“Tidings of Comfort”
December 7, 2008
Isaiah 40:1-11
Mark 1:1-8
Last weekend, the front page of the Sunday Styles section of The New York Times announced in big green letters: “THE HOLIDAYS DOWNSIZED.” The title of one article bluntly described the situation some are finding themselves in this year: “No Jobs and Fewer Gifts.” Another title proclaimed: “We’re Going to Party Like It’s 1929”—that sounds like a lot of fun.
These have been uncertain economic times. But finally this past week we were given some certainty: the National Bureau of Economic Research confirmed what most people suspected—the economy has been in recession for the last year. This certainty, of course, is not necessarily good news. The recession is real—although the ads for Dior, Armani, Cartier and other high end goods in the Times suggest that some have not yet received the memo.
When I returned to my office on Monday, I found a letter from “Redefine Christmas,” a movement that seeks not to reinvent or change the meaning of Christmas, but to redefine how we share Christmas with those we care about, to make gift giving more charitable.
The truth is, both in financially flush times as well as in these certainly uncertain times, we always have to do the work of “redefining Christmas.” So many voices tell us “Christmas is the Lexus tied with a bow” or “Christmas is the flat screen TV” or “Christmas is what you can get even if you have to trample others to get it.” And then there is Linus, standing in the spotlight each year since 1965, telling the familiar story of the birth of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke and concluding: “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”
If we are going to understand or even “redefine” Christmas for recessionary times, we need to speak and listen in new ways. That’s what these weeks before Christmas that we call Advent are all about.
Lately I've found myself thinking about these weeks before Christmas as a prayer. Not the kneeling, bowed head, closed eyes kind of prayer—God knows there's enough of that. These weeks before Christmas, these days of preparation are prayer as an active, lively dialogue as we get ready for the Christ who comes in glory, even in a manger.
This is snow shoveling prayer—of which I’ve also had enough: preparing a path, clearing a way that people might come and go with freedom.
This is cookie-baking, present-shopping, wreath-hanging prayer: preparing our homes, preparing ourselves for visitors who might arrive unexpectedly or welcoming someone long awaited.
This is early sunset, blazing golden sky prayer: watching through leafless trees the late afternoon battle of dark and light—knowing, hoping, even in these days of early shadows who the winner is.
Out of our ordinary routines, out of all that is special about this time—traditions, memories, even the deep loss that many feel—out of all that we do, we are speaking to the Holy One who speaks back to us: “Comfort, comfort my people.”
The words fall soft as snow upon listening ears.
When the trees look dead,
when the grass has withered,
when the flower has faded,
we hear a word that speaks about life.
When memories of the past dare us to continue,
when present burdens seem difficult to bear,
when there seems little hope for the future,
we hear a word that comes tenderly, reminding us that—even if nobody else does—God calls each of us forward into a new creation.
The television showed a father hugging his daughter as she cried after a tragedy. Over and over he kept telling her: “It's going to be all right. It's all right now. It's going to be all right.”
There is something in the universe that does not want human suffering,
something that abhors the evil that we see and do even more than we do.
something that will yet forgive the wrong we have done and hopes for the repentance of all people.
Can we listen to that voice that speaks to us “Comfort, O comfort my people?”
We may first speak words of pain or confession, words of despair or fear. But after we have spoken, let us listen.
In our sorrow and in our joy, “Comfort, O comfort.”
In our best actions and in our worst: “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.”
Those words of comfort, those words of a future—if we have heard them—call us to action.
These are days of activity. “In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.”
The wilderness can be a place of violence and lawlessness, often a cold place, a place of struggle and hope against all odds. The wilderness is hunger and homelessness. The wilderness is the fear and grief and anger that dwell in our hearts. In such desolate places we are called to prepare the way, to make the paths straight.
Friends sent a Christmas card with the usual photocopied letter detailing the high points of the past year. It was accompanied by a hand written note that read: “We didn’t include a few rough things happening in our families.” We’re often reluctant to share our rough places with everyone, but there they are—in all of our lives.
We are called to make the rough places smooth, but not to “smooth over” those places.
The road we are called to prepare might not be as smooth or as straight as we previously imagined. It might be a road filled with the challenges that make us strong.
Listen. If you have heard the comforting announcement of a future, you might also hear the call to prepare, to prepare a new way in the wilderness.
And again a voice is heard.
A voice says: “Cry!”
But before it can speak further an all too human voice interrupts. It is a voice that knows our limitations, our finitude. “What shall I cry? All people are grass and the grass withers, the flower fades.” Words of comfort, words of challenge seem so inconsequential. Suffering is real and strong.
Here we are coming closer to the mystery of Christmas—God incarnate, God with us in human flesh. One person put it this way: “The Christian God is no little god of fortune . . . in whose kingdom it is possible to remain free of want and sorrow. Jesus—multiplying the loaves and healing the sick—could have had all this: indeed can have it. Instead Jesus identified with the suffering and for the sake of their sickness became sick; for the suffers’ sake he suffered abuse; in order to overcome death, he, like everyone else, became mortal.
To accept the way of Jesus means also to hold on to the paradox.”[1]
Suffering is real and strong. But listen, still: “The people are grass, but word of our God will stand forever.”
Our objections to the comfort and challenge of God are acknowledged. Even so, we are invited into the word of God, the work of God that will stand forever.
This is the real reason behind some of our Advent/Christmas traditions: giving to special mission programs such as the Heifer Project, contributing to the Shelter House, and our other giving at this time of year—at the end of a year that has been marked by great disaster and great generosity. All this is done to enable the world to be more like God’s plan for it. We give to provide healing, clothing, food, and shelter. We give to announce the comfort of God.
When we give, when we act out of love, we learn to let go of at least some of what we have so that we can let God work though us in the world. When we give, we wait and hasten, we prepare the way of God.
If we are fortunate, as we prepare we begin to recognize the ways in which our lifestyles contribute to hunger, to poverty, to violence—to the affliction of the world. And we repent—that is, we turn in the opposite direction.
This is the active waiting of Advent.
These days are a time for us to give special attention to the way of life we are to live all
year long—bringing tidings of comfort to those who dwell in the shadow places of our city and our world. If we downsize the holidays, if we redefine Christmas, let us still be generous in remembering the poor, the hungry, the homeless. If we choose to give less, let us make sure that our gifts matter all the more.
Listen.
Even now, we hear God’s call to prepare a new road in a world of affliction.
Listen.
In a world of affliction, we will still hear God’s word of comfort.