comfort — Andy James

The Marks of Divine Comfort

February 8, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 40:21-31
preached on February 8, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

When someone you know and love is hurting, how do you show them comfort? Do you listen carefully to their story of pain and seek to do something to respond directly, assuring them that you care for them very personally and won’t leave them until you have to? Or do you try to explain the technicalities of it all, maybe how an injury or illness triggers a response from the nervous system or how the complexity of the world has set them up for failure, leaving them with no way out but to suffer? I for one hope you aim for the former approach!

Today’s reading from the prophet Isaiah, though, takes something closer to the latter approach. In trying to bring comfort to the exiles of Judah, the prophet sets out to give them a sense of the larger picture and assure them that a mighty and distant God is yet present with them in strange and wonderful ways. The prophet starts out with some rhetorical questions that hardly seem like they might be able to bring comfort and hope.

Have you not known? Have you not heard?

These provocative questions are designed to trigger memory of the past and reconnect the people to what they somewhere deep down know and have heard about God’s presence with them, but they are also painful reminders of the people’s forgetfulness and misunderstanding that stand at the center of their pain and sorrow.

Then the prophet turns to a description of this God that they have known and have heard but yet is very different from what many of us might expect to bring comfort. The God who comforts here is not so much a personal presence amidst pain but rather a powerful, sovereign being who acts with wonder and majesty. As commentator Walter Brueggemann puts it,

The picture of God proposed here is of a God who sits atop the vault of heaven, that is, on top of the earth, in regal splendor, so high and lifted up, so elevated and exalted, that the human inhabitants of the earth are seen only at a distance, as small as insects. (Texts for Preaching Year B)

In our day and age, this seems like a strange way to bring comfort!

Yet the prophet insists that a proper remembrance of the majesty and otherness of this God will bring greater comfort than we could ever imagine. The marks of divine comfort described here are quite different from any of our human comfort, but they are no less real. The prophet catalogs them at great length in these eleven verses. The God who comforts sits above the circle of the earth and stretches out the heavens like a curtain, spreading them like a tent to live in and giving space for God’s people to call home. The God who comforts brings princes to naught and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing, proving that the welfare of all the people matters far more than the wealth of a few. The God who comforts intervenes when life tries to take root in other soils, reminding us that there is no life apart from this great divine presence. The God who comforts knows all of the host of heaven and earth by name and recognizes when even one of them goes missing, proving that even one of such greatness can care deeply about each and every one of us. And the God who comforts does not faint or grow weary and in fact gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless, not holding on to this majesty but seeking to share it for the good of all creation.

In our culture where direct and personal comfort is the norm and preference, imagining that the presence of such a God can bring us comfort is not always easy. I confess that I myself am dismissive of those who seek to comfort others with platitudes describing how God is present amidst pain and suffering, as I find little or no comfort when someone tells me in a time of distress that “God is in control” or that “God has a plan for you in this.” In the everyday struggles of our lives—the pain of everyday illness, the sorrow of loss in our lives, even the uncertainty of most change that we experience as our lives shift and move—we look far less for reminders of God’s great power and majesty in the grand scheme of things and far more for assurance of God’s presence with us in our time of trial.

But when the foundation of life is shaken as it had been for these exiles, reminders of God’s sovereignty and majesty would make a lot more sense, especially considering how much they seemed to have forgotten about God’s presence with them. It seems like that was the real problem here—the people had forgotten so much about God and God’s goodness, not just the ways that God brought them comfort in difficult times but the ways that God’s presence defined the world from beginning to end and brought transformation to every corner of life. They needed the prophet to remind them that God is everlasting, that God’s mind is unsearchable and yet caring, that amidst God’s complete and total otherness God created us and all things and remains ever watchful, that God’s creation did not end in the past but that God’s transformation of creation continues even now.

So what does this kind of word bring to our lives and our world today? What are we to hear and understand in the prophet’s reminders to the returning exiles? What significance can we attach to these things in our world that does not find value in the marks of divine comfort?

First, these words of Isaiah remind us that we must be people who remember. We are called to remember the gifts of God in our lives and in our world. We must remember how God’s presence matters not just for our individual lives or for our church or community or country, but for the whole world. And we must remember how we are divinely insignificant and yet deeply loved by God, for we inhabitants of the earth are like grasshoppers even as we are known and loved by name.

