GETTING READY TO GO HOME

Isaiah 40:1-11

December 7, 2008 – Rev. Jerry Duggins

There’s a game we sometimes play. We put on a very sad, long face, hoping to arouse pity or compassion in a spouse, a parent or a friend. You have a cold and you‘d like someone to make you a cup of tea. There’s a very cool concert in Grand Rapids, but you’d like someone else to drive. Money’s a little tight and you’d like your lunch companion to pick up the tab. It’s generally a very innocent game and all the players know that this is not the end of the world. But sometimes we encounter a series of bad events in life and we get to playing the game for real, often unintentionally and unconsciously. And sometimes we fall into this when we hear certain biblical texts. How many of us, for example, heard these words from Isaiah, “Comfort, O comfort my people,” as though we were actually in need of comfort.

These words, granted even more emotive power, as we recall them from Handel’s Messiah, create a sense of peace in our hearts and minds from the many sorrows in life, both real and imagined. We hear them as a soothing and healing ointment for our deepest pain. But they are not about a free lunch when money is tight, a night away from the lonely apartment or a cold remedy administered by someone who loves you.

“Comfort, O comfort my people,” are words addressed to a people whose homeland is in ruins. At least this is what they remember, for they haven’t seen it in many years. Losers in the most recent political changes of the region, they were carried away in chains to serve their new masters, the Babylonians. They remember those glorious days when they would worship in that magnificent temple, a structure once so beautiful, but unknown to their children born in captivity. They live in homes not their own, doing work for the benefit of their oppressors. They’re not homeless, but away from their home, stripped of that sense of rootedness that made them feel like they belonged in this world. “Comfort, O comfort my people,” is addressed to a people that finds themselves strangers in a very strange land.

We, for the most part, are only playing a game, when we imagine that these words are for us, in our time, in our all too comfortable circumstances. Daniel Berrigan writes about these words:

To say that we are exiles, a despised minority, would be only an exercise in illusion. Far from being in a like plight, we are all too cozily enfranchised in our culture, at home in a Babylon become our native land. (p.100)

“At home in a Babylon become our native land.” It’s always a challenge to take a biblical text and apply it to a new context. Sometimes we are not careful enough to acknowledge the differences between us in our time and the original audience in another age. We need to hear these words as slaves, as people whose time is not their own and whose work does not belong to them. We need to hear them as minorities and outsiders estranged from our true homes. And this is precisely what we are not. We are citizens of the empire. We live in homes that belong to us, paid for with work we have chosen. We are not at the mercy of the culture, but rather its beneficiaries.

Or are we? In this Advent season, we are trying to focus our attention on God. What is God doing? What is God saying to us? Is it possible that these words: “Comfort, O comfort my people” challenge us to rethink our connection to the world, to the culture in which we live? Cynthia Jarvis puts it this way:

Honoring the repentant imperative of Advent, we might begin by naming those corporate and personal places of exile that find us dwelling at an inconceivable remove from God whose promises we once believed. Without the context of exile and punishment we may confuse this costly word of comfort with the sentiment of the season. (p.28)

Jarvis suggests that “with Isaiah we may offer a word of comfort that only exiles who know they are exiles can hear” (p.28).

This implies that we have a little work to do before we can hear these words of comfort and even more before we are ready to hear and acknowledge God’s coming. There are hills in our lives that will need to be leveled and valleys to be filled in, rough places to smooth over and crooked paths straightened. For we scarcely recognize most days how far from our true home we are. We do not even know that we are exiles. We have adopted a faith that is comfortable with empire, that is “at home in Babylon.”

Advent is a time that challenges us to consider where we are making compromises. Richard Ward suggests that we have become so comfortable in life that we scarcely realize that we have stripped “the God of Israel and of Jesus Christ” of all power and replaced “God with the “other gods” that reign in our world. “Consumerism,” he writes, “demands more of our resources and lust for oil and mobility threatens our environment. The conduct of war robs us of precious lives and international respect. Religious zealotry pits one image of God against another, leaving the human community fractured and cynical” (p.31). We have much to answer for in our accommodation to those “other gods.”

