A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, December 7, 2008
Isaiah 40:1-11
I realized yesterday that my sermon title “Christmas Comfort” sounds like a recipe you might find on bartender.com. That’s not what’s been on my mind or heart this past week. It’s been a week filled with the church family – Wayne L’s death and funeral; Diane O’s sudden critical illness; Ruth T’s gentle tying together of loose ends as she anticipates the end of her earthly life. Times like these place high demands on your pastors, but more importantly it’s what life is like for us together in the church. We all draw strength from God and we share it with each other.
Honestly, I haven’t had enough time to prepare my message for this morning, but I’ve been where I could make the greater difference. Still, all week long I’ve been asking myself the Advent/Christmas question: do God’s promises ring true when we hold them next to the powerful, often deeply painful experiences of our lives?
We know Christmas preparations are not inherently joyous and light-hearted. Some years we can sing “Jingle Bells” and “Joy to the World” with our whole hearts, and others years we can barely whisper our faltering prayers as we long for December 25th to pass by without dumping any more heartache on us.
For many, Christmas preparations bring a deep sense of yearning and remind you how much you wish you could laugh and sing and come near to the Christ child instead feeling empty and lonely and lost.
Most of these feelings come from loss – the death of a loved one, the end of an important relationship; the loss of meaningful work or of physical health. Certainly, our hearts go out to the strangers who are hit by such losses, but we’re stunned when we feel it up close.
Also, some of our emotions in this season come when our fantasy of how Christmas is supposed to feel conflicts with the realities of the world in which we live. Christmas causes pain when the way things really are, clashes with the way we believe God should make them.
Some of the struggle of the season, especially for moms I’d guess, begins with the question: “How did I get stuck being in charge of everyone else’s happiness?” “Why am I feeling down when everyone is celebrating?” In Erma Bombeck’s words: “If life is just a bowl of cherries, what am I doing in the pits?”
We know we can’t ignore or explain away the pain and sorrow of Christmas. Still, let’s never fall to the temptation of measuring our lives by the easy times. It’s in the hard times that we know what matters most. Life is hard. That’s always been true.
Six Hundred years before the birth of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah spoke God’s familiar and beloved words: “Comfort, comfort my people.” God was addressing the Children of Israel, returning to Jerusalem from their time of exile in Babylon; they saw their holy city still in shambles and their old ways lost forever. “Comfort, O comfort my people” says our God.
More than anything the prophet reminds us we must learn to wait. Everything happens in God’s own time: the end of the captivity in Babylon, the coming of Messiah, the healing of hearts. T. S. Eliot spoke about the necessity of this kind of patient waiting through the time he called the “darkness of God”:
I said to my soul, be still and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God…
I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope
For hope would be the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing.
[T. S. Eliot, “East Coker” from Four Quartets, pub. 1944]
When you can’t feel any Christmas comfort take a deep breath and wait, knowing that God keeps promises.
Then, we need to accept the reality of where we are. When you’re in the wilderness there’s no benefit in pretending it’s the Promised Land. Remember the wisdom of Emily Dickinson who said: “Where thou art – that – is Home.”
We may become very impatient with ourselves. We find it hard to live in the present and to accept what is true in our lives. We’re sorely tempted to live in the past with its golden glow, or live in the future with the anxieties that accompany every forward glance.
Isaiah spoke God’s word, and God spoke again in the birth of Jesus. This incarnation didn’t come suddenly without warning. Others had prepared the way, and in the fullness of time God came to be with us in every moment of our lives – comfort to those who weep and wander; companionship with those who rejoice and shout.
As people of faith we’re called to remember and proclaim: when life places us in the vise, when the idyllic dreams are crushed, God’s word is constant: “Comfort, O comfort my people” says our God.
But there’s more. Read these words with a different inflection and they become God’s commandment: COMFORT – MY – PEOPLE! We’re to be the servants of God who raise up the valleys, straighten the crooked roads, and make the rough places plane, so the Lord God can enter in.
And we’re called to be comforters in God’s name. This is the other side of the promise. This is the task of our ministry, yours and mine. John Henry Jowett (1864-1923) said a century ago: “God does not comfort us to make us comfortable, but to make us comforters.”
Every one of us can choose how to live with our losses. We’ve survived thus far by the grace of God and the loving kindness of people who’ve stuck by us. We can turn this blessing around and offer it back.
The needs of the world are overwhelming. So let’s consider a more modest proposal. Rather than agonizing over the suffering of the whole world, might you focus on just one other person? Isn’t there someone to whom you can bring God’s comfort in this holy season?
Isn’t there someone you can lead gently, you can touch kindly, someone to whom you can minister with hope and with comfort? Isn’t there a lonely neighbor who might come to your home for dinner? Isn’t there a friend at work who’s carrying an especially heavy load who would welcome an invitation to worship with you?
But, you say you’re one who needs to be comforted?
Ah, that’s the miracle of it all. When you can set aside your own pain long enough to minister to another, you both can be healed. Experience suggests that we get comfort in return when we try to give it.
On Thursday, after Wayne’s funeral, I met three of you who had attended even knowing how fresh your own grief is from the death of your beloved husband or wife. And you came to show your love for Wayne and your encouragement to Pat, and to be a part of the community. And each of you said it was hard but each time it gets a little easier. That’s how we heal and this is how the community of Christ lives together.
In the words of poet Lawrence Housman:
How shall we love thee, holy, hidden being,
If we love not the world thou hast made?
O give us neighbor love for better seeing
Thy Word made flesh and in the manger laid.
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done.(Father Eternal, 1919 – Housman gave over the copyright to the newly-formed League of Nations) When Christmas causes pain, God is present with a promise and a commandment: “Comfort, comfort my people, says our God; I will comfort you so you may be a comfort to others.”