Beyond all this, though, Isaiah’s words can remind us of God’s great power to transform our lives and our world. God is not afraid to disrupt the order of things as it is now so as to make it better for all creation. God’s concern is far less with preserving the here and now and far more with opening up new possibilities for the powerless and hopeless of the world. And God’s power will not be used to prop up the powers and principalities that exploit this world but will instead displace them and strengthen the powerless to lead us to a new way.

And finally, Isaiah’s words help us to understand the myriad ways that God is beyond our understanding. This strange attention of an all-powerful God to those who are powerless just doesn’t make sense to our human minds. The ways that God stands so high above everything and yet remains very much present with us aren’t easy for our minds to fathom. And the incomparability of God and our experience of God to so much of our human experience makes it difficult if not impossible to do anything more than simply stand in awe.

So in the midst of such human pain and despair, the marks of divine comfort are exactly these strange and wonderful things: the memory of God’s presence and being, the power of God’s transformation, and the wonder of a God who is beyond our human understanding. From these marks of comfort, we are assured that those who wait on this God “shall renew their strength,” “mount up with wings like eagles,” “run and not be weary,” and “walk and not faint.”

These promises mean all the more in our world where forgetfulness of God’s presence is the norm, where nothing seems to really change for the better, and where human understanding seems like everything. Yet these marks of divine comfort show us that these are marks of the world that will be set aside, for God comes to us beyond our expectations and transforms us in ways that we could never imagine, opening us to a new way of thinking and believing and living that brings us a different and yet greater comfort than we could ever understand.

So may God show us these strange and wonderful marks of comfort so that we might know this comfort in our lives and our world, share it with those who need it even more than we do, and join in the transformation and new life that come from this God here and now and always. Thanks be to God! Amen.

The Rock of Our Salvation

August 24, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 51:1-6
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on August 24, 2014

The exile had come to an end, and the people of Judah were finally returning home. It had been a long forty years since a substantial group had been forced to leave Jerusalem and go to Babylon, and even though that first generation of exiles had largely died, the continuing generations did not let go of the hope of returning home that had been shared with them. But what would they find there? They knew that Jerusalem had already been largely destroyed during the multiyear siege that predated their forced departure, and they had to suspect that things had been left to decay even further, that the symbols of their culture and faith, especially the temple, would have been completely destroyed.

So as they made their way home, the prophet Isaiah knew that they needed some words of encouragement. He started out by calling out to get their attention. There was so much going on around them, so many things to distract them, so many things to keep them from being able to catch this new word, so much that would make it easy to ignore what he had to say, yet they so needed to hear him. Once he had gotten their attention, he pointed them to the past, offering reminders of how they had made it through all of the struggles that they had faced along the way in hopes that they would be inspired amidst the new challenges ahead.

Look to the rock from which you were hewn,
and to the quarry from which you were dug.

Isaiah made it clear that all the stories of the past still mattered. Everything that would emerge from this time of transition and change would be rooted in what they knew very well, in God’s continuing faithfulness from generation to generation. The stones of their life together might be cut and chiseled and shaped in new ways, but they wouldn’t miss that it was all from the same rock.

The prophet continued by directly invoking the story of Abraham and Sarah. Just as God’s faithfulness broke through the bleak desperation of their lives in giving them a son after years of barrenness, so God would make a new way for them as they returned from exile. They too could count on God for amazing faithfulness, to comfort Zion amidst continuing distress and change, to transform the wilderness and desert into the lush beauty of Eden, and to show them a way of joy, gladness, and thanksgiving for the journey home.

In our world these days, we too need the prophet to remind us of the rock from which we are hewn. We certainly may not have all the burdens of the returning exiles, but there is plenty that weighs on our hearts in these days. Our world is filled with much strife and sorrow: war in too many places, conflict that simmers and so easily boils over, the devastation of infection attacking people and places in our world that already face incredible struggle, people who face persecution or death because of their confession or the color of their skin. All the pain and hurt is enough to make you want to move as far away from it all as possible. But then we still face the grief that emerges so close to home on days like today, when we mourn the death of one of our own and carry all the other concerns that weigh on our hearts and minds each and every day. There is so much to distract us from the source of all things, from “the rock from which [we] were hewn,” from the one who bore us into this life and who journeys with us every step of the way.

