“COMFORTED”

A Sermon Based Upon Isaiah 40: 1-11

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

First Sunday of Advent (B),   December 7th, 2014

“⁵ Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken." (Isa 40:5 NRS)

Romanian born Jewish American Eli Wiesel, survived the horror of several Nazi concentration camps, including Buchenwald and Auschwitz.   Recounting the humiliation of those terrible camps, won him the Nobel Peace Prize.  One moment was most discomforting:

 “Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive….But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing...

And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes.   And we were forced to look at him at close range.

He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still
red, his eyes not yet extinguished.

Behind me, I heard the same man asking:
"For God's sake, where is God?"
And from within me, I heard a voice answer:
"Where He is? This is where--hanging here from this gallows…”

(https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/265616-la-nuit).

THIS QUESTION IS TIMELESS
In the extreme dark moments of our lives, we’ve all wonder, “Where Is He?”

Last week, we spoke of how God’s people returned to what was once their homeland.   Once they were crying beside the waters of Babylon, but now they are weeping by the waters of the Jordan.   As they saw what had happened to their homeland during their almost 60 years away, again they ask:  Where is He?  When will God ‘tear open the heavens and come down?’   They still have faith, but they need comfort.  How will they go on?

Can you imagine what that would be like, to come home and find you have no home?   It can happen and it has.  Even at Christmastime, families have come home to fires that destroyed everything.   Several years ago, Madonna Badger, a New York Fashion executive lost both parents and her 3 precious young daughters in terrible Christmas fire.  I pray that kind of tragedy doesn’t happen to any of us, but we all can recall moments when events have threatened to take our lives from us.  Sometimes, even if you still have a home, wrote Asheville writer, Thomas Wolf, “You can’t go home again!”   He was writing about the changes in America during the 1920’s and 30’s.  He spoke of the changes in society and the changes in people that come over time.  He understood what we all come to understand:  Things change.  People change.  The world changes.   Old things pass away.  New things are always on the rise.  Even when the changes are good, it can be hard to cope.  Christmas is still Christmas, but it’s never like it used to be.   Life is in constant change.  Families change.  People change.  Things are never the same.  Can an unchanging God bring us ‘comfort and joy’ amid the fires of change in our lives?’

One of the greatest texts found in all of Scripture begins, “Comfort ye,  Comfort ye my people!”   The prophet stands right there with the people, surveying the ruins of everything that once was, but is no more.   He’s reading the people’s minds, saying to them, “Hear ye, or Comfort ye”,  he says.   “I know it all looks bad.   I know things how it once was, but take comfort.   Let me give you a good word.   There is a silver lining here.  At least the war is over.   Your sin is gone.  The punishment is finished.   You’ve paid your dues.  God is making a new highway, even in this God-forsaken wilderness.  Things may not look good.  Things may not feel good.  But serving God will your lives better, even when it doesn’t feel like it.   “The glory of the LORD has revealed this!”   The mouth of the LORD has spoken this, says the preacher.

“Yea, Right!  A voice calls out (vs. 6).   We’ll be dead before it gets better.   “All flesh is like grass…”   Here today and gone tomorrow.   Do you know how long it stays green in a desert wilderness?  Life has about as good a chance there as a snowball in Hades.   And this is not just some skeptic talking, but it’s how God’s people saw and felt about everything:   “The word of God might ‘stand forever’, but we surely won’t.   Everything that goes around comes around, but we won’t live to see it.  Where’s is the comfort and the joy?   Have you ever been in this kind of wilderness?  Have you ever been that voice?  

These are discomforting times.  We survey our world.   We read the morning paper.  We watch the evening news.  We observe the trends.   I spoke to a pastor in church that has grown large in recent years.   “I guess all churches are in decline”, these days, he said.   Even his church has finally found the slump.    Hearing that reminded me of Peter Seeger’s song from the sixties,  “Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing.”   That song gets even more somber, as it recalls the sufferings and sacrifices of a senseless war:  “Where have all the young girls gone?  Where have all the husbands gone?  Where have all the soldiers gone---Gone to the graveyards everyone?   Oh when will they ever learn?  When will they ever learn?  

