Comfort

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 40:1-11, Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13, 2 Peter 3:8-15a and Mark 1:1-8.

It is said that prophets have 2 jobs: to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Last week all of the selections in our lectionary were uncomfortable to hear. They were about times of judgment on God's people and about our staying alert for when Jesus returns to judge the world. They were about how people's sins become their own punishments, which, quite frankly, people need to be reminded of. During the early days of the AIDS crisis, gay activist Larry Kramer was not popular for pointing out to his own community that this disease was spread by promiscuity and unsafe sex. Yet sometimes people have to hear the disturbing truth. Look at the changes that came about when women in Hollywood and in corporations shared their uncomfortable stories in the #Me,Too movement. The video of George Floyd being suffocated over an excruciating 9 minutes got white people to take seriously the stories African Americans have been telling for centuries. And let me tell you, receiving an uncomfortable or even upsetting diagnosis is better than walking around with a vague sense that something is wrong.

Today we get some comfort. The diagnosis might be hard to hear but the prognosis is not hopeless. The Great Physician has a plan of treatment, which, while not always pleasant, leads to a cure. In Isaiah this takes the form of preparing the way of the Lord. He is speaking to the exiles in Babylon. The metaphor he is using is what people would do if a king were coming to visit. They would stake out, level and smooth the rough terrain along the highway he was going to take. So Isaiah is saying “As you would do for an earthly monarch, remove all the obstacles that come between you and God.” Of course, the obstacles in this case are moral and spiritual. In the very first chapter of Isaiah, God lists what the problems are. “Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New moons, Sabbaths and convocations—I cannot bear your worthless assemblies. Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood! Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong! Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” (Isaiah 1:13-17) There is a through-line between how we treat God and how we treat those created in his image. The people's worship of the God of justice and compassion was meaningless because it did not carry through to their lives and relationships with others. Their unjust and pitiless nation was easy pickings for the Babylonians. Now, after 70 years, the prophet tells the people that Judah “has served her term, that her penalty is paid, she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.”

So God is restoring the nation to its homeland and expects the people to get rid of the obstacles to his work in rebuilding the kingdom. The results will be appealing. “See the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him and his recompense before him.” The image is that of a conquering hero, returning with bounty to share with his people. And then the prophet switches from a military image to a pastoral one. “He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.”

The idyllic picture continues in Psalm 85. “Mercy and truth have met together.” Another translation goes, “Steadfast love and faithfulness have met together.” Both are possible for the Hebrew words have different shades of meaning depending on the context. Behind the word “mercy” is the Hebrew word “khesed.” It is frequently used of God's lovingkindness towards his people, expressed in his redemption of them from their enemies and their troubles, as well as from their sins, his saving them from death and his keeping of his covenants with Abraham, Moses and David. Similarly the word “emeth” means both “faithfulness” and “truth.” The underlying sense is one of reliability and stability, which both truth and faithfulness have. We can count on God's truth and kindness to never change.

The second part of that couplet goes “righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” The word “tsedek” means both righteousness and justice. The interesting thing about justice kissing peace or “shalom” is that sometimes there is a conflict between the two. Strict adherence to righteous justice can disturb the peace of a community because maintaining the peace means showing mercy at times. In Monroe County deputies have some discretion when deciding to arrest someone, taking into account the seriousness of the offense and whether it would endanger the person to be arrested or other people in the vicinity. An example would be a kid seen committing a minor offense, where it might be better to speak to his or her parents than to haul him to jail. God is just but merciful. As the psalmist says, “If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?” (Psalm 130:1) Another Psalm says, “He does not deal with us as our sins deserve; he does not repay us as our misdeeds deserve....As far as the eastern horizon is from the west, so he removes the guilt of our rebellious actions from us.” (Psalm 103:10, 12)

Only God can give us the perfect balance of righteousness and mercy, of justice tempered by love that leads to peace. Our part is repentance, turning from our sinful ways and returning to God. That's what John the Baptizer preached. Mark in his fast moving account doesn't give us much of John's message. Matthew shows how he afflicted the comfortable. “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them, 'You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.'” (Matthew 3:7-8) And his audience was in so much discomfort that they realized they must radically change their lives. They, Jews, so felt the need to repent that they were willing to be baptized, a rite for Gentiles converting to Judaism. They felt they must act as if they were coming to the faith for the first time.

John, however, realizes that he is just the herald of the king. The Messiah is coming and he is greater and more powerful than John. John realized that his baptism was not sufficient to really change who people were. “I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” In the Old Covenant, the Holy Spirit was reserved for people with special roles: prophets, priests, and kings. But the one who inaugurates and establishes the New Covenant will immerse all his people in God's Holy Spirit.