So when the prophet invites the exiles of Judah to listen, he might just be speaking to us too. He might just be offering us a memory of God’s promises that we have experienced in our own lives. He might just be giving us a reminder of God’s presence amidst all that weights on our hearts. He might be showing us a way of comfort amidst all the pain of our lives. And he might just be giving us hope for new life when we find ourselves in our own desert places, places where joy and gladness can blossom abundantly and thanksgiving and rejoicing will spring forth.

The prophet might have stopped there, thinking that comfort would be enough to get the returning exiles through their first days back home. But the comfort and hope we have in God is not the end of the story—there is more still ahead. These promises, this comfort, this new life—all these things are not just for self-preservation but rather are given so that they may be shared. As much as the returning exiles were desperately desiring the fullness of God’s hope for themselves, they also needed to share it with others. All their actions in rebuilding the city, in reshaping their life together, in restoring God’s promises in their midst, would help demonstrate God’s salvation and God’s hope to others in the world who needed to see these things for themselves.

Just as the exiles had waited so patiently and hopefully for God’s new life to emerge in their midst, so the prophet said that even “the coastlands wait” for this good news and that God’s salvation will reach to every shore. All the new things ahead would not just be for the benefit of the returning exiles—they would be for the blessing of all creation. These new things would replace the old in a dramatic transformation:

the heavens will vanish like smoke,
the earth will wear out like a garment,
and those who live on it will die like gnats.

But this was not the end but rather a beginning, the beginning of a world where God’s “salvation will be forever,” where the old things, as good as they might have been, will be replaced with something far greater.

Just as the prophet’s words of comfort and confidence speak to both the exiles and us, his words of challenge call to us as well. Amidst all that weighs us down, amidst all that distracts us from God’s new thing, amidst all that keeps us focused only on ourselves as we seek God’s comfort in our lives and our world, we too are called to bear God’s new life into the world. We are called to share the teaching and justice of God with all people and to work to make it real here and now. The faithfulness of God that sustains us also calls us to share that faithfulness with others, to share our confidence that God’s salvation and new life will prevail amidst everything that changes, to make God’s deliverance clear here and now and forever.

So amidst all the things that weigh us down in these days, with death and sadness and pain near and far, with all creation crying out for a new way, God’s promise of comfort and new life resounds loud and clear, inviting us to make these things real not just for ourselves but for all people, reminding us to return to the source of our being and find the hope of new life.

So amidst all the challenge of these days, amidst the pain and hurt and sorrow of our lives, amidst the war and strife of our world, may we return to our roots, look back to that rock from which we are hewn, find our comfort in God’s promises, and share this hope of new life with all the world each and every day. And when we struggle to hear and live amidst all the noise around us, may the rock of our salvation, the comfort that comes from God alone, and the promise of new life in Jesus Christ our Lord, bring us back to our faithful God, who promises to bring us comfort and peace and to make all things new. Thanks be to God. Amen.

We Need a Shepherd

April 21, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Psalm 23
preached on April 21, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Shepherd me, O God,
beyond my wants,
beyond my fears,
from death into life.

—Psalm 23, paraphrased Marty Haugen

These are days when we need a shepherd. It might be a bit strange for us to need a shepherd when there are no sheep nearby, when the last pastureland in Queens shut down before many of us were even born, but the last week made me long for someone to be present with us through difficult times.

This past week has been one of the toughest in recent memory. If we look back, it had plenty of difficult history, as it already held anniversaries of the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building and the Columbine massacre, to name just two. But the new horrors of this past week were almost too much to bear. First, the bombing at the Boston Marathon killed three people long before their time and injured hundreds of others, then the ensuing investigation and manhunt for the perpetrators consumed the nation for much of the week and culminated in an intense 24-hour search for the two bombers that left two more dead and shut down an entire city for a day.