Peter Seeger, of the popular folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, says he got the idea for that song from reading a book about the Don River in Russia and the Cossacks who lived along it in the 19^th century.  They too went off to join the Czar’s army, singing as they went.  Most of them would never return.  Three lines from the book, are quoted in the song: ‘Where are the flowers? The girls plucked them / Where are the girls? They’re all married / Where are the men? They’re all in the army.’     Those lines inspired a song of human protest---protest about the harsh realities of unending wars, unending bloodshed, and unending strife--- lives ruined and lost far too soon.  (http://www.metrolyrics.com/where-have-all-the-flowers-gone-lyrics-peter-paul-mary.html).

WHAT COMFORT DOES GOD GIVE?
We wonder: Where is it going?  Where did our lives go?   Can it get better?   Can anything bring us lasting comfort?   What will renew our joy?   Especially when it comes to our faith, where it the comfort and the joy?   

A recently released Christian film, entitled “God is Not Dead” evidently touched a nerve with a lot of people.   Perhaps it offers comfort amid the growing confusion and complexities of our times.   Even though attendance is down, churches are emptying, and people are losing faith,  maybe it’s not as bad as it seems.   Maybe, just maybe, Hollywood can bring us some comfort.  Maybe Hollywood can save the day and get the ‘true’ message out—since the Bible and the church aren’t doing so well---especially for our youth.   That could be it, don’t you think?  This movie specifically picks on educated people, even though statistics tell us that “matters of faith” fair better among the educated than among the uneducated.   But when things are going right, you gotta blame somebody.  Might as well pick on somebody who thinks they know something, right?

In the movie, a student is being forced, by his atheist professor, to sign a declaration that “God Is Dead.”  If this Christian student wants to get a passing grade, he must sign.  But “Josh”, the main character, refuses.  He’s the only student in the class who won’t sign.  Then the professor requires Josh to a debate to whether or not it is sensible to say that God exists.  The rest of the students in class will decide who wins the debate and that will determine Josh’s fate. 

Josh is given 20 minutes at the end of each class period to make his case.  After his first two debates, the professor has countered all of his arguments.  Josh is losing ground, not just in the debate, but with his friends, and his girlfriend too.     In the final debate, both Josh and his professor make their points, but Josh concludes with a question directed straight at the professor:  “Why Do you Hate God?”  After Josh restates his question twice, the professor explodes in rage, answering that he hates God because God let his mother die, God did not answer his prayers, and God left him all alone.   (Interestingly, the professor talks like a lot of honest Christians who struggle too).   Then Josh turns to ask the shaken, angry professor, one final question:  “How can you hate someone who doesn’t exist?” 

With the professor only able to stand in silence, another student from a foreign country, seizes this moment of weakness and stand’s up to say: “God is not Dead!”   Most of the class begin to chant with him, “God is not Dead!”  “God is not Dead!”  “God is not dead!   The electric feel of ‘comfort and joy’ and triumph are in the air.   The atheistic professor leaves the room in defeat.  As the movie comes to a close, the professor has been seriously injured in a car wreck, but before he dies, but a pastor comes to his bedside and leads him to faith.   God is not Dead!   God is not Dead!  The cheers try to give us some comfort and some joy.  Will it work?   Can Hollywood finally do for us what the Bible, the preacher and the church can’t?  

As a child, my parents advised me not to believe everything I saw at the movies.  “It’s just Hollywood”, they’d say.   But I wonder what my parents would say when God goes to Hollywood?   I wonder what my Father would say when more go looking for God at the movies than actually read their Bibles?  I know what my Father would say: “Son, they never get it right in the movies!   That’s what he always said, whenever Jesus appeared on the big screen.  

