Isaiah 40:1-11
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Our world is crying out for comfort. So often when we seek comfort, we are not seeking the comfort Isaiah proclaims. We seek happiness, contentment, disruption of the unpleasant sensations and emotions that come with being human. We find distraction, fleeting pleasures to fill the void, satisfying our brief cravings. We carry our comfort cup of coffee or soda, we light our cigarette or fill our glass, we turn on the television or pull up one of the half dozen streaming services someone is paying for, we click that yellow buy now button and within the 48 hours it takes for that purchase to get to our door we’ve already forgotten about it. It is not morally wrong or sinful to seek comfort, but it is rarely if ever found on the other side of a transaction. When we develop this habit, transactional relationships with our loved ones, with our colleagues, with our hobbies and our friends and even our churches, can develop without us ever even noticing. We can end up treating love, joy, faith like consumer goods we can buy or earn. It is so easy to start, and so hard to stop, and we are all trapped in this cycle in one way or another.
This is why the season before Christmas is a season of strangely dressed prophets shouting and waving their hands and pointing their finger at us in wild places. In order to receive the Incarnation for the gift that it is, freely given, we first need to be shaken up a bit, we need to wake up from the restless slumber of our routines. Advent offers us an opportunity to look closely, to find the places where we have filled the cracks in our hearts with empty promises and short term distractions that will always leave us wanting. That emptiness we feel when the bottle is finished, or when all the presents are unwrapped and the gathered family have dispersed, or when the emotional high of the big game fades- that emptiness comes when we numb ourselves from the hard things, which always means we have numbed ourselves to the good things too. This is why the prophet shouts, why John shows up in all his wild mad glory. Sometimes, when we are numb, it takes more than a still small voice to reach us.
Isaiah reminds the devastated and exiled people of God that their salvation comes from God, not human strength. The grass withers, the flower fades, people are inconstant and we cannot save ourselves. But the word of our God will stand forever, and that Word comes into the world as helpless and overwhelmed as we are, and grows into a mighty and gentle shepherd. The God who saves us is also the God who loves us. The God who judges us is also the God who desires to comfort us, to speak tenderly to us, to feed us and gather us in his arms and carry us in her bosom and gently lead us to a place of safety and peace. This is the truth, this is the comfort we seek, the only comfort that lasts.
But what comes first? A voice, crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. The voice cries in the wilderness, and the cry is in heard in the wilderness. The winding paths in the desert that we are to make straight are the paths we walk, the paths the Israelites walked in exile, the trails that we blaze as we wander like sheep without a shepherd through the night. The wilderness is not a place we go to, it’s not a camping trip or a weekend off grid. It is where we are, where we live for so much of our lives as we wander the peaks and valleys of grief, illness, growing pains, addiction and recovery and relapse, the beginnings and endings of marriages and lives, the births of children and the days the nest feels devastatingly empty, the career ladder that can feel more like a maze. This is the wilderness, and we’re in it together, and it is here that we meet God. God does not wait for us to reach the other side of our wilderness, God does not wait for us to get it right. God shows up, and we can find comfort with God even in the wilderness. God will flatten mountains and raise up valleys and split seas and endure suffering to get to us, to bring us comfort, to tell us “Here is your God, I am Emmanuel, I am with you, I am here.”
That is where we find our peace, where the crooked paths still lead to justice, where hills and valleys do not prevent anyone from reaching God. When we put down our comfort objects, our distractions and our transactions and numbing agents, we find that the wilderness is not what is separating us from God. When we begin to seek God, we find that God is right here, always seeking to bring us closer, to help us navigate the uneven ground and walk beside us through the rough places.
I mentioned last week that a colleague of mine wrote new lyrics to the tune of O Come O Come Emmanuel as a pastoral response to the grief and pain and violence that permeates our world right now. Today’s passage from Isaiah is the basis of her verses, and I want to share them with you. I hope they bring you comfort, and I hope you will join me in continuing to pray for peace.
O comforter, speak tenderly of peace;
Cry words of promise and release.
You level hills and make valleys plain:
Reveal your glory, end our pain.
Rejoice! rejoice! Take heart and do not fear;
God’s chosen one, Emmanuel, draws near.
Our broken faith we doubly bear as shame.
Come be our Word, a saving Name.
All words that wound will cease to stand
When you lift your almighty hand.
Rejoice! rejoice! Take heart and do not fear;
God’s chosen one, Emmanuel, draws near.
Our troubled hearts can wander far,
Forgetting how you make us who we are.
Now lift us up and hold us fast–
Our future liberated from our past.
Rejoice! rejoice! Take heart and do not fear;
God’s chosen one, Emmanuel, draws near.
Revised verses by Rev. Emmy Kegler
Mother A Writes 