But that wasn’t all that shocked us this past week. In Iraq, a wave of bombings continued across the nation as local elections were held yesterday, and some 33 people were killed by bombs on Monday alone. An earthquake on Friday in the Szechuan region of China left over 150 dead and thousands injured. Closer to home, the city of Chicago witnessed its 100th homicide of the year on Thursday. Two letters laced with poison were mailed to the president and a U.S. Senator. Fifteen people were killed and hundreds injured in a terrible explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas. And somehow our United States Senate came up four votes short of passing a bill favored by nearly ninety percent of the American people to finally require background checks on most gun purchases.

The violence and strife around us is just too much to bear, and that’s without considering all the other stuff that is going on with our friends and families and neighbors, all the unemployment, the sickness, the cancer, the addiction, the depression… It’s all just too much to bear. There’s just not much we can say. These are days when we need a shepherd.

It’s not even that we just want a shepherd—we actually need one. What are we supposed to do with all these things? We are used to dealing with grief in our lives—in fact, I think we have gotten pretty good at it over the years. Yet it seems that nowadays we are constantly bombarded with news of deep pain and hurt: so many deaths, so much violence, wars and strife escalating around the world, so many things that show us the deep brokenness in our midst, so much that reminds us that we are not the people God wants us to be. And the more we learn of all this, the less we know what to do with it. We need something, someone to show us the way. These are days when we need a shepherd.

Our psalm from the Lectionary today reminds us of the wonderful shepherd we have before us. These incredibly familiar words are often the first on our lips in times of loss, the first attempts at comfort when we face confusion and pain and hurt, the first thing that comes to mind during a week like this. Psalm 23 is so often recited at funerals or offered in times of deep loss, seemingly giving us comfort and consolation for days yet to come, in a world separate from our own, but if we read more closely we might just see that this is a shepherd for the here and now, a God who brings us what we need and frees us from our want not just in the future but even more in the present. God shows us the way to a new wholeness and peace in the midst of the uncertainty and confusion of our world. God invites us to lie down in green pastures and find rest. God leads us beside still waters to bring calm to our busy days and restore our souls. God walks with us and shows us how to journey in the pathways of new life. God guides us and directs us and comforts us even in the darkest valley, and there is nothing that we should fear—no terrorist who can do us harm, no earthquake that can shake us to the core, no threat that can separate us from God’s deep and real and present love.

And so the psalm speaks incredible words of comfort and hope just when we need a shepherd. t shows us the way to emerge from the darkness that surrounds us in days like these. It helps us find our way into new life when there seems to be nothing but death around us. And it helps us to recognize God’s presence among us, shepherding us “beyond [our] wants, beyond [our] fears, from death into life.”

But in these days when we need a shepherd, Psalm 23 also tells us that there is more to this shepherd’s work than just bringing us comfort right where we are. This shepherd might bring us comfort in a surprising and unusual place: at a table prepared in the presence of our enemies. This table is not just for our comfort— it is for our growth, for our real peace, for our honest engagement with the places where we fall short, for our hope of new relationship with those who seem to be set against us. Our comfort and peace amidst strife, then, do not come at the expense of the life of others but rather as “a banquet of love in the face of hatred” (Marty Haugen). Only then, after this strange and incredible feast, are we anointed as God’s own with oil that overflows, bringing us grace, mercy, and love beyond our wildest dreams.

And finally this comfort becomes all the more real as “goodness and mercy… follow [us]” throughout life. Strangely, they do not come before us but rather follow after us, maybe partly because we are as responsible as anyone else for bringing them into being in our world, but maybe also because God gives us these things in ways beyond our understanding, in glimpses that are clearer when we look back upon our most difficult days. And this goodness and mercy then sustain us as we find a new home in the house of the Lord for the fullness of our lives and beyond.

These familiar words of Psalm 23 are perfect for days like these when we need a shepherd, for these weeks when our hearts seem so heavy that they cannot bear anything more, for these moments when we can do nothing more than turn to God and offer a cry for help. And so in these Easter days when the resurrection still seems so far away, in these moments when it seems nearly impossible to believe that Jesus is alive and at work in our world, may God shepherd us through the darkness, pain, and sorrow of our world, beyond the want and fear and despair of difficult days and guide all of us into new life. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

The Comfort We Need

December 4, 2011 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 40:1-11 for the Second Sunday of Advent
preached on December 4, 2011, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There have been a lot of times lately when I’ve just wanted something comforting in my life. I’ve wanted one of those good home-cooked meals like only my parents can prepare – though I’ve found that some barbecue and some Thai food I can get here in New York get pretty close sometimes! I’ve wanted a good conversation with one of those close friends who can listen and understand all the things that are swirling around in life and make things seem to swirl a little less. I’ve wanted to listen to some beautiful music of the Advent season that somehow makes these days feel complete for me.

