God Sends Comfort
Advent 2 – December 8, 2019
“Isaiah of the Exile”
Three’s Company episode w/
Chrissy Snow (short for Christmas Snow ;) )
·
Her misheard lyrics to “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen”
o “God rest ye, merry
gentlemen… Let nothing through this way”
·
Made me giggle then
·
And then made me giggle again this week as I kept hearing the end of
the chorus – “Oh tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy; oh tidings of
comfort and joy.”
·
Because “let nothing through this way” is the opposite of what the
voice (God?) is calling the people to do – to prepare a way in the wilderness
for the Lord, to make straight in the desert a highway for our God
It’s a word of hope for
the people of Judah and Jerusalem, who have been in exile in Babylon for
something like 50 years already at this point
·
(Last we saw them in Jeremiah, they were besieged in the city, but the
end of the kingdom hadn’t come quite yet – so we’ve fast-forwarded again)
·
But there they have been – and there have been so many times when they
have wondered, “How long, O Lord?”
o Psalms are filled with these
questions, some from this time period; Book of Lamentations too – questioning
and lamenting and crying out to God, wondering how long this devastation will
last, if God hadn’t perhaps gone a bit too far with this punishment
·
Imagine being uprooted from your homeland, not knowing if you’d ever be
able to go back, leaving most of your belongings behind, not knowing what, if
anything, would still be there if you were able to go back
·
So much out of their control, with no certainty of when the tides would
turn
·
So hard to hold on to or find hope in this season of life that has been
utterly beyond their control
Sometimes our lives or our
world feel like things are out of our control too
·
Not living in exile, but still know that life is uncertain and
unpredictable
o School shootings far too
close to home this past week
o Shooting at Navy Base in
Pensacola
o Those 2 stand out this week,
but stories of violence and trauma are far too common – sometimes they are just
a blip on the radar b/c they happen so often
·
World changing rapidly around us – can be great (video calls) and at
the same time unnerving
o Changing industries and work
opportunities – dairy farms struggling and closing at alarming rates for
example; good paying factory jobs shifting with new technologies
o Political landscape filled
with anger and vitriol, distrust of anyone with a different point of view –
hard to have open, reasonable conversations with each other
·
Personal upheavals of so many varieties
·
In those seasons of life, we cry out to God – with longing, with
lament, with questions, with anger, wondering why God is taking so long to do
something
And in the reading from
Isaiah, God finally shows up! God sends the prophet with “tidings of comfort
and joy”
·
“Comfort, o comfort my people… Speak tenderly to Jerusalem”
·
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the
desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every
mountain and hill be made low, the uneven ground shall become level, and the
rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all
people shall see it together…”
·
At last, God is on the move, the God who has for so long seemed angry
and absent – this God is coming to them once again
o And the word God sends the
prophet to speak is Comfort! For all of the struggle and challenge and
heartbreak that the people have been through – that time is coming to an end,
because God is on the way
·
And the Lord God comes with might to set them free from captivity and
exile
·
This God comes as a shepherd, one who will feed them and lead them,
carrying the lambs, gently leading the mother sheep
·
This is a God of both strength and kindness, one who both guides and
provides, one who will safely bring them home again!
This God is the one on whom we rely too, even in the middle of
unpredictability and anxiety and sorrow –
·
The words of the prophet call us to prepare the way of the Lord, who
has not forgotten us or abandoned us, but who we eagerly wait for to come
again, with might and mercy for this hurting world
o To not “let nothing through
this way”, but instead to make the path straight, so that God’s glory may be
revealed and that all people may see it
·
The word of God comes to us as it did to Zion, to Jerusalem, to not
only be hearers of good tidings, but
to be heralds of good tidings as well
·
To point out God in action in the world around us, to say, “Here is
your God!”, to offer words of comfort and hope
·
D learning about the moon in 1st grade – and we’re
supposed to look at the moon each night
o After school/ looking at
moon which was visible (didn’t have to go out in the cold!) – and in the car,
D: “the part of the moon we see is the part that reflects that Sun’s light”
o And that is OUR call as well
– to shine with the Son’s light, so that when we speak, we reflect the love of
God
§
The tender God who speaks comfort, who cares tenderly, who watches over
us as a shepherd does his flock
·
So that even when the world seems to be in chaos and we’d like nothing
better than to hunker down and hide and “let nothing through this way”, we
instead make room for the God who is on the way, and declare tidings of comfort
and joy to all who need to hear.
·
Amen.
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