Comfort and Demand Broad Street Presbyterian Church
Isaiah 40:1-11 December 8, 1974
Matthew 2:1-11 John McCormick Buchanan

I do not ordinarily like to use a sermon_as_a commercial, but this evening
at 8:00 P.M. something very special will happen in this Sanctuary. As I have

overheard various components rehearsed last week, my appetite has been_whetted.

And I urge you, unapologetically, to be here this evening to experience

George Frederick Handel's Messiah.
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If you anyhere you will notice that the first voice will sing words of

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the Old Testament Lesson this norning.| couched very delicately and gently

the tenor voice will announce( "Confort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your

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God."']Handel chose his theology well, for that is perhaps the dominant Advent

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| God is about to intercede in the history of His people: \coa is about
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to do something that will be redeeming and healing and comforting | a theology

of Isaiah 40 is Christmas theology, and as Christians we maintain that God

did act redemptively centuries later in the birth of Jesus Christ.

But there is an intriguing story behind the ancient _wordse-the familiar

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and yet relevant story of the Exite.|so let us go back through history to
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the sixth century 3.0. | 1¥e geographical points are important: Jerusalem and
\ ay + by “Babylonian acaniet

Babylon.| Jerusalem was in ruins; the! temple destroyed as a result of a very

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foolish military advent e,| sereniat had warned that it would happen, but he

had added the promise that through the disaster God would restore what had

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been destroyed, and that God's people would be re-established on the basis
of a new covenant =| but: then history took one of those curious_twists which

upsets everything.\The victorious Babylonians did not perform according to

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the seript.|Rather than occupying the land and exacting severe tribute, they

carried off the leaders of Judah to Babylon:

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the aristocracy, politicians, priests.|mhe idea was a good one and it

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almost worked.\Rather than allowing the Jews to retain their deep ties to
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the land and the culture, their captors counted on them being assimilated

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witk Babylonian culture \ they were given a minimum of freedom in Babylon:

what military might could never do, time would accomplish \ The Jews, for

their part, settled down in their exiled captivity to wait.| Jeremiah had

promised - God would do something. --.. . >

And then nothing:| fifty years of waiting: \five decades of silence.\that's

a long time to wait:\ transpose it to the twentieth century: |1924:\ an intolerably
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long time to wait for anything, But beyond the sheer length of the wait, the

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implications of the exile often, I think, elude us.\at the time, a nation
which was defeated militarily and whose sacred Temple was sacked was shown

to be a nation with a false cod,\ 10 the ancient Near East it was believed

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that the gods did battle: | and that when the Jews were humiliated by their

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enforced exile it was God - Jahweh - who suffered the ultimate defeat.| and so

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there was more to that exile than inconvenience and homesickness. \re was a

theological crisis.

Fifty years of waiting.\risty years of silence: |a whole generation of

Jews died in the interim,|1 see bearded old men pouring over the Psalms and

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the Prophets, hoping against hope that their history wasn't siuke.\1 hear the

words of Psaba 137, that nostalgic lament:

( "By the waters of Babylon,

there we sat down and wept,

When we remembered Zion.

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?"
I see young men with families, tired_of waiting, tired of talking about waiting,

tired of the sentimental piety of old men.

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But then the silence was broken.\ someone back in burned-out Jerusalem
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saw a vision and wrote a letter, and somehow that letter got all the way

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across the desert to the exiled community in Babyton.\we don't know who the
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writer was, only that his letter is attached to the words of_an earlier

prophet and occupies the 40th through the 55th chapter of the Book of Isaiah.