Thankfully I’ve gotten a taste of these and other comforting things lately, so I’ve gotten some of the comfort that I want, but I have to wonder if it is the comfort that I really need. I’m sure that my doctor for one won’t think particularly highly of the comfort food I’ve eaten lately when I visit him tomorrow. I know I’ve driven some of my friends a bit crazy over the years in seeking out their presence in the midst of my life. And even my carefully-chosen Advent music isn’t always endearing to those who find great comfort in Christmas carols! So it is that all this comfort I want may not be the comfort I need.

Our reading from the prophet Isaiah this morning deals in this comfort that we need:

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

There’s no need to worry – God is finally on the scene.

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.

Any punishment the people might have deserved is now over and done with. It’s time to move on.

These words of comfort come out of strange silence – for some forty years, the people of Judah had been suffering in exile in Babylon, wondering when God was going to intervene in their pain and struggle and bring them back home.

So the prophet promises dramatic construction in the wilderness to get back to Jerusalem:

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.

This comfort, you see, is not just the promise of stability and a return to something seen before. Comfort does not come in fulfilling the people’s wants and desires to turn back the clock. For the prophet, comfort comes in changing things once and for all, in transforming the world now and always. This is the great promise of what God is doing, the prophet says, for

Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

This glory is not in the restoration of an old way for one or two people – it comes through a new way of life in the face of a world uprooted and torn apart, through a reconstructed land that pulls together people across all boundaries, through a changed world that shows the glory of God in every place.

In our world filled with much change and uncertainty, we really do need and want comfort and transformation, and probably something more than just a favorite meal, the companionship of a friend, or some beloved music. While our struggles are nowhere near the difficulties faced by the exiles of Judah who were Isaiah’s first audience, it sure feels like it sometimes: the ways of life that we once knew seem to be far off and distant; our nation needs a new and better way of life in our politics, our finances, our economy, and nearly everything else too; and our world faces great danger in the abuse and misuse of its many resources as it needs to show and see more signs of God’s glory every day.

But just like in my own life, the comfort we need in these days isn’t always the comfort we want. Sometimes we think we simply need to turn the clock back to a previous time and place to make things different, but we easily forget that the past had more than its fair share of problems, too. Sometimes we try to fix the struggles of our politics and nation by blaming them on someone else, but the reality is that we ourselves – each and every one of us – are just as responsible as anyone for the mess we face today, and only an honest assessment of our own complicity in our pain and struggle can bring us a different path for the days ahead. And sometimes we mix up God’s glory and our own glory, suggesting that God’s blessing upon America or this church or our privilege and status in life is the great expression of God’s presence in our world, when in reality God’s glory defies all these boundaries and expectations and brightens the darkness of every time and place with justice and life.

So amidst the comfort that we want, maybe we need to seek the comfort we need more like what Isaiah describes – an honest, heartfelt, compassionate, tender expression of love and support combined with real and true steps toward the new way of life that God envisions for us.

I think it’s quite appropriate that we hear this text in these days, for Advent is the time when we remember that God sends us the comfort that we need. God’s comfort for our world comes not with the end of waiting but in the midst of it, not with a powerful and immediate transformation of things but with patience and deliberation and hope for God’s return to our midst, not with blinding bursts of light in the darkness but in the great simplicity of one or two candles shining boldly in the night, not with a giant feast spread across many tables but with a small taste of the kingdom in a little portion of bread and grape juice shared at one table, not with a king sent in royal garb to rule and reign with great power but with a baby born Prince of Peace to show tenderness, mercy, and love.

So may this Advent be filled not so much with the comfort we want but the comfort that we need as God steps in to change things, as we take our own steps along the path toward God’s incredible new thing is transforming our world, as we look for the glory of the Lord being revealed in our midst so that when the Great Comforter comes we might be ready to embrace his presence and live in his love for others and ourselves each and every day.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.