Jesus put forward an interesting solution to the despair we feel at life’s pain. Jesus looks out into the world around us and asks us to counter despair with simplicity. Why be afraid of where food will come from? God feeds the sparrows and they don’t work for their food. Why worry about where your clothing will come from? Flowers are better dressed than any person, and yet they never have to work to make their clothing. Place any part of natural into this equation and the same answer comes out – God provides, and that is often sufficient.
The response that many people have to this teaching is simple. What do birds have to do with my problems? How is it remotely helpful for me to look at flowers when I’m cold at night? In the midst of all our problems, just looking at something else thriving does not magically make us feel better about our circumstances. In fact, the seeming protection and care that God shows every part of creation can make it seem like our own struggles are even more of an aberration. God has cared for everything, and yet I am here in the midst of trouble and pain! Rather than taking these words and finding peace in them, we instead build up a case against ourselves. The darkness of the world that we sit in bleeds into a positive image like this, and poisons it – creating a new way for us to criticize our own hearts.
This is not something unique to this one teaching, or any other aspect of our faith. Paul speaks about how God’s good gift of Torah on Sinai are turned into a curse by our own understanding. When we know what we should not do, we are sometimes more likely to do it. Unless the lesson imparted by a rule or teaching is internalized inside us, we will find loopholes and ways to violate the spirit of a thing even if we do not violate the words of the text themselves. Negativity births negativity. No matter how nice a thing is, putting it in the midst of something bad seldom makes the bad thing seem better, just the nice thing seem worse. I do not enjoy okra anymore because it is breaded and fried.
For someone in the midst of trouble, platitudes, even divinely inspired ones, are not what are needed. This is why scripture so often gives multiple answers to the same question. For the person who is fretting about what might be, the simple things of life can be a way to remember that God’s goodness is not just for one season. However, for the person in the valley of death, that same lesson will probably not accomplish the same thing. There is a rightness of speech to every situation, and the same cure is not meant for every disease. Not every teaching will land in fertile soil in our hearts and produce fruit given the place we are in.
Our scripture we have read together this morning, where Isaiah promises that God is coming to bring peace to God’s people, is written for people in the midst of troubles. Rather than calling for the people to take up songs of praise and to cheer despite pain, the Prophet establishes a pattern.
The Prophet proclaims that the people have suffered, before The Prophet proclaims their deliverance. When we acknowledge the pain that we have faced and hear that acknowledgment reflected in the people who care for us – a lot more healing can happen than would come from denial. God calls out, “Comfort, O Comfort, my people!” Because that is the first thing that the people need, is comfort.
God then moves quickly into a promise of what is to come, a restoration but more than that a setting aside of what was for something new. The call of the Prophet begins, asking us to make a pathway in the wilderness, to clear a way through the uncertainty and danger of the world and see a highway to deliverance for all people. The Prophet’s hymn about God’s control over life and death in the midst of this passage may seem a departure from the theme, but it carries something heartening within it. God, the God who brings life and death, is the God who loves us and cares for us. The hope of our redemption is present in God’s ability to overcome obstacles we find impossible – even obstacles as large as death are nothing to God.
The proclamation of the Prophet, “Here is your God!” Flows into God’s taking up of the title of Shepherd. Throughout scripture God’s care is described in pastoral terms, as an attendant to those in need and as a protector from the troubles of the world around. The acknowledgement of our pain naturally has matured into a promise of our deliverance and the realization of that deliverance in God’s hands.
Advent is a season that celebrates Christ’s coming into the world long ago to set this world on the course it needed to be, a moment when the work began to make a way in the wilderness. Advent is also an acknowledgement that we wait for the day when Christ returns and, as a shepherd, puts an End to all Pain that we might face. For the Church that waits for Christ, we are caught in a space where pain and the end of pain are smashed together in strange juxtaposition. We know from where our deliverance comes, but we do not know when it might be here.
For some of us, the words of hope and promise may seem bitter, our broken hearts, breaking even joy into something lesser. To those of us in this place, let the first part of Isaiah’s prophecy rest in your heart. “Comfort, O Comfort, my people,” is God’s word to all who struggle, to rest in the care of God and of God’s people. For others, the words of God’s promise should fill us with an excitement we’re not used to feeling.
There is an end to trouble, Glory to God that we will get to see it! Faith sustains us in the midst of brokenness, because we know that we have a good shepherd, and that shepherd is actively working in this world and the next to make things right. For all of us, the words of the Prophet make our job in the meantime clear, “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Clear the wilderness of all obstacles to the people who are seeking rest, and God bless the work as we embark upon it. – Amen.
Teach us to Number our Days 