecting the livelihood of the temple structure; God had forgiven the merchants and sellers of cheating the poor. God had forgiven all who had taken advantage of anyone who they saw as powerless. These were the transgressions that the writer of the first part of Isaiah and other prophets described as reasons for Israel's exile. This is good news, that though the people were inconstant, God was constant, eternal and forever full of good news and comfort.

The poet-prophet describes a changed landscape, an altering of what is familiar. While the people of God, then and now, were given comfort in the face of radical change and shifting from lives of oppression to lives of relative freedom, they were also reminded that the way of the Lord required their continued and continuing participation in the lives that God would have them live. The valleys lifted, the mountains razed, the rocky places made level, so that God's way of living could be seen and God's way of living be a witness to glorify God everywhere.

Today, God's comfort and God's people are spread throughout the world—so comfort to God's people (all people?) means that somehow this good news of change and transformation (the glory of the Lord) was not limited to one group, but that all people shall see it together. And soon this season we'll read how Jesus' advent into the world was, “good news of great joy for all the people.”¹ The good news of great joy—the glory of the God—these are revealed by the sharing of God's word and by our living out the ways of justice and mercy in the lives of all people

The prophet speaks to the people of God returning from exile. The prophet's message can be taken into our understanding as we seek God's message for this congregation and for this time of history. We seek God's comfort as we understand that God's vision means change—allowing God to move us to the new and old homeland that we scarcely remember anymore. And that new and old place will look very different than we will remember—if we remember it at all. The church of Jesus Christ exists in a different world today than in any time in the past. The God we worship is constant, the world to whom we proclaim the good news changes daily.

As the people of Israel discovered when they went back to a place now called Judea, under their Persian rulers, Jerusalem had to be completely built from scratch—a new city in a land that was not longer very familiar. Their world had changed in their absence. We, too, are called upon to bring Christ with us into a world that no longer just accepts us and trusts us because we claim to be Christians. Our Christianity must be (now more than ever) a sincere witness to the Christ that we welcome into our hearts and lives. Our lives have to match the message of love, justice and mercy that we see in God throughout the life of Jesus. And though Isaiah's witness to humanity admits that we tend to be very fallible—we carry an everlasting message.

All people are grass,
   their constancy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
   when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
   surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades;
   but the word of our God will stand for ever. (v. 6b, 7-8)

God is destined to succeed, yes, and we are invited to be a part of the glory that God will bring into the world and to all peoples. No one, not one will be excluded in the invitation—no matter what our feelings may be.

The testimony of Israel, Brueggemann writes, remembers "a past that is saturated with life-giving miracles, not a past filled with self-sufficient achievement," and looks forward to "a future of complete shalom that is free of violence, brutality, competitiveness, and scarcity, a new governance that displaces that of empire." But today matters, too, because "[t]his testimony offers a present tense filled with neighbors to whom we are bound in fidelity, in obligation, and in mutual caring," in justice for all, including "those that the empire finds objectionable and unproductive." So it does matter how we organize our shared life, even in the face of the empires of materialism and militarism that surround us: "It matters if life-giving miracles are scuttled for the sake of can-do achievements....if circumstance-defying promises are silenced for the sake of winning at all costs....if bonded neighbors are excommunicated in a passion for private shalom" (Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope: Contested Truth in a Post-Christian World).

This text is about evangelism, about preaching [and living] the good news of God's love and faithfulness. Knowing what we know about the Jesus for whom we wait, we can agree with Brueggemann that "it is no wonder that part of this poem is quoted in all four Gospels, a text that voices the radical newness that is to be initiated in the story of Jesus" (Texts for Preaching Year B).²

The comfort that God brings may indeed make us uncomfortable—and radical hospitality and widespread transformation will mean unfathomable change—yet our comfort comes in the faith that God's gentle presence is now and forever, always with us and all of God's people.

To the glory of God, witnessed by all people. Amen.

1Luke 2:10b

2http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/december-4-2011-secone-sunday.html