Necessity of Comfort

These are the texts and sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent.

Isaiah 40:1-11
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.


Mark 1:1-8
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight” ’,
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’





How do we hold in fruitful tension the prophecy of Isaiah in chapter 40 and the description of John the Baptist in Mark 1? Here we are in the season of Advent, a holy time that is hard to perceive when all around we are surrounded by:
• Santas and red-nosed reindeer,
• snowmen and mistletoe
• and every recording artist who ever had a record deal singing the same dozen songs about the baby in Bethlehem.
And the peace of the Savior, the coming of the King seems further away than ever. As much as we love Christmas carols and the warm sentimentality of homecomings and the delight on the faces of little children experiencing the magic of the season, the Bible refuses to let us drown in a sea of goo. John the Baptist in his camel skin clothing with his command for repentance doesn’t seem to fare well when you put him next to Burl Ives singing Have a Holly Jolly Christmas. There is safety in the sentimentality. It is all about us and our families, where we all are safe and secure and comforted.

Isn’t that what Isaiah is talking about? 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. (Isaiah 40:1-2) Isaiah here is prophesying to a people that were suffering the pain of exile and oppression. These were the descendents of the original Exodus people that had been taken over and dispersed by the Babylonian Empire as a punishment for falling away from God. They needed to hear the prophecy that there would be an end to their suffering and that the Messiah would come. And we need to hear those words of comfort as well. We live in a world that is characterized by pain and suffering, transition and loss. There are many for whom this holiday season will be one of suffering, one of tortured memories of loved ones who have died, family members that are far away, lives that have been ripped apart by addiction, violence and man’s inhumanity to man. So this word of comfort from Isaiah is a necessary one. It is vital that we remember and tell the world around us that there is comfort and hope, grace and peace. Hear again the final words of Isaiah in this section:
"He will feed His flock like a shepherd;
He will gather the lambs in His arms;
He will carry them in His bosom;
He will gently lead the mother sheep."
God is among us to care for those who are most vulnerable, most in need of care. Part of our responsibility as His church is to be his hands and feet in the world, offering that comfort and protection to those who need it the most. It seems as if the very things that make this holiday season so sweet for some are the very things that rub salt into the wounds of those who hurt and mourn. Before we can hear the words of John the Baptist, we must hear and know the prophecy of Isaiah. There is comfort and protection and hope in the arms of God who above all is Love Incarnate. When it seems that all hope is gone, Isaiah reminds us that hope is still possible. It affirms that grace is still possible.

It is no accident that the opening words of Mark’s Gospel are from Isaiah’s prophecy. The prophecy was fulfilled in the coming of Jesus and it was John the Baptist’s vocation to prepare the way. That’s what this season of Advent is all about, getting ready. And how do we get ready for the coming of Jesus? John the Baptist has it in a word. Repent. But hear the echo from the original text the way Mark intended it. This is a voice crying out in the wilderness with an urgency that is missing in many of our English translations and is missing in our piecemeal, daily devotional way of reading the Bible.

When you separate the Scripture down into 365 easily understood passages, something is lost. In the original Greek and in good English translations, the word euqws, immediately, occurs 30 times in the Gospel of Mark alone. After Jesus was baptized by John he immediately went into the wilderness. Immediately the disciples turned and left their nets, immediately Jesus healed or taught or said. Again and again Mark uses this word, immediately, immediately. The whole gospel has this sense of urgency. Mark’s writing is rough, unlike the educated letters of Paul or the precision of Luke the physician. So hear the urgency of John’s call to repent.

-What does it mean to repent? Literally, it means to turn away from some action or course of action and to turn your face to something new. Martin Luther, the great Reformation theologian said that sin is when humans turn in on themselves. Using that same image then, repentance would be turning away from ourselves and our sinfulness to look into the face of God. It means changing our perspective from looking at our lives form our own selfish perspective to looking at our lives from God’s eternal perspective.
-What does repentance look like in our everyday lives? What it looks like is that we make a conscious and real decision to stop doing something that we know is out of the will of God.
What we have to repent of is no mystery. Even now, I know the Holy Spirit is pricking each of your hearts, just as mine is being moved to give up that one thing that we cherish, that we put before God. Maybe it’s money, maybe it’s time, “Oh, I’ll get around to working for the church later, after I retire, after the kids are grown, after I go fishing, after 18 more holes of golf.” Maybe it’s not picking up the phone to check on a friend, to offer a word of encouragement. “I’m too tired, I worked hard all day.” Maybe it’s the spurt of self-righteous irritation we feel when things are done our way, or what we expected someone else to take care of doesn’t happen at all. So we gladly take on a martyr complex “Oh, I’ll do it myself, that’s the only way it will ever get done right anyway. Poor, pitiful me.” I don’t know about you but those are the top of the list of things I need to repent of.

