Isaiah — 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.

a sermon on Isaiah 64:1-9 for the First Sunday of Advent
preached on November 27, 2011, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

The people of Israel knew what it was like for God to come down and meet them. By the time of the prophet Isaiah, God had intervened in their history many times, guiding them away from the danger of the Egyptians, through the waters of the sea, and onto dry land; shaking the foundations of their lives to give them the gift of the law to guide their life together; and stepping in to show them a new way when they faced the power of their enemies. God was the only god that they had known – “no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you,” as Isaiah put it.

But now something had happened, and God was not quite so present anymore. The people were in exile, longing to return home. Their land lay in ruins, torn apart by centuries of attacks from within and without. According to the prophet, the people had forgotten God and gone another way, becoming unclean like the filthiest, nastiest rags. Nothing was going right for them anymore, and things were just a complete mess.

So it was time for something new. It was time for the heavens to break open, for God to come down and clean up the mess and start things over again. It was time.

Our world seems to be very much like ancient Israel sometimes. Not only is that tiny stretch of holy land still the focus of great war and conflict in our day, we too wonder why God doesn’t seem to be as involved in things as God used to be. We too can look back and see marks of God’s presence in the past – in a less complicated, less busy world where it was easier to set aside the time we need for spiritual and religious things; in a seemingly stronger, more vibrant church where the pews were full and challenges absent; in a world that didn’t seem to have so many dangers and complications that strike at the core of our humanity; even in the little things of life and living where God’s face has emerged through the haze of our world over the years.

But we too face an uncertain and unknown day, a time mostly of our own making, a place where the presence of God feels distant. Our celebration of the birth of God’s son at Christmas has devolved into a competition for the best gifts and cheapest prices at the expense of the humanity of others and ourselves, as we have seen so clearly over the course of these past few days. The institutions of our society struggle more and more to be relevant to the new and different lives of people in our changing world. Our economy seems to be stuck in neutral for so many of us – and even jammed permanently into reverse for the least of these among us. And yet our indomitable American spirit makes us think that we can take care of ourselves and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps out of the mess we face. Nothing seems to be going right anymore, and things are just a complete mess.

It is time for something new. It is time for the heavens to break open, for God to come down and clean up the mess and start things over again. It’s time.

The prophet’s response to the great laments of his age wasn’t all that comforting. First he reminds the people of the fleeting nature of life: “We all fade like a leaf,” he proclaims. Then he suggests that everyone has given up on God and any chance of God’s intervention – and God has given up too: “There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.”

But he doesn’t leave it there. Isaiah says that God hasn’t completely given up, that God is still working on the people like a potter shaping her clay, gently but firmly reshaping the people into something new, just in time for the heavens to break open, for God to come down and clean up the mess and start things over again. It’s time.

We can stand to hear something like Isaiah’s words in these days. Like the fleeting leaves of the prophet, none of us will be around forever, and eventually things will be different because we’ll be out of the picture. Like the people of Israel, we too have often turned away from God and claimed that we can do it on our own. And yet God’s presence is still with us too, molding us and shaping us like clay in the hands of a master potter, correcting us where we have gone wrong, preparing us for the great and new thing ahead.

It is from this place where we begin our journey toward Christmas – not from the manic lines and crowds of the holiday shopping season, not from the bulging feast of our Thanksgiving tables, not from the crazy busyness that marks these days between Thanksgiving Day and December 25th, not in the songs that repeat the platitudes of the holidays over and over again, not in gifts or any things that too often carry the day.

No, my friends, we begin our journey toward Christmas with a longing for something real and whole and new, a heartfelt cry to God for things to change once and for all, not just a change in things for the better for one or two of us or the one percent or even the ninety-nine percent, but a new way of life for all of us, where the heavens break open and God comes down and cleans up the mess and starts things over again. My friends, it’s time.

This way of approaching this season is what it means to celebrate Advent, to make a space for this time in our lives and our hearts for the coming of Jesus into our world, to prepare the way for God’s new thing by putting aside the certainty that we can handle things on our own, to keep awake and be ready for the time when God’s presence will transform us and our world, to make sure that we are longing not just for a baby boy born two thousand years ago but also for the time when he will return in power and glory to make things whole once and for all.

And so it is time for us to do radical things in these days – small but radical things amidst our world. We light candles to show the promise of God’s light shining through the darkness. We sing strange hymns that talk about waiting and longing and hope and promise. We pray quietly and hopefully for the time when something new will break into our world. And we keep being as faithful as we can together, showing God’s claim upon us and our world in baptism as we do today with Eve and never forgetting to let our world know the reality of God’s love as best we can.

And so, my friends, it is time – time for us to set aside the trappings of the holidays in favor of preparing for something radically new, time for us to trust that God will not leave us to our own devices along the way, time for us to clear out what we must so that we can be as faithful as we are called to be, time for the heavens to break open, for God to come down and clean up the mess and start things over again. It’s time.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.

The Comfort We Need

It’s Time.