Comfort, O Comfort My People

The Rev. Amy Hodges Morehous

Advent II, Year B

December 7, 2014

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.   (Isaiah 40:1-2)

Comfort my people, says your God. Comfort. It has been a hard few weeks, I think. Hard news close to home this week, with the school bus crash, and three lives lost too soon. We all want to live in a world where children are safe always, a world where they can grow into the promise they represent. If we've even glanced at the news, we've seen the social and civil unrest across the country these past two weeks. People across our country are hurt, and angry, and questioning. And those are all on top of the individual burdens we already carry - the worries about our children or our parents or our jobs or our money, the family stuff we all wade through at Thanksgiving, the many stages of grief in which we all live. While most of us here are not a people who have been victimized and exiled from our homeland for a generation like the Israelites had been, I think we all understand a deep need for comfort, and a yearning for promises to be fulfilled.

Advent begins for us with Isaiah. In Advent One we hear, "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down." Today, Advent Two tells us: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God." Next week for Advent Three we'll hear: "The Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the oppressed; to bind up the brokenhearted; to repair the ruined cities."

Advent is a season of expectant waiting, yes. A season of promise. Of promise fulfilled, and promise yet to come. It reminds us to look to a time when "Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring up from the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven."

A time of God's promises. Promises brought by the prophets and fulfilled in the incarnation of Christ. Promises fulfilled in the arrival of a tiny child, born into a world such as this, a world full of division and strife and poverty and grief and violence. A child who would know all of those intimately. A child who reminds us that God's promises are trustworthy, and they are not contingent on our worthiness, or our strength, but instead on our weakness. God's promises are God's promises, and God will always - always - show up.

Today, we're asked to participate in those promises together. To give that tiny child space to grow in our hearts. To give Jesus Christ room in our lives, room that we haven't filled up with cheap grace, or worry or cynicism or irony or despair.

John the Baptizer speaks to us each Advent of reconciliation - of repentance and forgiveness and returning to God. When we repent - when we forgive - when we let go of the individual sin and grief and despair we carry around - we make space for hope. We make space for more of Christ, and less of us. Repentance is a joy and a blessing - not a grief or a burden. Repentance is the setting down of burdens.

Second Peter asks us today: If God's promises are true then "what sort of people ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God?" If God's promises are trustworthy, if we're not supposed to carry our own load alone, if we are truly forgiven for all that we lay down at Jesus' feet, then what sort of people are we freed from sin to be?

By ourselves, we don't know how to heal all the problems that exist in our world or our country or even our own hearts. But our faith is not in ourselves; it's in God's promises. Our faith is not in our own strength, but in God's. We are the participants in God's promises, here and now, in God's forgiveness here and now. We are the people being asked to participate in the Advent promise. You are being asked to be part of God's hope and healing and reconciliation now - today. God loves the people of this world so much, so deeply, and so unshakably that he sent a living promise to walk among us, to live with us, to carry the burdens that we were not meant to bear alone.

Jesus Christ is about reconciliation. About reconciling people to one another, and to God. We're not anticipating the coming of someone who's going to give us presents according to who's been naughty and who's been nice.

We're anticipating the coming of someone who will carry the burden of our past, of our choices, of our inadequacies - the coming of someone who wants us to be free of cynicism and worry and anger and fear so that we may participate in reconciling work with him even now.

I know that we all feel inadequate to address the deep divisions that exist in this world - in this country. Even in our city, in our own families. But I believe they will all be reconciled in Christ one day. I believe that God's promises are true, and that is a hard-lived belief, one that has held me through difficult times, one that has helped me to put down those hard times and turn to face the next day with hope. I believe that God's promises are true, because I have seen them in my life. Where has God shown up for you? Because that's what we have to share with one another - the story of how God has been present in our lives, has kept promises, has brought healing to brokenness. We tell the stories of our lives and how God has worked in them because in doing so, they become part of the living Gospel. Do you believe that if you tell your story, if you put it all down, if you trust it all to Christ, do you believe he will carry it for you?

I believe that God calls us to live into that promise of hope. God calls me to participate in that reconciliation, in that waiting - not reluctantly, but gratefully, with great joy. How do we do that? We tell our story. We listen. We pray. We ask questions. We repent of those things that drag us down. We give up fear, and practice hope. We learn to live in community with one another, even when that is terribly hard. We remain alert to the world around us. All the world, especially those in need.

It's the second Sunday of Advent. As Bishop Porter Taylor eloquently wrote this week: "Mary and Joseph have already left their home. They are in the wilderness guided by a small light and the hope in their hearts" and the promise of God's protection and love. Now is the time for us to journey, too - to repent of relying on our own strength, to lay down our weary loads, and to make space for the coming of Christ. It is time for us to step forward into the work of this world - reconciling, and healing, and praying, and listening and, yes, comforting.

A voice cries out: '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, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.'  (Isaiah 40:3-5)

Amen.