2nd Sunday in
Advent (Year B) – Sunday, December 4, 2011
Christ Evangelical
Lutheran Church, Lancaster, PA
Texts: Isaiah 40:1-11
I met
my childhood best friend in the Boy Scouts, going camping in the low
tech outdoors, yet ironically staying up all night arguing whether
the spaceships of Star Trek or Star Wars were better. The Enterprise
can totally beat a Star Destroyer!! You know, general boyhood stuff.
We were close, which is why when we got to fighting – you can only
share a 2-man tent for so long before tempers flare – his words
hurt worse than anyone else's. He knew just how to get under my
skin. There was one summer camp when we started arguing, and he
fired out a line about my brother. That was it. The gloves came
off, and I pushed him as hard as he could. He punched me. I found a
solitary place in the woods to hide my tears. Later that week I,
innocently, of course, threw a metal water bucket at him. It just so
happened my aim was pretty good. That didn't go so well.
It's
always the ones you care about the most whose words, and actions,
hurt you the worst. It's the ones you love the most whose hearts you
can tear open. You know what I'm talking about. In any close
relationship, words have the power to forge the strongest possible
bonds of love, or to cause the pain and anguish of a broken heart.
A parent's affection can become abusive or manipulative. “You've
always been such a screw up, why don't you get a real job?” A
child's adoration can turn to what sounds like rejection. “Ugh!
You don't even know who I am!” The look in your spouse's eyes can
make your heart skip a beat, until the day when he or she says,
“You're not the person I married.”
The
prophet Isaiah reminds us, “All people are grass. Their constancy
is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower
fades...”
The
broken-hearted don't usually keep their pain to themselves. Revenge
is swift and cold. When we feel the shooting pain of a broken heart,
we lash out, our voices scoring the deep and penetrating hits that
only a lover can inflict on his or her beloved. The gloves come off,
the dirty laundry is aired, the closet of skeletons is opened.
Sooner or later it can be hard to remember why we're fighting or how
it started. This predicament afflicts not only family members but
also friends, co-workers, or even fellow church members – people
with whom we have a history.
“The
grass withers, the flower fades …; surely the people are grass.”
Sometimes
our relationships embody the unconditional and self-giving love of
God, and our words reflect this. Sometimes, however, our bonds with
each other wither and fade like a flower, starved of nourishment by
the sin which holds us captive.
In the
Bible, Israel has just as spotty a record when it came to being
faithful to each other. If you think about family, though, it
doesn't get much closer than Israel and their God. This was and is
the ultimate relationship, and Israel fell short there also. We'd be
fooling ourselves if we thought we were doing any better. Israel's
unfaithfulness was like a spouse calling it quits. We are just as
close to God, and we might imagine that our infidelity is just as
painful. Consider what it would feel like, or what it has felt like,
when a child, parent, or spouse no longer has a place for you in his
or her life. We feel this sort of pain in our unfaithfulness to each
other, and we know what feelings and words well up inside us when we
feel that kind of pain. We might want to throw something...like a
water bucket. Or hurl some hateful words.
The
grass withers, the flower fades...
...but
the word of our God will stand forever.
Comfort,
O comfort my people. What was that? Listen. Comfort, comfort!
You
need to know something. Israel was in exile, in captivity, in
Babylon, an exile it deserved, the prophets tell us. They had
rejected the laws of their Creator to an extent that they were kicked
out of the house, literally, and sent off in chains. God was just in
sending them off. God would be just in sending us away.
But
there in a foreign land, feeling powerfully and painfully the
consequences of their broken relationship, they did not hear God
saying, “that's what you get” or “I told you so.” What did
they hear?
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!
God
said, “enough!” God had promised to be their God, and our God,
forever. God always keeps God's promises. So God took the
initiative, God said “enough!” and ended the standoff. Through
Isaiah, God announced, “get ready because I am coming home, I am
rushing to meet you in the wilderness, in the desert of your lives!
Proclaim this good news from the mountaintops, that I am your God,
and I will be with you, protecting you, feeding you like a shepherd,
carrying you gently in my arms.”
God
didn't hold on to the grudge, but said, “enough!,” and came
running to his beloved children. In fact, God ran all the way down
to earth, God the Son being born as the human son of Mary, the Word
made flesh, Jesus Christ. God came running with arms wide open.
Like a mother or a father rushing to scoop up their children and hold
them tight, or like a spouse ending the argument and rushing into the
arms of his or her beloved.
God
doesn't wait for us to make the first move. God doesn't wait to see
who's right (thanks be to God). Because when unconditional love is
involved, it just doesn't matter. God doesn't wait for us to right
all our relationships with each other, to realize that people who
look different, speak a different language, have a different opinion
or even believe differently are, in fact, also God's children. God
just comes to us in Babylon, in our captivity, in the wilderness,
with a tender word of comfort. God just sent to us the tender Word,
Jesus the Christ, to bring salvation to the entire world.
Hearing
these words of comfort in our captivity, words like, “God forgives
you all your sins,” or “this is the body of Christ, given for
you,” we are enabled and empowered to speak them to each other.
That's the Holy Spirit. The first few lines from Isaiah today are
not only God's words for us, but they are the words God is calling us
to speak to each other. We are told, “cry out!” You might say,
“what shall I cry?” We are called to speak God's tender words of
comfort both literally, and also through how we live our lives. I
ask you to look at the person next to you, say hi! That's a child of
God. You're a child of God. That person next to you is precious to
God. Through tender words and actions, through a life of receiving
God's grace and passing it on, we are called and commissioned by God
to cry out the good news of Jesus Christ.
Isaiah
describes this tender word as literally re-forming Creation itself -
“every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain be made
low, and the rough places will be made plain and the crooked places
will be made straight, and the glory of the LORD shall be revealed
and all flesh shall see it together.” That's the King James
version, the version quoted by Dr. Martin Luther King on the steps of
Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. God's tender word of comfort,
of forgiveness and love, has the power to endure and absorb any
hatred and anger, and to transform society by transforming the hearts
of its people. God's love, which is embodied and perfected in Jesus
Christ in our world, here with us now, is mending even our hearts
wherever they are broken.
God's
comfort has come into the world through the tender Word Jesus Christ.
We wait for it to come again this season in the Bethlehem manger,
for it to come among us, and for the day when it will be the word
that directs all speaking and all doing. Amen, Come Lord Jesus!
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