My Dad knew the Bible.  He’d never been to Hollywood, but you couldn’t fool him.  To see it in the movies, to see it up there in lights, or when hear a movie star’s witness, or see a Football player praying on the field, this is when it becomes more blessed to see it than to believe in it.  Isn’t that when we finally find the ‘comfort’ and then the ‘joy’ we desperately need?   It is about ‘our comfort’ isn’t it?  And if the Bible can’t do it alone, if the church won’t bring it home, or if the preacher can’t provide the right tone, let Hollywood bring it on, right?   As the song says, “Let every heart prepare him room, Let Hollywood and nature SING!  Let Hollywood and nature sing!   Hollywood can bring us comfort, right?  It can bring Jesus to us, just the way and when, we need him most.

But what if it doesn’t?  What if comfort comes, not when we are made comfortable, but what if comfort comes, even in our discomfort?  Isn’t that what Isaiah wants them to discover.  Even in a wilderness, and even when life is in ruins around you, “the glory of the Lord” is not stopped from being revealed.  In fact, it might be the ‘discomfort’ that reveals it.

Several years ago when I was a missionary, the Jesus film was very popular.   As missionaries, our leaders encouraged us to show that movie to unbelievers in Europe.   It had been shown with remarkable success in Africa, and other places.  Maybe it could impact Europe too.

 We had been showing movies with spiritual themes, although not overly religious to our youth group.  I thought to myself, “Well, it might be a good idea to show this “Jesus Film” to my youth group.  They had been meeting in our home and were now meeting weekly at the church.  They were wonderful, smart, intelligent, and fantastic youth.   We tried to make them feel as “comfortable” around religion and matters of faith as much as we possibly could.   Again, we wanted them to feel ‘comfortable’, and not to be ‘discomforted’ or ‘uncomfortable’ about matters of faith and life.   Most of them had never known a Christian before.  Besides, they had heard some bad things about religion from their communist upbringing.  They were still cautious, but they were at least open.   We didn’t want them to be disturbed by “Matters of Faith!”

Then came the night we showed the Jesus Film.   It all went well through the retelling of the story of Jesus.  Even though the story covered some of the miracles, it was done in good taste.  It was not too much “Hollywood”.  We got those ‘material’ minded socialists even through the dramatic showing of the resurrection of Lazarus.   It all made me nervous, but so far, so good.  Again,  I wanted them to be ‘comfortable’. 

But then we came to the Resurrection of Jesus.  I thought the movie did a good job of not over dramatizing it.   It just showed the side angle of an unclothed man, quickly getting up and walking out into the light.   That was it.  No explanation.  No Drama.  Whew!  I thought to myself.  We got through it.  Then, as soon as I had that thought, two of the youngest  teenage girls (both grew up atheists) got up and walked out.  I didn’t think I’d ever see them again.   The whole thing made them and me uncomfortable.   Those girls were so smart, so curious, and so caring.   I didn’t want to lose them.   I didn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable.  Fortunately, after a little while one of them did come back, and did see the other one too, but it was much less.   The film didn’t do everything I wanted it to do. 

Later, when I finally got to ask why they walked out, they answered that when they watched a dead man get up on right before their eyes, it was against everything they had ever been taught or known about reality.  It called everything they believed and knew as ‘truth’ into question.  It pushed them over the edge.  More than anything else, they were afraid of what their parents might say.  They just couldn’t be comfortable with it.  The strange feeling I had was that they were right.   Sometimes, what I believed didn’t make me comfortable either.

        

TRUE COMFORT IS IN GOD HIMSELF
When I started preaching, it was the preacher’s job to ‘comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable.’    The problem comes in decided when to do what, figuring out who is who, and when is the right time for which?  Are you the one who needs comfort, or are you the one who needs to have your “comfort” kicked in the seat of the pants?   