The first statement he addressed to those lonely exiles was:

"Comfort, comfort my people,

Says your God,

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem

and cry to her that her

Warfare is ended: that her

iniquity is pardoned, that she

has received from the Lord's

hand double for ali her sins,"

Tf you are a captive, an old man waiting, that is very good news \ Literally,

in the nick of time, God's word comes to you as hope for_the tuture.\Goa_is

not dead - He has not been defeated = He still reigns ~ the promise will be

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kept.| To a depressed and captive people that is very comforting to know,

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But then the prophet talks about some kind of strange highway through

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the deserts/ valleys filled up and mountains brought tow.| those are road

bailding terms, and it sounded_to the exiled Jews as if God's comfort carried

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with it the demand for some rather _strenuous labor: \haxd, risky and dangerous
ork. [re"s one thing to hear that God is alive and wet: \ie's another thing
altogether to pick up family and belongings and start walking through the

wilderness,

And 1 can see those young family men, with friends in Babylon and

blossoming careers, dragging their feet a bit \ zamuna Steimle has them

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say: froerange contort!|o make a highway in the wilderness} Good God! Wasn't
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Babylon bad enough?/At least we're making ends meet, the children are in

school...and we have security!/And we are expected to throw all that over for

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a crazy highway in the wilderness?\Out of the frying pan into the fire?| what
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kind of comfort is this?" |(The Protestant Hour, December 1970. P. 12-13)

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Their forefathers, of course, had said the same thing | They were_captives

in Bgye | and a man by the name of Moses came up with a hair-brain scheme about

walking right out - right through the Red Sea and up through sinai | Hearing

the comfortable assertion that God is alive and well_is one thing, but this
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business about walking through the wilderness was a bit more than they

bargained for.

That is a major Biblical theme that keeps happening to od's people over
j Pp ppening to God's peop

and over again, \esd speaks a good word, and just as_His people sit_back to

enjoy it they find themselves out on a limb with Pharoh - or the Babylonians -

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or someone else sawing avay:\out on the limb with nothing but a handful of
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vague promises to break the gait | the Bible is full of that strange comfort.

Just as men start to enjoy the warm glow of God's love and their own salvation,

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they find themselves picked up by the scruff of the neck and pushed out into

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the wilderness.\Put in more proper term, salvation in the Bible is never an end
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in itself, an idea even the most rigidly Biblical Christians seem loathe to

acknowledge,\ God saves men in order to use them in the work He is doing:\ and
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that work is notorious for happening out there where it is not_very secure:
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where the landscape is uncharted:| where there are dangers and risks.
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And so we approach Christmas, the event in which God spoke and

acted in a way that perhaps would have surprised even the prophet | and
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the word for us is the sane: \confort and demand, only we're not particularly
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interested in venturing out into the wilderness at this time of year any
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more than those exiles were.
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Christmas is comforting in an important and profound way.| there is a
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goodness and hope about the birth of Jesus Christ that addresses something

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deep inside all of usi| something which we need \ To read the newspaper today
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is to be concerned about the guture. \Nen are still enthusiastically dispatching
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each other on every continent.| And in what is surely one of the most ixyonic \
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exercises in lekicityod heavela sigh of relief when our Secretary of State
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Agme to an understanding jwith the Russians on Arms Limitation last week, that
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generously allows both us and them a nuclear arsenal capable of obliterating

each other fifteen times over.

And that is not ait change is happening so rapidly within our own
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culture that we often feel like exiles in a foreign land.\Margaret Meade

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has observed that anyone born before the Second World War is an immigrant :| the

natives are our children And James Reston, writing in the New York Times
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several years ago put his finger on perhaps the lasting tragedy of the 1970's =

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"There is a sense of...ehelplessness and doubt about the fidelity of our
institutions || mis is something new in our national life - something very

dangerous to the American character...'"} (Oct. 28, 1970: cited by Steimle, ob cite p.11)

So we welcome December 25 as Balm in ctteas,| We need to be reminded that
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God is alive and there is hope for the human race.\we need to know that love
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is built into the universe and that the birth of a child twenty centuries ago
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still means that God identifies with us.
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In a world that changes so rapidly we can't keep uP, there is

comfort - necessary comfort in a celebration that is faniliar,| There
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is something reassuring about a Currier and Ives print of a New England
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Church on Christmas Eve, bundled families walking through clean snow.
There is something reassuring and good about singing \"'Away in the nega!)
with the children and remembering how it used to be sung with one's own
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parents.

