SCRIPTURE: Isaiah 40:1-11
TEXT: 4Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. THEME: The birth of Christ opens us up to learn new things about God. INTRODUCTION Last week we began our Advent journey to Christmas. Imagine two rows of Preschoolers sitting in these front pews. All you have to do is say the word “Christmas” to see their little bodies squirm with delight and anticipation. But when you are the adult, and you say the word “Christmas" we shudder with a nervousness of all the things we think we have to do before the 25th to make Christmas happen. We need to find a middle place where we recapture some of that childlike delight to balance our drivenness. SCRIPTURE Sermon Brainwave Commentator Anathea Portier-Young, said the Hebrew word for ‘comfort,’ naḥămû means to reverse one’s mind, feeling or state. Comfort, O comfort - reverse your mind, your feeling, your state, away from anxiety and fret of being captives of Babylon. Comfort your frame of mind towards being freed, liberated, released to go home. The prophet Isaiah is speaking these words to shock you out of your captivity; “Your term is up, the penalty paid, The extraction team is on its way, negotiations were successful, you are going home!” Not only you but everyone. This adds meaning to the word ‘Comfort’ that the English word does not contain. The Change in status or feeling or state of mind that brings comfort and a lot more. The way in the wilderness is a metaphor of a change in thinking. The highway in the desert is a metaphor of our theology, when it is legalistic and does not bring life. The straight road is a metaphor of our thinking, to be open to new ideas. To think about things in a new way. The valley lifted up is a metaphor of our self-image and insecurity being challenged by higher expectations witnessing the greatness of God. Seeing the Glory of God. Making hope possible. The Mountains made low is a metaphor of changing those high ambitions for more realistic, gentler, practices, kinder and doable successes. Un-even ground smoothed out takes care of the differences we have with each other for a spirit of cooperation and collaboration. And the rough places a plain, creates a space to receive new revelations as a foundation for faith to be built upon So, to comfort my people is to give us the chance to change our status or mind set. To be open to a change, to see things from a different point of view and get a glimpse of the Glory of God - in the birth of Jesus the Christ. We bring the present of ourselves. Our being present to the Christ in our midst. God is eternal compared to our mortality. God’s truth is eternal throughout the ages. This is what we know about God’s love for us. We are created by God. God has our back and God wants to dwell with us. This is what Zion is all about. Zion is the place where God dwells. At Christmas, God dwells with us making our world Zion. APPLICATION How does the way we believe bring comfort to others? Yesterday I went to a Memorial Service at a church different from our own. The Funeral Talk retold the story of Adam eating the fruit he knew he was not supposed to. Blame was passed on to his wife. So now we have a ransom paid to escape death. The congregation was nice, trying to understand the complexity of our family’s grief. They had points they wanted to make at the expense of getting the facts correct which made it hard to listen to them. The message of the sinner’s need, for an atoning sacrifice did not portray a compassionate concern for loss. The moral degradation of a soul, ransomed by a debt paid for by Jesus was more of a business transaction than love. I was comforted by the stories of how faith changed a life, although most of my family members failed to witnessed this changed life. It was hard to listen to explanations of the text that were like a collage drawn from many places from the Bible to make one point, instead of wrestling with a passage in its context. This made me think about how difficult it is to hear a familiar passage that draws a different conclusion from how we might have understood it in the past. The Gospel writers connect this passage from Isaiah to the ministry of John the Baptist, the prophetic voice crying in the wilderness preparing the way for Jesus. But there are also undertones of our being open to understanding God differently through the revelations Jesus will bring, giving us the opportunity for our theology to evolve and bloom. Brace yourself for a different kind of Messiah who is not born king in a palace, and a different concept of the Kingdom of God that is not contained just in Judea but made-up citizens from every country in the world. And a different sense of reconciliation that is centered on the practices of love and forgiveness instead of retribution. And a community of God that is more diverse than its Jewish roots. The incarnation, of God being flesh and blood and living among us, may include the foretaste of heaven, not being somewhere else but here; Where the Garden of Eden is, where Jesus dwells among us, Where God dwells in Zion on earth, with the new heaven and new Earth and new Jerusalem descending from the heavens onto Earth. The dwelling of God dwells with us. Zion the place where God dwells being here on this magnificent planet, with us as God’s magnificent people. We are not waiting to live resurrected lives but live this life into resurrection. CONCLUSION Christmas is a call for us to be present, as God is present to us through Jesus born to Mary and Joseph, to live among us. Christmas is Zion, where God dwells with us because we are ‘good’ and the earth is ‘good.’ God’s plan is not to discard us or the planet but to live in partnership with us to; reuse, renew, revitalize and to ‘Comfort.’ What we know about God is foundational and has held faith for us through generations. So, like the Judaism that Christianity is born from, or the Catholicism that the Protestants reformed, or the church that the Holy Spirit revived, and this is what we have something to evolve from, and blossom into today. There is a leveling, a rising up and a bringing down of our openness to how God wants to work in our world through the church today. “Comfort, O comfort my people” to be open to the compassion of God to “reverse one’s mind, one’s feeling and one’s state” for what is next to come.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Pastor robbSermons Archives
May 2024
|