The Glory of the Lord
Shall Be Revealed
Isaiah 40:1-11
Where do
you go to find a little comfort? When
you’re feeling stressed or burned out, put down or shut out - where do you
go? What do you do when you’re feeling
frustrated and agitated, disappointed and discouraged, overwrought and under
appreciated? If you just want all the
noise to stop, all the pressure and pain, to whom do you go?
There are
many places we can turn - to a bottle or a stranger’s bedroom, to a ball field
for distraction or Bermuda to just get away.
We can turn to the government and demand they fix all of our problems or
just stroll through the mall looking for something to buy that will make us
feel better, if only for a moment or two.
There are many places we can go to find some comfort, but the prophet
proclaimed there is one to whom we can turn who will offer comfort that does
not quickly fade like the flower in the grass.
Only God’s Word endures forever.
This
morning we will prepare the way of the Lord and pray he makes the rough places
a plain and will reveal his glory once more through his word and by his
spirit. Let us pray:
Lord, so
often we look for love in all the wrong places.
We grasp for some comfort to carry us through the day, the week, the
season. We settle for cheap substitutes
and turn away from your love that endures forever. Open our eyes and hearts we pray so that we
may recognize you are with us right here and right now. Amen.
For a long time the people had been stuck in
Babylon, the place we now call Iraq.
They didn’t want to be there, but they were trapped and could see no way
out. There was no withdrawal
strategy. All they wanted to do was to
get out and go home, but they could not.
Maybe you know the feeling.
For seventy
long years the people of Israel languished in Babylon. Mary Beth called this a “time-out”
period. You know the disciplinary
technique that modern parents use when their children get out of line. If the
child is getting out of control and not listening anymore, parents will send
their children to their rooms or a time out chair so they may think about what
they’ve done and what they should do.
Through the prophet God the
heavenly parent had said to the children of Israel, “Cease to do evil, learn to
do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the
widow” – they did not.[1] Instead, “they bowed down to worship the work
of their hands,” which means they thought they could solve every problem and
find every answer all on their own and worse than that believed they knew
better than God the course their lives should take.[2] They put all their eggs in a basket they wove
themselves out of dried grass.
Again and again the prophet warned,
but after a while, as every parent knows, the warnings will not work if they
are not backed up with some kind of discipline.
Something must be done, so God sent the Babylonian army, which could not
be ignored. In short order the people of
Israel were overwhelmed, captured and driven to Babylon against their will. This was God’s way of sending them to their
time-out chair so they could think about what they had done and should do.
Now, at
long last the time-out was over. Babylon was conquered by Persia, and Cyrus the
King of Persia, told them children of Israel that they could go home. That’s when God told the prophet to “Comfort,
comfort, comfort ye my people.” The
words are tender and soft. George Fredrich Handel began his great work,
Messiah, with these words and he captured their mood with a lyrical tenor solo
that lifts the soul and stirs the heart, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my
people.” These are the words of a parent
lifting a three year old out of the time-out chair and whispering, “I still
love you.”
When this Hebrew word for comfort
was translated into Greek, into what is called the Septuagint translation of
the Old Testament, it turned out to be the same word the New Testament used to
describe the Holy Spirit. In the gospel
of John, Jesus said, “The comforter, (there’s the word) the Holy Spirit, whom
the Father will send in my name will teach you all things, and bring to your
remembrance, all that I have said to you.”[3]
In other
words, comfort here means more than just a pat on the back and soothing
words. It is more than the words a
mother says to her toddler when he scrapes his knee, “there, there it’s not so
bad, everything’s going to be alright.”
Comfort here is more than well wishing because it recognizes that some
things are that bad and cannot be made better by words alone.” The old Peanuts cartoon captures this
sentiment when Charley Brown and Linus, wearing winter coats and mufflers walk
by Snoopy who is freezing outside in a blizzard. They pat him on the head, tell him, “Be of
good cheer” and then go in their warm house leaving him outside in the cold.
God’s comfort makes a difference. God’s Word offers more than easy bromides
like “every cloud has a silver lining.”
It is deeper than a bottle that dulls the pain and offers a love more
profound than can be found at night with a stranger in a bedroom. It provides more than the distraction we find
at a ball field or on a winter getaway to Bermuda.
God’s
comfort, Jesus said, will teach you and bring to remembrance all that God has
said and done and that is what will finally lead you home. That is exactly what those stuck in Babylon
needed most, because they did not know how to get home. Remember they had been living there for over
seventy years. Their grandparents,
ripped out of Israel, were now mostly dead and buried or too old to make the
long journey home. So, it was to their
children and grandchildren, the king declared, “You are now free – go
home!”
But, none
of them had ever seen the Promised Land. All they knew were Grandma’s stories
about the old days, and you how much attention the children pay to those. Babylon was the only home they ever
knew. Like their forefathers in Egypt a
thousand years before, some may have been thinking, “better the devil we know
than the one we do not”, “better to be safe than sorry”. At least we’ll have bread and a warm
bed. Maybe we’ll just stay where we are,
where we’ve always been, where everything is familiar and certain. Sometimes there is nothing more frightening
than seeing a long deferred dream fulfilled.
Fantasy is not so frightening until there is a chance it may become
real.
Besides that, they didn’t really
know where their Promised Land was. They had some vague sense of direction, but
they didn’t know how far it was and what obstacles and challenges they would
face. They didn’t think they could make
it to the Promised Land on their own.
They were right about that.
