Second Sunday of Advent December 7, 2008
Isaiah 40:1-11 Pastor Julie Webb
Just
sit there right now.
Don’t do a thing. Just rest.
For your
separation from God
is the hardest work in this world.
Let me bring you trays of food and something
that you like to
drink.
You can use my soft words
as a cushion
for your
head.
Shams-us-din Muhammad Hafiz (c. 1320-1389), trans. by Daniel Ladinsky in
Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West
+ + +
(Quietly) Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that she has done her time, that her debt is paid, that her guilt has been atoned-for.
(Tenderly) Comfort, give comfort to my people.
A voice cries out: “In the wilderness, prepare the Lord’s way; make for our God a straight highway through the desert. Picture this: 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 is going to be revealed, and all people are going see it together, for the Holy One has spoken.”
Comfort, give comfort to my people.
This week, we learned that our economy really is in recession, and that it has been in recession for about a year. We think we already knew that, but there it is.
Comfort, O comfort my people. . .
Violence and acts of terror are rampant in our world, in our country, in our neighborhoods. We participate in this violence through what we believe, through what we support, through what we say, through the images we watch; with our money, and even with our silence. If we have neighbors who are experiencing violence in their home, and we fail to intervene, we have become participants in their violence.
Comfort, O comfort my people . . .
The ice cap at the North Pole is melting. Scientists now say that the entire North Pole will be open water within about 42 years. To say that this is not due, in large measure, to our abuse of the earth’s resources, would itself be a sin.
Comfort, O comfort my people . . .
In the Northern Hemisphere, it is the dying time of the year. Shorter days; less of the sun’s warmth. Lots of illness. It makes some of us think about the brevity of our lives.
Comfort, O comfort my people.
A voice says, “Cry aloud!” And I say, “What shall I cry?”
--All humanity is grass, and all its beauty like the wildflower’s. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Holy One blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.
Comfort, O comfort my people.
Isaiah 40:1-8 (NASB, NRSV, NJB, adapted)
+ + +
The winter is the childhood of the year. Into this childhood of the year came the child Jesus; and into this childhood of the year must we all descend. It is as if God spoke to each of us according to our need: My son, my daughter, you are growing old and cunning; you must grow a child again, with my son, this blessed birth-time. You are growing old and careful; you must become a child. You are growing old and distrustful; you must become a child. You are growing old and petty, and weak and foolish; you must become a child – my child, like the baby there, that strong sunrise of faith and hope and love, lying in his mother’s arms in the stable.
George MacDonald, in Adela Cathcart
+ + +
Sometimes, the only way I find out what I’m really thinking is when I hear words coming out of my mouth. “I’m so tired,” I say; and then I realize how tired I am. Does that ever happen to you?
This week, I heard a Christian say that the world is never going to change. Never mind who said it—it could have been any of us. On any given day, it might have been me. But isn’t it funny to hear it coming out of our mouths? --What we say, revealing what we really think about the world?
Listening to that, I wondered: is it possible? Is it possible for things to change? Or is this world of ours never going to change?
The Bible writers give us conflicting messages on this subject, as far as I can tell. But, at the core of the good news that we preach is this gospel message—that transformation, that redemption, happens, even here, even in this hopeless world, even now.
That’s our gospel message; and yet, our daily experience is that everything in this world is passing away, like grass. We don’t feel liberated by that truth, usually; instead, we can feel discouraged.
When that happens, we can turn to Christ Jesus, who experienced great evil;
who grieved his friend Lazarus’ death; and who faced his own death.
We can hear him say,
“Face your despair: enter into it.
Notice what you really believe, then give that to God.
Give it to God. Trust God with it.
God receives everything with such love. God can transform anything.”
+ + +
Get on up to a high mountain, O Zion, messenger of good tidings. Shout as loud as you can! Lift up your voice with strength; lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities in exile, “Here is your God!”
(Proclaiming) Comfort, O comfort my people.
Here, with power, comes the Holy One, who rules with authority.
(Boldly) Comfort, O comfort my people.
God will feed this flock like a shepherd; God will gather the lambs in God’s arms, and carry them in God’s bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.
(Gently) Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.
Isaiah 40:9-11 (NASB, NRSV, NJB, adapted)
+ + +
This week, artist and theologian Jan Richardson learned about Japanese pilgrims’ coats. These were coats worn by people as they traveled from one Buddhist temple or shrine to another. The beautiful coats were painted with flowing words; and they received a different cinnabar stamp from each temple they visited, so that “the coat of a pilgrim who had been traveling for some time would have looked something like a cross between a passport and [a] prayerbook.”
Listening to the Isaiah reading for today, Richardson notices:
It is a passage about wilderness, about making a sacred way, about transformation that happens within and without. These are classic images of pilgrimage . . . . Pilgrimage calls us to give ourselves to a terrain that we may find foreign and unsettling, and to open ourselves to the sacred and surprising places that it holds. Altered by our engagement with those places, we are able to reenter the familiar terrain of our lives and to see it with different and deeper vision.
. . . What would an Advent pilgrim’s coat look like?”
What kind of pilgrimage might the season of Advent invite you to? What would your pilgrim’s coat look like? What prayers would you paint upon it, to bless you on your way? What are the names of the temples, the holy places—within or without—that you long to visit in this season, and what kind of imprint would they leave on your coat; how would they mark you? How open are you to the surprises that God might have in store on your Advent path? In whose company will you travel?
Jan Richardson, The Advent Door, www.theadventdoor.com
+ + +
Ranier Maria Rilke:
. . . be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and [to]
try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms
and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek then answers,
which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
live along some distant day into the answer.