Christmas does comfort us:| chri stnas meets a deeply felt need:| Christmas
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is needed reassurance that some_things have not changed and will not change.
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And it is very tempting to leave it at this - which is what a lot of
people will do.\ the Christmas season will be a pleasant intrusion of
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nostalgia, good will and generosity. |rt might be possible to stop there
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except for one thing = that strange highway in the desert ;\that insistant
Biblical theme that keeps demanding that men walk in the wilderness once
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they've enjoyed their comfort \We would prefer to confine the celebration to

an observance of a tender birth story, but we can't do that in integrity.

Because the Babe of Bethlehem grew_up and when He did He started talking about
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things like peace and love and sacrifice and brotherhood.
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The Wise Men were the first to experience ie. \mey came to the Bethlehem
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manger to welcome a cnita.|mey cemented themselves securely into tradition
by bringing gold, frankincense and nyerh .\rhedr Advent was spent anticipating,
traveling, and it was consummated in an unforgetable experience in a stable.

And then. ». they had to take another way home. \they couldn't _go by the main

road which led to Herod's palace,\Having seen the child, there was now danger
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and risk and grave responsibility.\Christmas_for them meant the necessiry of
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pushing out into the desert on an unknown route.
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I can remember being offended as a child to hear the minister

talking about the triumphal entry to Jerusalem and the crucifixion at

Christmas tine, \1 remember wanting to hear about stars and angels and Lambs
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and resenting it when he talked about conflict and suffering and death,
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And as a seminary student newly acquainted with the lectionary,- a list of
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scripture lessons assigned to each Sunday of the year, I remember surprise

in discovering that the lesson for the first Sunday in Advent was the Palm
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Sunday marrative.

I have learned subsequently the rightness and wisdom of that choice.\ ror
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that is how it is with the Christ chita \hat began at Bethlehem leads to
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the cross: |it is not far from manger to calvary \1o go to the manger and return
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by the same route is to miss the point.| ror Jesus Christ the man calls his
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people to follow Him out into a wilderness world - our wilderness J where men
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and women are hurting, where poor people are gettin poorer | where children
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die of malnutrition,

In the midst of the Cold War_mentality Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam of the

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Methodist Church preached a powerful Christmas sermon. \iits words probed deeply
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in 1955 and they still address us with penetrating relevance. \Listen_to what

he said: | "tanking must choose.\ There is a way begun in Bethlehem that will yet

uy,
lead to the healing of nations and the salvation of my soul \fe materialism of
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Marx cannot be beaten down by men whose materialism _puts things before men.\The

atheism of Marx cannot be destroyed by men who_act_as though God were not relevant
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to our economic and social life.\Mankind must choose.\ rt is not_a matter of
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piling gifts at the feet of Mary's son.\rt is a matter of giving our hearts
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to the Son of coa"\ nest Sermons 1955 Edition, P.117)

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8.

We are on our way to Christmas - to comfort, reassurance, good will
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and good cheer | put Christmas is no more our destination thah the Bethlehem
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stable was for the Magi \Rather it is for us, as it was for_them, the
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point of departure, Using the prophet's idiom, it is the beginning of a

road through the wilderness \ Using a more personal idiom, it is a time to

reflect on God's love, God's mercy, God's complete identification with us -

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and then to rededicate ourselves to the risky assignment of following God's

son on whatever road He chooses to lead us. '

Comfort and demand:\ celebration and sacrifice\ salvation and hard work.
= —aer [=a =—— —e

That is the rhythm of the Gospel of Jigsus Christ on this and every day.

"For to us a Child is born,

to us a son is given:

and the government will be upon his shoulder,
and his name will be called,

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace"

Amen.
Qur Father, we are on the way to Bethlehem, We're getting ready to feel better
about ourselves and each other and the world than we have felt all year. We are
grateful for that. We are grateful for the warmth and love and comfort of this
season, But help us, Father, to see beyond the manger to the cross. Irritate
us, even now, with your insistant demand, so that we follow along the road
of service and love and courage and sacrifice. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.