Because unchanged people cannot participate in the kingdom of God. You cannot have a community with a proper balance of justice and mercy and righteousness and peace and faithfulness and truth and love if the people in the community do not produce those fruits. As it is, those things develop at different rates and to different degrees in different people. How often have we seen people who had one virtuous quality or more in abundance but was lacking in certain other virtues? Most of our Founding Fathers were champions of liberty but not for African Americans or Native Americans. General Ulysses S. Grant was anti-slavery even before the Civil War and yet he issued a General Order to expel Jews from the portions of Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi under his control. That order was quickly countermanded by President Lincoln. Lincoln himself, while against slavery, did not think African Americans were the equals of Whites. Martin Luther King Jr. was a great civil rights leader and an adulterer. Albert Einstein was both brilliant and prodigiously unfaithful to his wives. We have the world we do in large part because even good people have bad behaviors and that destroys both peace and justice in our communities.

And, of course, we see this kind of moral contradiction in the church. And it goes back all the way to the beginning. Peter is the first to say that Jesus is the Messiah. But then he immediately contradicts God's Anointed by saying Jesus is wrong about being rejected and executed. (Mark 8:27-33) And he denies Jesus 3 times on the night of his trial. (Mark 14:66-72) This tendency doesn't disappear after the second chapter of Acts. Peter resists the three-fold vision of eating unclean animals that is preparing him to preach the gospel to Gentiles. (Acts 10) And at Antioch, Peter flipflops on whether he should eat with Gentile Christians and Paul calls him out on it. (Galatians 2:11-16) 

For his part, Paul has a hot temper. In the controversy over circumcision, he suggests that his opponents just go all the way and castrate themselves! (Galatians 5:12) He also falls out with his missionary partner Barnabas over his nephew John Mark, who leaves them mid-trip. (Acts 13:13) Paul will not take Mark on their next journey and so he and Barnabas never work together again. (Acts 15:36-40) Paul, who is grateful to God for forgiving his earlier opposition to Jesus, nevertheless will not give young Mark, who made a one-time mistake, a second chance. And yet later it seems that he and Mark do make up because in his second letter to Timothy he tells him to “Take Mark and bring him with you, because he is a great help to me in ministry.” (2 Timothy 4:11) The Spirit worked on Paul and helped him put his ministry of reconciliation into practice in his personal life.

Nobody in the church is a plaster saint, picture perfect. And yet God can use them and help them change into the people he created them to be. And that is a comfort to those of us who feel inadequate at times to serve God perfectly. If we let God's Spirit work in us, we will get ever closer to the person he wants us to become.

And our passage in 2 Peter gives us further comfort in that regard. At times it seems like God has forgotten about this world. It seems to be getting worse and worse and we start to wonder why God is not intervening in a major way, or at least sending his Son to wrap things up and set things right. After pointing out that the eternal God does not look at time as we do nor operate on our schedule, we are told, “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” He's giving us the time we need to change. The early Christians seemed to think that Jesus was returning in the first century, though he said the gospel must first be preached to the whole world and to all nations. (Matthew 24:14) The first Christians can be forgiven for not realizing how big the world is and how many nations and tribes and people there were even then. God is making sure that on the last day no one has the excuse that they didn't hear the good news about Jesus. Everyone will get a fair shot at responding to God's grace.

One side effect of this pandemic is that we have been worshiping and reading the Bible online, which can be seen worldwide. In fact on Facebook Live we get more views than we would normally have people in pews at this time of year. This allows our little church to help fulfill the Great Commission in a way not possible even 40 years ago, let alone 2000 years ago.

And it looks like we are going to have a fairly stripped-down Christmas this year. There won't be as many families gathering from the 4 corners of this country. There won't be office parties. We won't be singing Christmas carols in church. Our services will be small and socially distanced if not online altogether. And maybe, not being buried under all the usual trappings that have come to be mistaken for its meaning, the real message of Christmas will be heard more clearly.

And that message is ultimately our comfort. When everything God warned us about we did anyway and it all went wrong, God came as one of us, Jesus. He came not to punish us, but to heal, and to instruct us about God and his kingdom, and to give us the Spirit that would enable us to live in that kingdom. If you think about it, abstractions can't really meet together or kiss. People can: just and merciful and faithful and truthful people. Filled with God's Holy Spirit, such people can meet and kiss and live together in God's kingdom and know true peace.