Watching And Waiting For Comfort

"Watching And Waiting For Comfort"

Isaiah 40:1-11
December 7, 2008

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.

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.’

A voice says, ‘Cry out!’
And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’
All people are grass,
their constancy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
when the breath of the LORD blows upon it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades;
but the word of our God will stand for ever.
Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good tidings;
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
‘Here is your God!’
See, the Lord GOD comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead the mother sheep.

This past week I did a little more personal sharing than I usually do with people,
especially in conversation or email with some of you that are going through a difficult
time. What I mean is that I shared some of my personal story with a few folks who were
going through similar things in their lives right now. In general, us pastor types are not
really supposed to do a lot of that in the ministry, for good reasons, because we’ve all
probably had contact with folks who sort of overwhelm us with their stories—I mean, you
know the type: when you began to share, they immediately begin to share their story,
and it becomes pretty clear that its quickly becoming all about them, that they see you
as nothing more than a listening ear, when, at first, they had volunteered to hear your
story and be present with you during that particular time. So, it’s a good thing for us
caregiver types to avoid too much self-talk, because we can be tempted by doing that
as well, but I’ve also come to realize over the years that sharing some of your own story
with others who are going through similar things can simply indicate that you do
understand what it means to lose a parent, or to feel hopeless, or struggle with
depression, or whatever—I think it just helps to know that the person you are talking to
knows what it means to walk in your difficult shoes, though everyone’s shoes are
different, as everyone’s experience is different.

That self-relating, that sharing of stories, as a way of helping others on the journey,
that is something fairly new in the West—I don’t know about the East, but here in the
West we’ve kept those sorts of stories fairly private, especially since the Victorian era.
There was a sense that everyone had a particular cone of privacy that ought to be kept
secret, and not shared with others. But things began to change in the 20th century, I
think, perhaps because of the spread of easier communication, radio, availability of
newspapers, etc, and you saw a shift in the culture, a greater ease with sharing the
difficult things, the hidden things, the private worries. Honestly, I don’t think programs
like Alcoholics Anonymous could have flourished in an earlier age, and though it was
theoretically anonymous, you still had to show up before others and name some of your
darkest shadows, your hidden shame, your struggle with the demon of alcohol, that sort
of things. A more confessional age began, and there was something about that
sharing that was healing for those in the AA movement. Bill W, the founder of AA, knew
that when you gather together those who share a common struggle, who know what it
means to suffer and stumble with the disease of alcoholism, that the simply sharing of
that journey with others is something that can be healing for those in recovery. The
rise of the self-help movement owes so much to people like Bill W. who had struggled to
get sober all those years, and yet, I don’t want us to forget that he was as human as
the people he tried to help. You know, Bill struggled all his life with addiction, and it was
an addiction to cigarettes that eventually killed him, and another addiction to beautiful
young women that almost caused his marriage to collapse. But it was Bill’s broken
humanity that helped so many people, not his sainthood—he was a man on a lifelong
journey of recovery, like so many people are, and you win some and you lose some.
The comfort for his followers and those in AA is that there are people who understand
the daily struggle with addiction, and that they weren’t alone in the journey, that they
could rely on a fellow traveler to help them get through our own dark times and
struggles. But it isn’t just alcoholics that have this gift of being able to share their
journeys—there is a self-help group for everything from grief to overeating, to coming
out, to addiction, to shopping, and the reason is because there really is great comfort
in knowing that you aren’t alone in this world, that others have gone through what you
have gone through, and somehow gotten to the other side.

That need for comfort, for an ear that understands what is being said, a touch that is
familiar and a voice that is hopeful, and yet realistic, that is what I think the prophet is
trying to offer the people of Israel in this passage. Comfort is being offered here in
Isaiah, in what is called Second Isaiah, because it is believed that the person who wrote
this part of the book of Isaiah was different from the one who wrote the first 39
chapters, mostly due to a perspective that seems to be situated decades after the
Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem. The first 39 chapters were all warnings about the
coming judgment of God by Israel’s enemies, the Assyrians, and then chapter 40 jumps
literally decades later to offer words of hope and comfort in the midst of the Babylonian
Exile, which happened when the Babylonians defeated the Assyrians. It’s a confusing
setup, I know, but just know this: these words are meant as a comfort to a people who
lives that were a mess, with Jerusalem in ruins, the Babylonians holding captive the
best and brightest of Israel in Babylon, and seemingly no way out of a difficult situation.
In the midst of all that, the writer says there is a comfort, that God recognizes that the
people have paid a heavy price for their sins, a double portion, really, and that God will
make a way home from Babylon to Jerusalem, to the home land. A highway, a pathway,
a road home, an easy road, no less, will be built by God’s own hands, and all will see
this path, this miracle of homecoming, and this will happen because God’s promises
endure, God’s words do not wither like the grass, but will eventually come about—
comfort is right around the corner, the comfort that comes with just being back home
again, in the place that gave them birth, the land of Israel.