“Comfort, O comfort my people” are not words for those who have made a home for themselves in exile. They are not words for those getting along just fine in life. They are words for the poor who can’t fathom how they came to live in such desperate circumstances. They are for the hungry who lack the means to provide their next meal. They are words for the disenfranchised, the disinherited, and the downtrodden. They are for those who know that they are in exile, for those who know that this is not their home.

For these people they are words of comfort, but for those who live in comfort, they become words of challenge. For in our comfort, we have settled for something less than fair. We have settled for an approximation of justice that is still unjust. We have settled for making our lives easier and in the process made the world more uncomfortable for others. We have settled for a house, a two-car garage, a big screen TV and a host of other comforts, and failed to equip ourselves with the things that make for a home. We have in many ways mistaken a house for a home.

Advent invites us to return to our true home. It provides us with the time we need to get ready for that trip. Getting ready means recalling those times and places when we first encountered God. It means learning to recognize the sacred in our lives all over again. It means being reintroduced to the faith that expects God to come anew.

Getting ready entails repentance, confessing those times when we have tried to replace God with other more transient comforts. Getting ready means recalling those values of the kingdom that initiated hope in our hearts. It means rethinking the justice we have settled for, reconsidering the comforts we have received at the expense of others. It means a rededication to ministries of compassion. Getting ready to go home means all of these things but mainly it means getting reconnected to the God who called us into new life and whose love and breath sustain us in this world.

It means these things individually and corporately. According to Ward, Advent “is also a time for that community to find its own voice, overcome its objections, and speak words of comfort and assurance to anyone who feels separated or abandoned by God, that God will arrive and will come in gentle power” (p.31). One is reminded of the image at the close of our reading today where God comes in might and yet holds the little lambs with gentle arms.

It seems perfectly natural that we would want to give up on the world and settle for getting out of it whatever we can for ourselves, but this is not the way it is to be for those who find their home in God. According to Hanson in the Interpretation commentary, “…Isaiah presents the vision of divine purpose not as an avenue of escape from the nitty-gritty of the world but as an invitation to join in the restoration of that world to a realm of universal justice and shalom” (p.7).

In this sense, we cannot travel home by car, bus, train or plane. Home is not a place we go to, but a condition we are invited to rest in. Our home is in fact coming to us and it will transform this strange land into something new. Getting ready for home involves opening ourselves to change, letting go of self-reliance, placing our hope in Christ, and responding to God’s call to partnership in restoring the world to a place of justice and shalom.

In gathering around this Lord’s table, we are coming home. We gather not as a disconnected group of individuals but as the church, as the body of Christ, as a family united through the love of Christ Jesus. Every time we share in this meal, we declare to one another and to the world that God is coming, is indeed already present.

As these words from Isaiah challenge us to become God’s agents of comfort, so too this sacrament teaches us to identify with those truly in need. Both Isaiah and communion invite us to “get up on a high mountain” and deliver “good tidings.”

It is Advent, a time to get ready for the coming of God, a time to return to the roots of our faith, a time to let go of idols, to reform our vision, and to get back on the path toward our true home in Christ. There is comfort and challenge in this season. It is not a time to play games or foster illusions. Where there is need for comfort, there is certainly plenty to be had. But in the midst of life’s ease, there are challenges not to be ignored. So whether comfortable or afflicted, there are good tidings for all. We’re going home. The time to get ready is now. Amen.

Isaiah: Spirit of Courage, Gift of Tears. Berrigan, Daniel. Fortress Press: Minneapolis MN, 1996.

Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Isaiah 40-66. Hanson, Paul D. John Knox Press: Louisville, KY, 1995.

“Isaiah 40:1-11, Pastoral Perspective” by Cynthia Jarvis. In Feasting on the Word, Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year B, vol. 1 Advent through Transfiguration. Edited by Bartlett, David and Taylor, Barbara Brown. Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville KY, 2008.

“Isaiah 40:1-11, Homiletical Perspective” by Richard F. Ward. In Feasting on the Word, Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year B, vol. 1 Advent through Transfiguration. Edited by Bartlett, David and Taylor, Barbara Brown. Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville KY, 2008.