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Sermon: The Second Sunday in Advent (B) - 4th December 2011
St Aidan's Anglican Church West Epping 8:30 am
Readings: Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8
What do you say to someone who’s facing calamity? The person whose wife or husband has died while the family is still young – the young person whose desperate attempts to find a job results in continual knockbacks – the family whose home and possessions have been destroyed by bushfire?
For the person who believes in God, there is an additional issue that needs to be worked through. It is natural to feel that God has let them down. What is he doing? Why has he done this? Or why has he allowed it to happen? Does God really care? Is he really there?
These are real questions: questions that have been asked over the centuries by people who are doing it tough. Questions which were also asked by the people of Israel in exile in Babylon five-and-a-half centuries before Christ. Their country had been invaded and ransacked; their city of Jerusalem was in ruins; the sacred temple was a heap of rubble.
They had been in exile for decades. Children who had been led out of Jerusalem by the conquering Babylonians were now parents or even grandparents. Israel was an unknown land to most of these people of Israel.
But now God had a message for these people: people cut off from their homeland, people in the land of the enemy, worshippers whose God seemed absent and whose temple lay distant and ruined, people whose hope seemed completely gone. And in our first reading this morning we read this message of comfort. “Comfort, O comfort my people”, says your God.
But words of comfort can be empty words. “Cheer up”, we say. “It’ll be OK. Things will work out. You’ll get over it.” But at the time it doesn’t seem that way at all, and those words do not ring true. Sometimes the best comfort is silence: being there, listening, supporting, accepting, understanding without correcting. But if we are going to say words of comfort, they will need a firm basis. Otherwise they will be irritating or even hurtful, not comforting at all.
But now the Lord has sent his prophet with genuine words of comfort. What are these words? What is the message?
The message is that things are about to change. Something wonderful is about to happen to God’s people in exile. Their time of punishment is complete. Their period of chastisement is over.
No doubt many of the people had lost sight of the reason why God had allowed the conquering Babylonians to overrun them. Perhaps they had lost sight of the rebellion, the unfaithfulness, the corruption, the idolatry which had become so entrenched that God’s warnings of coming punishment were ignored.
The people were not in exile because the Babylonian army was stronger than the Lord’s resources, or because Babylon’s gods were more powerful than the Lord. Their exile was primarily a time of punishment, of chastisement, that they might learn to be faithful to the God of the covenant. But now, says the Lord, that time of punishment is over. God is about to restore his people. Their vague hopes for the future are about to become a reality.
These are indeed words of comfort. Comfort from God himself. Comfort based on God’s truth, God’s power, God’s promises, God’s love. God is about to do a great thing.
As we continue to read this passage, we discover more about the Lord, and how he works. And in this Advent season, it is good to remind ourselves of these things, for the God of Isaiah is our God, the God of eternity.
What do the exiles need to learn about God? They need to take in, as we need to remind ourselves, that God is a God who is coming, God is a God who speaks, and God is a God who cares.
A God who is coming. “Get ready”, is the message. “God is on the way. And he’s taking the direct route.” Do you remember the old Pacific Highway to Newcastle as it was forty or fifty years ago? Narrow, hills, twists and turns, traffic jams, hours of driving. Imagine what it would be like if that was still the road today! Quite different from today’s expressway, which of course has enough problems in any case!
Well, God isn’t coming by the winding narrow scenic route. He’s coming by the expressway. The road that goes straight through. Cut through the hills! Fill in the valleys! No delay! God will arrive at the right time. And everyone will see his glory.
What is the prophet getting at? He is telling the people to get ready for the Lord to come to them. Of course he will not be seen visibly, but his presence will be evident to his people as, against all expectations, they are set free to return to their own land, the land given to them by the Lord himself. The Lord will come: the people must be ready.
But these words of the prophet look beyond those events of over twenty-five centuries ago. John the Baptist saw in them his own mission, to prepare the way for the Lord Jesus. His task in the desert was to call the people to repentance, that they might indeed be ready for the coming of the Lord their Saviour.
However, these words still have something to say to us today. For the Lord is coming again, as we are reminded by our reading from 2 Peter. And like the Israelites of so long ago, and even some of the Christians to whom Peter wrote, we can be tempted to assume that the idea of the Lord’s coming is mere wishful thinking, even an irrelevance.
But we too are called to be ready for that great event, which shall herald both the day of judgement and the wonderful fulfilment of the kingdom of God. We are to live as people who are prepared, trusting in Jesus and living as his followers. The Lord is coming. Let us live in readiness.
But our passage also reminds us that God is a God who speaks. The prophet is told to cry out. But what is he to cry? A mere human message is of little real significance. People are like grass, which grows and withers and dies. A human message can achieve little. Human comfort may be better than no comfort, but it cannot reach our deepest needs. We can’t put too much trust in our own words.
But the word of our God stands for ever. His message is not based on ignorance or uncertainty or misunderstanding. It stands: true, certain, permanent. When people speak, it may be worth listening. When God speaks, we must pay attention.
At the end of this period of apparent silence for God’s people in exile, God was indeed speaking to them. Centuries later, through the ministry of John and especially the ministry of Jesus, he spoke in a new way.
And he speaks to us today: not necessarily dramatically, not in a physically audible way, but through the words of scripture, as the Holy Spirit takes those words and seeks to bring them to bear in our minds and hearts and lives. God is a God who speaks today. May we listen to his message and take it to heart, and may we be obedient to that message day by day.
But God is also a God who cares. By the last section of our passage, it almost seems that the Lord is already on the way back to Jerusalem with the released exiles. Judah and Jerusalem lift up their voices with joy as the Lord leads the people through the wilderness as if it were a second Exodus.
How does he come? What is his manner, his bearing? The emphasis is not on power or might. He comes as a shepherd, leading his flock and looking after them. “He gathers his lambs in his arms and carries them in his bosom, and gently leads the mother sheep.” Here is a gentle and sensitive and wise and loving and personal care for those that are his. Not a “shape up or ship out” mentality, but the love and care we need at all times. The Lord certainly sees the big picture, but he also cares intimately for his people.
The Lord is the ultimate source of true comfort. He is a God who is coming , and indeed will come one day to dry every tear. He is a God who speaks , and through the scriptures we hear the message from him that we need to hear most of all, if we will only listen. And he is a God who cares , who understands us and loves us perfectly.
May we find our comfort above all in the God who is coming to us, the God who speaks to us, the God who cares for us. And as we find that comfort, that security, may we be encouraged to go on in faith and obedience and loving service, living in readiness for that great day when we shall meet him face to face. Amen.
Paul Weaver