And yet, I just want to point out how emotionally disconnected it must have felt to some
in those ancient days to have God offer this kind of comfort to them. I mean, God
seems to be offering this way home, this promise of being a gentle shepherd, but does
God really understand what it mean to be one of the sheep, always dependent on the
whims of kings, empires, and even God? What does this God really know of the
suffering of God’s own people, if you think about it? It’s fine to say that God knows
everything, but can God really know what it means to be human, to be enslaved, to be
a sheep, not knowing whether the human or divine shepherd is going to send you to
the slaughter house or to the safety of the green fields? It’s like the moment when a
friend tries to sympathize with you, offering you comfort that’s a little too intimate, but,
really, they don’t know what it means to go through a divorce, or the loss of a child, or
job, or home, or even the loss of loved one, not yet anyway, because they simply haven’
t experienced it themselves? It may be well meaning, but they don’t really understand,
do they? Not like someone who has been there before, someone who can offer you the
comfort of their experience, their story, like the stories of those in AA when go to their
meetings. I mean, can God really know what I am going through, or what you are going
through, if God has never really walked in our shoes? Now, I know that some will say,
“well, God can do anything and experience anything,” and I suppose that’s true, but
that seems like the kind of knowledge that isn’t personal, isn’t rooted in experience—
sure, God gets it in the divine mind, in theory, so to speak, but can God really
understand our journeys if God has never walked in our shoes, never experienced our
broken heart, our deep grief, our shattered dreams, our deep disappointment in the
people we love?

This year’s theme for Advent is all about the watching and waiting for God in our lives,
watching and waiting for the Christ child to be born amongst us on Christmas Eve, and
this Sunday’s Advent candle is recognizing that we are waiting for a God who can give
us REAL comfort in this world, a comfort born out of experience, not just theory, not just
some sympathy that is distant from our real world experience. And yet, the question
that was just asked, whether or not God can really know our pain, our hopelessness,
and even our real human joy—the question about whether or not this God really can
give us comfort, especially if this God has not gone through what we have gone
through, that question really does gets answered on Christmas Day. We actually do
get what we want on Christmas, and that gift is a fellow traveler, someone who really
does understand, completely understands, who knows what we have gone through—we
get this gift in the Christ child who is born on that day. Last week I talked about the
idea that God had already tried power, the use of power, with us, with humankind, and
out of that experiment, God had come to understand that this path hadn’t lead
anywhere positive, this attempt to heal this world by the use of sheer power—and what
is worse is that humankind somehow thought it got the green light to try to solve its own
problems through the sword, the gun, the bullet, and what we got was war after war. So
God went a different route, a route that would flesh out these words of comfort we find
in Isaiah, words that were meant to clear the highways and byways in our souls, the
rough places in our hearts, the wilderness found so often within us.

And the road God took was right through the human heart, in coming to us as one of us
in this Jesus of Nazareth. I wonder if God, at first, had originally simply planned to use
the road in Christ as a way of revealing God’s own self to us most fully, most openly,
and then, surprisingly, God ended up being surprised by the very experiment God had
begun, surprised by what God had learned about humanity, and the revelations that
came to divine mind by traveling in our shoes, our moccasins, so to speak. I think the
revelation went both ways—we learned a lot more about God through Christ, and God
learned a lot more about humanity because of the Christ. And what we got was a God
who knows us, who really loves us, and knows how difficult it can be to human, to love
and lose in this world, to struggle with the despair and yet, still be immersed in the
goodness of friends and family, and children, and this big beautiful, world, even a world
sometimes scarred by sin and shadow. I think this is a God who gets it, gets us, gets
us the dilemma we often find ourselves us in, and though God is still continually calling
upon us to be good to ourselves and to each other, this God now understands how
easily we can often fail. I think that is the reason why God is now so merciful with us,
because God gets us in ways that God never got us before, before that moment in a
manger thousands of years ago.

But walking with someone, walking beside them, immersing ourselves in their story,
implicating ourselves in the outcome of that story because of our love for them, that will
change you, much like it changed God. We know that truth because of people like Bill
W. and people we’ve shared our own stories with, our stories of pain and hope, joy and
sorrow. I think when God chose to hear our human story in Jesus the Christ, I think
God was trying to say something to us, to tell us something, and that was that it’s
important for us to take a chance on sharing the difficult things we’ve perhaps kept
hidden, those stories that might be useful and helpful for those who don’t think they can
recover from what we ourselves have recovered from, from what we have eventually
received resurrection. Now, don’t get me wrong—we often spend a lifetime coming out
of a grave that has been especially painful—as they say in recovery work, one is
always an alcoholic, but what matters is that one is a recovering alcoholic, that one is
working towards that wholeness, whether it be from alcohol, or whatever thing that has
kept you and me in our graves. The prophet Isaiah promises the people comfort, a
divine comfort, and yet, who knew that divine comfort would come through such human
means, though this Jesus of Nazareth? And if that is the case, if the case is that God
offers us comfort through the human, through Jesus, the Human One, maybe we need
to do what God does, which is to take the chance of sharing our stories with each
other, our stories of woe, our stories of wonder, our stories of hope? To comfort each
other the way that God has chosen to comfort us, by sharing ourselves with each other,
and giving each other strength for the journey because we know we too can get
through the wilderness and we know we can get to other side, because someone else
has done it before us. Amen.