-What does repentance do? It smoothes the hills and valleys of our lives, it removes the obstacles that block our paths. It prepares a way for the King’s arrival in our midst. Go back to Isaiah’s prophecy: Every valley will be lifted up, every mountain will be made low, the uneven ground will be made level and the rough places be made smooth. (40:4)

Our lives are to be pipelines of God’s love, glory and grace in the world. But often our un-confessed sin and self-centeredness block up that pipeline with the grunge of the filth of sin. Imagine a section of cPVC pipe, white and clean, ready to bring good drinking water into your home. But after years of neglect, that pipe can get dirty, stained with the minerals and chemicals that are part of the water supply. The beauty of cPVC and newer types of plumbing lines is that they are slick. Unlike cast iron, they easily shed any residue that might block the water supply and they don’t rust out and break. And that is what repentance does for us. It keeps the pipelines of our lives clear and clean, useful and life-giving. Repentance gets ‘me’ out of the way, so the Holy Spirit can run through my life, spilling over, abundantly blessing others.

Repentance is not a one-shot deal. It isn’t getting your heavenly ticket punched once and for all. Repentance is part of a life of discipline, discipling to be more like Christ. Repentance is about perspective and discipline but mostly repentance is about grace. All these things are impossible without God’s grace. Will Willimon says that you can think about turning away from sin and its consequences in two ways. You have to repent, yes but by God’s grace, we get to repent. For without grace, repentance and forgiveness wouldn’t even be a possibility.

Grace is fully an act of God. That’s the beauty and the purpose of prophets – whether it’s Isaiah prophesying comfort to an embattled people or John the Baptist offering the opposite of comfort. John the Baptist issues a warning, a wake-up call to announce the reality of grace, the reality of God who is continually making all things new. Isaiah is reaching for a far-off day when comfort will come, John the Baptist is preaching the immediacy of that day “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” And remember the preaching of Peter on the Day of Pentecost “Repent and be baptized every one of you.”

Like Peter, we live in the already and the not yet. As a child, I never understood what it meant when Shakespeare wrote “The king is dead. Long live the King.” Or the man who said to Jesus: “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.” In both those cases, one sentence or the other has to be true. If the King is dead, why say “Long live the King”? If you say you believe, then why do you have to ask for help with unbelieving? Why do we wait during Advent for the King to arrive, for the baby to be born when it all has happened already?

Because we are still waiting. Yes, Jesus Christ was born, fully human and fully divine on a cold Palestinian night many years ago. And he lived and taught and healed and grew in favor and stature with both God and man. And he gathered around himself a group of followers and disciples and after 33 years, he was brutally murdered, crucified on a shameful Roman cross. And the veil of the Temple was torn in two and all of creation and the Creator mourned. But after three days, he rose again and he appeared to his disciples and gave them instructions, peace and comfort. And he ascended into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us from that day to this. And he calls us to be his disciples, to be stewards of His-story. And it all begins with a voice crying in the wilderness “Prepare the way of the Lord.” “Repent.”

For the King is coming again after this second time of Advent waiting. But instead of coming as a tiny baby, he will come as conquering King. And the prophecy of Isaiah, and John the Revelator will be fulfilled. So what then is our response in this already but not yet time, between the king that has been born and the King that will come to judge the living and the dead for they are one and the same?

Repent. Turn your face away from the world and your entrapment. Repent and be free to live a life full of risk and purpose and grace. Yes, we are waiting for the King to come, waiting for the light to fully drown out the darkness that threatens to engulf us. But brothers and sisters, hear the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The King has come, the King is coming! The curse of Adam and Eve has been removed and we will live together in the beauty of creation as it was intended to be. There will be no more night, no more pain, no more fear. But in this waiting time, don’t be content to simply endure, to grit your teeth and just exist. Repent, turn your face to God’s perspective and see the world as it really is: a place full of grace and glory, a world of forgiveness and hope. Repent, turn, look around, God is all around if you will