That’s why the prophet cried out,
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, and make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.”[4] What does that mean? How is that done?
To find the answer to these
questions we turn to John the Baptist because this was the verse he quoted when
he stood hip deep in the Jordan River to make way for the coming Messiah. You’ll never recognize God in your midst, he
said, if you do not prepare and make straight a highway for our God. The Lord could tap you on the shoulder, as we
learned last week, and ask for a cup of water or something to eat and you might
look right through him if you do not prepare yourself, make straight the highway.[5]
Of course, John believed that
reflection, repentance and resolution to follow the Word of God are the tools
used to straighten out our course. This
is how we open our ears so God may speak and how we open our hearts so God may
move within our lives. That’s how we are
to prepare to receive the Messiah.
That’s not how we do it now. Today
and over the next four weeks we will prepare to receive the Messiah by plowing
through the mob at the mall to find the perfect present. We’ll shove our way past competitors who are
looking for a parking place or elbow pasty someone looking at the last
X-Box. Maybe you saw the stories the
other day about the Wal-Mart riots that got so bad the police had to be called. Somehow, I don’t think that’s what God had in
mind when he sent Jesus to be born in Bethlehem.
Even so, we’ll still spend a lot of
time and effort choosing and decorating a perfect tree. We’ll shop ‘til we drop and bake ‘til we
break to create a Currier and Ives Christmas.
We’ve done it before. We’ll do it
again. We’ll knock ourselves out
preparing for Christmas, but then wonder why life is still so hard, why the
valleys and mountains have not been smoothed over and why we face the same
challenges and obstacles. We’ll find ourselves after Christmas to be exactly
the same people we were before. There
will no transformation and little joy.
We’ll be no closer to the Promised Land.
We will never really see the glory of the Lord revealed through lights
and tinsel.
How is it revealed? How does God make himself known? The prophet
continued, “A voice says, “Cry out!” And
Isaiah said, “What shall I cry?” This
is a question preachers understand.
Every Monday morning we look to that hard Sunday deadline when you will
gather expecting to hear a good word, some word for the Lord that will get you
through the week or bring you home to God.
So, all preachers ask, “Lord, what shall I say?”
This is how God answered, “All
people are grass and like flowers in a field.
The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord abides
forever.”[6] What does this mean? How does that lift our
spirits? We’re like grass, here today
and gone tomorrow? That’s supposed to
make me feel better?
I think God is telling us that so
much of what we work so hard for will not last and we know it. We’re like people who build sand castles at
the shore or carve ice sculptures in July.
We invest our time and talent, heart and soul into things that will wash
away with the incoming tide or melt away under the hot sun. The beautiful Christmas tree that stands at
the center of our holiday loses its needles in January and just looks sad lying
by the street waiting for the city to pick it up. The only thing that endures is the Word that
comes from God.
The Apostle Peter picked up on this
same verse in his first letter and added this note for clarity. “The word is the good news that was announced
to you.”[7] What is that good news? It was the same news Isaiah received. “He
will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms.”[8]
Have you ever seen a picture like
that? Maybe you saw it hanging in your
grandma’s hallway or in a Sunday school room when you were little? Have you seen that picture of Jesus with a
lamb over his shoulder and at his feet?
Hold onto that image of the shepherd.
Turn it over in your hand like a Christmas ornament and look at it from
every angle. What does that mean to you
– this shepherd and his lamb?
This is the very picture of care
and comfort. God is here, right here, right now. God is tender and whispers quietly to you as
a shepherd to a lamb. Some of our
favorite passages from scripture paint this portrait. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.”[9] “O come let us worship and bow down, let us
kneel before the Lord, our maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of
his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.”[10] What did Jesus say? “I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my
own know me, and I lay down my life for the sheep.”[11]
I believe it was no accident God
first revealed the birth of Christ to “shepherds who were keeping watch over
their flock by night.”[12] They, more than most, understood how to care
for the flock and what it takes to keep vigilant against predators who prey
upon the weakest of the lambs. They
understood the sacrifice of a shepherd who would lay down his life for his
sheep. So, the shepherds were the first,
the Bible says, to “make known the saying which had been told them concerning
this child.”[13] They
were the first to fulfill Isaiah’s command to “lift their voices and declare,
“Behold, your God.”[14]
Will you do the same? Will you by your attitude and actions, by
your words and deeds declare, “Behold, your God.” During this season there are so many
opportunities. It can be as simple as
choosing a Christmas card with a nativity scene and Bible verse instead of one
with Santa and eight tiny reindeer.
Rather than buying some meaningless trinket for someone you know has
everything they could need or want, you could make a donation to Katrina
victims in their name, or contribute to the Heifer project as our Sunday school
children will be doing. You can volunteer during the week between Christmas and
New Year to help us feed the homeless through the congregational-based
shelter. Next week the sign up board
will be in the Narthex. There will be
many ways you can help, many opportunities to say, “Behold, your God.” Will you?
Your take on Christmas, what it means and what it’s for will be shaped
by your answer.
Through this same prophet God said,
“As one whom a mother comforts, so I will comfort you. You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice.”[15] So where will you go to find a little
comfort? When you’re feeling stressed or
burned out, put down or shut out – to whom will you go?
Let us pray:
O come, thou dayspring, come and
cheer,
Our spirits by thing advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and deaths’ dark shadow put to flight.
Help us to rejoice Emanuel and declare
through attitude and action, word
and deed,
“Behold, you are here, right here,
right now. Amen.
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