Comfort in Exile

“Comfort in Exile,” a Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, December 4, 2011 at St. John’s Church, Sodus, New York

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, her penalty is paid…(Isaiah 40:1-2)

4John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.(Mark 1:4)

Finley Peter Dunne, American journalist and author of the early 20th century is credited with coining the phrase about journalism that it entails “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” Between the words of the Prophet Isaiah and the words of John the Baptist, our lectionary texts this week do a very good job of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. Thanks to Handel’s Messiah, many Christians are familiar with the section of Isaiah’s text that we heard today. And every year on this Second Sunday of Advent we encounter wild and wooly John the Baptist, appearing in the wilderness offering his baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, clothed in camel’s hair and munching on his locusts and wild honey. During this Advent season of waiting and expectation, of longing for the coming of God’s reign in our world, we are offered the tender words of the prophet as a soothing reminder to God’s people that despite all the vagaries and travails of human life, “the word of our God stands forever.” They are words of hope and comfort to a world aching for the inbreaking of God. And we are exhorted by John the Baptist to re-order our life priorities in order to “prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

It is a well known fact that many people find this holiday season emotionally and psychologically difficult. People who are living with serious illness, those who have lost loved ones in the past year or who continue to grieve a significant loss, those who are experiencing crises in their intimate relationships, those who suffer from addiction all find this season of forced merriment and celebration hard to take. In the tough economic times in which we live, those families enduring prolonged periods of unemployment face a season of overspending and consumerism that only serves to intensify their economic distress as they struggle to put food on the table and pay the rent while everyone and everything around them screams “spend, spend, spend!” CNN reported a poll this week which indicated that 35% of Americans dread the holiday season because they dislike the social imperative to have to be nice and cheerful for the entire month even when they don’t feel like it and most especially those for whom life is very difficult, sad or stressful.

In Advent, the prophet Isaiah sends us words of comfort and promise, words of hope. G.K. Chesterton once observed that words of hope mean little to those who have never known hopelessness and I imagine that is true. I wonder, however, if there is anyone alive who has not known hopelessness at some point in their life’s journey. We all have emotional aches, places of emptiness and loneliness, places of despair and desolation. Those places of emptiness and desolation become more pronounced in this season of short days and long nights, especially when they contrast so poignantly with the required merriment of the season. Isaiah’s words of hope and comfort, coupled with John the Baptist’s call to reorientation of our life priorities provide a welcome antidote to the false joy of our secular season.

If you’re fortunate enough to be in a place in your life where experiences of despair and emptiness are not paramount, just look at the daily news and you’ll get more than enough to send you there. Sex scandals breaking out at university sports departments and the Republican candidate races, the debt crisis fueling fears among investors and eroding trust in banks, violence erupting in Egypt as elections continue in that country that so recently saw a peaceful revolution, American Airlines goes into bankruptcy, British public workers stage a nation wide strike protesting cuts in pension benefits, the Occupy Wall Street movement continues in the wake of violent clashes with police in various cities, most significantly this week in Los Angeles. Unrest, un-ease, financial worries, polarized politics, violence and war, not to mention the aftermath all over the world from months of natural disasters –earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires that have devastated communities in our country and around the world in this calendar year. We go into this holiday season with more than enough trials and tribulations of human life to keep us grounded in clouds of worry and fear. And into the midst of this world, come the words of Isaiah and John the Baptist.

The prophet known as Second Isaiah was speaking to the ancient Israelites during the time of their exile in Babylon. They had been sent away to Babylon when the first temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and they spent forty years in exile, away from their homeland. Oddly enough, over the decades of exile, many of the exiled Israelites adapted to life in Babylon and were not eager to go back to Jerusalem when the opportunity arose, where they would have to rebuild their temple and their pre-exilic way of life. Some of them had grown comfortable in exile and the rigors of the journey home did not much appeal.

Being comfortable in exile. An interesting paradox. On the one hand the prophet utters words of soothing comfort, and yet at the same time calls the people out of the comfort of their exile into the challenges of going home to Jerusalem, the holy city where they had known God. Jerusalem is a metaphor for that holy place where the reign of God is realized. In Advent we await the coming of God into our world. In a sense we too are called on a journey home, home to the heart of God. Journeying home to the heart of God may or may not be a comfortable trip. At least comfort in the sense of familiarity and ease and predictability. Just look at the imagery Isaiah uses. Valleys being lifted up and mountains brought down does not suggest that the journey will be a stroll. The breath of God withering the grass is also not particularly calming imagery. And yet, the prophet promises that God will “gather the lambs in his arms and carry them at his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.”

Advent is a season for we who have become too comfortable in exile to reconsider the promises of our God and muster up the hope required to live as if those promises will be fulfilled. The secular culture in which we live is a place of exile for many of us. As we live through this month of conspicuous consumerism, we know that something is awry. Despite the slick ads on television and the internet, new gadgets and do-dads will not bring the joy and happiness that the gospel of consumerism promises. Yet it is easy to fall prey to the frenzy of the season, to get sucked into the mass marketing blitz and lose touch with promise and hope of Advent.

The prophets Isaiah and John the Baptist call out in the wilderness of our modern lives, reminding us that so long as we remain captive to the values of materialism, success and greed we are in exile. The comforts we take for granted are false comforts, as fleeting as that grass that withers, something many of our brothers and sisters in Joplin, Mississippi, and Turkey, Texas and Japan learned the hard way this year. Going home to God, to the holy city Jerusalem takes us from exile into the promised land. As John the Baptist reminds us, we cannot do that without turning around, turning away from the temptations of our secular culture and back to the covenant with God. Those early Judeans went out to John the Baptist in the wilderness and got immersed in the waters of the Jordan as the first step back to a life lived with and for God.

It’s no wonder that so many people feel depressed during this season. In many ways that is a healthy reaction to the denial that our secular culture shoves down our throats every December. Advent makes much more emotional sense and is more true to human experience. We long for deliverance from war and violence, from poverty and social injustice, from addictions, debt, illness and loneliness. We long for God to come into our world and the only way to help that happen is for us to leave the comfort of our exile and be the hands of God in this world. Our God is a God of comfort. God comforts us in the dark nights of our prayer and in the ear of a friend over coffee. God comforts us in the hand held at the deathbed and the chicken soup delivered when the flu hits. God comforts the victims of disasters in the money sent for relief, the relief workers who rush to bring immediate help and the people dedicated to long term rebuilding.

This Advent, there are many exiles in the world in need of comfort. Relief agencies and charities of all kinds cry out for donations and contributions as the calendar year comes to a close. “Alternative gift catalogues” are widely available, offering us the opportunity to spend our holiday money giving food, animals, microloans, medical and educational tools to people all over the world who live in poverty. I visited Thailand, Laos and Cambodia this past summer and saw firsthand how far the American dollar can go in these developing countries where the things we take for granted here – running water, electricity, public education, quality medical and dental care – are beyond the reach of thousands of people in remote villages mired in poverty. In the midst of the holiday spending orgy, those of us who honor Advent can make a point of making additional donations to organizations that bring comfort to those in need.

Comfort, comfort ye my people says your God. In this season of preparation and waiting, expectation and hope let us live Advent in all its haunting beauty. Let us bring comfort to those we live and work with as we seek comfort in the arms of our loving God. Advent is about hope in the face of despair, light breaking into winter darkness, joy returning to lives marked by sorrow and grief. It is about leaving even the comfort of exile to make our way to God’s promised land. It is about the journey from exile across the desert on a highway paved by God. Advent is one of the most precious gifts we have in this season of gift giving. Let us live into it with gratitude.

Amen.