Hilton Head Island, SC – December 15, 2019
The Chapel Without Walls
Isaiah 40:1-5;6-11
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended. – Isaiah 40:1
The year was 587 Before the Common Era. The Babylonians attacked Jerusalem, conquered the holy city, and then destroyed it. They took the leaders of the nation back to Babylon with them as captives.
One of those leaders was someone biblical scholars identify as Second Isaiah. This man is believed to have written the last chapters of the Book of Isaiah, beginning with Chapter 40. He was there in Babylon when another Judean wrote in Psalm 137, “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.”
What we call the Babylonian Captivity was one of the three most overwhelming national tragedies the Jewish people ever experienced in their four-thousand-year history as a people. First came the conquest of Judah by the Babylonians. Next was the complete destruction of Judea by the Romans in 72 CE. The third, and arguably the greatest of these tragedies, was the Nazi Holocaust during World War II.
In Babylon the Jews felt completely devastated. How could this have happened to them? Whatever could they have done to deserve such a disaster? They were slaves in a strange land! Their hearts were broken! They had lost all hope.
Then, one of them rose up with a message of consolation and encouragement. Handel included those words as the opening aria of his great oratorio Messiah: “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned.” We don’t really know who Second Isaiah was, or when he was born or died, or whether he returned to Jerusalem with the others after Cyrus the Mede conquered Babylon and freed the Jews. But the scholars are convinced this otherwise unknown individual was the man who began his part of the prophecy of Isaiah with words of magnificent comfort and hope.
In the first centuries of its existence, the Christian Church came to recognize certain passages in Isaiah as being especially messianic. Isaiah 40:1-11 is one of those passages. “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.” In the midst of desolation and destruction, the phoenix of comfort rises from the ashes, and God’s people are granted a new vision of release from their valley of deep depression.
Christmas comes four days after the shortest, and therefore darkest, day of the year. After the emperor Constantine declared Christianity to be the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christians superimposed Christmas onto an already existing Roman winter holiday, thus making Christmas one of the holiest days in the Christian year. Therefore glorious light is thrust into the thickest darkness, hope into devastation, and peace into great conflict.
Second Isaiah intended to provide comfort to his fellow Jews in a time of immense national distress. Christians came to see in his words echoes of the coming of Jesus Christ into the world. The comforting words of Isaiah became inspiring words for those who eventually perceived Jesus of Nazareth to be the promised Messiah of God. What any of us says or does may have profound effects long after we are gone. This certainly was the case for the prophet --- or the prophets --- Isaiah.
Until Jesus was born, Christians believe that something vital was missing from the world. Humanity was not succeeding by itself. They needed help. In Jesus that assistance became manifest in human flesh. However, Jesus was not born into regal splendor, but instead into impoverished squalor. When Mary and Joseph came to Bethlehem, Luke tells us, “there was no room for them in the inn,” so Jesus was born in a stable next to the inn. Jesus did not grow up in a palace of plenty, but in a small stone house of scarcity. That is why, in his ministry, Jesus spoke so frequently about his concern for the poor.
Some of the messianic passages in Isaiah tell of glory to come, but some also hint at tragedy and defeat. Next week, on the last Sunday of Advent, we shall hear of the Messiah that “He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Today, happily, we hear words of comfort and tenderness. They are a good preparation for Christmas.
Christmas is a triumphant theological and Christological proclamation which overlays a very spare and sparse historical narrative. The birth itself was rustic and rudimentary: an expectant mother who had to give birth in a barn because the inn was filled to capacity, and the innkeeper did not want to try to get any of his patrons to give up their room for a lady in labor. The nativity scenes on the church lawns make it look so warm and cozy and inviting, but it probably was cold and damp and smelly.
The other parts of the narrative overcome the bleakness, however. Angels we have heard on high! Gloria in excelsis deo! We three kings of orient are. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gifts fit for a king.
It is a virtual impossibility for us to imagine the birth of Jesus as it really was. There are so many trimmings and tinsel that have accrued to the story over twenty centuries that the historical realities are lost in the plethora of Christmas accretions that have been added through the years. What began as exceedingly ordinary evolved into the utterly extraordinary.
At the end of the Jesus story, however, it looked like a complete tragedy was about to unfold. Jesus was with his disciples in an upper room on Mt. Zion in Jerusalem. He knew he was about to be arrested, and he was quite certain that the Romans would decide to crucify him.
It was Passover, and he used the Seder unleavened matzos bread and the Seder wine to signify something which then was totally beyond the ability of the disciples to comprehend. “This is my body, which is broken for you,” Jesus said, taking a matzo, and snapping it in two. Taking the cup, he said, “This is my blood, shed for you.”
Did he actually say that, or did the disciples only later imagine that is what he said? Did he do that, or did they choose to remember that is what he did? Words are symbols of the realities they describe. They are not the realities in themselves, but they are the only means we have of giving substance to the meanings of those realities. Jesus knew he was about to lose his life, and he wanted his closest friends to know that he voluntarily would do it on their behalf and on behalf of a world greatly in need of reconciliation with God.
The Church has called communion a sacrament. It also refers to it as the eucharist, the thanksgiving. By means of the sacrament, we are transported back in space and time to that upper room with Jesus and the Twelve. Communion makes us disciples in direct communication with him, along with the others who gathered in the upper room.
The first Christmas started in squalor, and it ended with angels and wise men. Good Friday dropped a pall of death and horror over the disciples, but on Easter they experienced inexpressible astonishment and unimaginable joy. God brings comfort out of calamity, clarity out of complete darkness, profound hope out of utter despair. Comfort, Christmas, and communion are a mixture of thoughts and emotions, of dreams dashed and invincible trust restored.
With all of these thoughts in mind, let us come to the table of our Lord Jesus Christ.