Interestingly, I don’t think any preacher, any story teller, or any movie maker has the skill it takes to decide who needs afflicting and who needs comforting.   Life is just too complex.   I also don’t think we always know what we need either.  I do know that sometimes, what I need, even more than comfort, is to allow myself some space for discomfort.   As a people, as a society, and even as a church, as strange as it sounds, our comfort is not always found in seeking or finding comfort.  In fact, when we have to get what we want, or hear what we want to hear, we may never know the greatest comfort.

Take the apostle Paul as an example.   When Paul came to believe in the resurrected Jesus, it didn’t make him feel comfortable at all.   I don’t know if Paul ever felt comfortable again, really, that is, after he met Jesus.    That’s what the book of Acts seems to tell us, and it’s not just telling us that about Paul, but about the early church too.   People didn’t settle for comfort, when they found the truth.   In fact, when the truth came to Paul, he didn’t see anything, while he was on the road, but he did hear a voice.   Just like the prophet in the wilderness, Paul heard a voice.  Paul didn’t see Jesus come up out that grave, but he only saw a blinding light, which resulted in him seeing nothing---nothing at all.   All he experienced was a voice that came questioning everything he was doing and believing.  It wasn’t a bit comfortable.  The voice that came was a ‘discomforting voice’ that came complaining to him, “Saul, Saul, why are hurting me?    Instead of making Paul feel warm and fuzzy, the voice made him feel ashamed and uncomfortable.    You might say it even sounded like his mother.

Where Paul did find his comfort, that is, before Jesus came to him, was when he was killing people.   When Paul was seeking only his own comfort, he thought he had everything together and didn’t need to hear anyone else.  When Paul had his own version of comfort, Paul didn’t realize it, but Paul only believed a lie.  Only when he let voice disturb him, only then, did he come to discover the true voice he needed to hear.    Paul did not run away from that voice, either.   He did not become embarrassed or skeptical.   It was this ‘discomforting’ reality of a Resurrected Jesus that so arrested his life that it ‘blinded him’ to everything else.  As a result, he not only gave his life to Jesus, but he kept living for Jesus, even when he was beaten, even when his life was threated, and even when his own head was on the chopping block. 

 After he heard that voice, Paul was never comfortable again, and that’s what saved him.   He did not find ‘comfort’ in the voice, but he found truth, challenge and with that came contentment in all things.    Paul’s salvation came when he stopped to listen to the disconcerting, uncomfortable, but challenging voice of God’s saving, redeeming, but also challenging grace.    It wasn’t a ‘grace’ that told him everything he wanted to hear, but it was grace that told him what he needed to hear, and he allowed himself the grace to listen.  Only in this ‘disconcerting’ and ‘uncomfortable’ voice was “the glory of the LORD …. revealed”.  The voice that saved him, did not sooth him until it first shook him, all the way to his core.

Which voice will save you?  What will be the voice that sings in your life to give you comfort and joy this holiday season?   Will you hear the voice in the glamor or glitter of the moments?  Will you find a strange kind of sadistic comfort in all the whining voices shouting negatively that : “All Flesh is like grass…..”   “We haven’t got a chance.”   Are you going to stay down in that valley observing and complaining about it all?   Maybe you will find some other source of comfort?  A movie?   A drug?  A drink?  A crutch, or some other manufactured rush?  Will it bring you your only source of comfort?     Or will you hear the voice that says, “Get up on a high mountain?”  “Bear the good news!”  “Lift up your voice.”  Lifting isn’t taking the easy way to comfort, is it?   Will you ‘bear it?” Will you lift it up?  Or better yet, as the prophet concludes, will you let the one with the voice and the word, ‘bear you up’? 

This word from the prophet’s words end with an even greater challenge, not only to listen to God as a voice crying in the wilderness, but for us to come to trust God as our ‘Shepherd’,  as a good shepherd who will “gather us as his lambs’ and be our comfort, even when life becomes ‘confusing’ and ‘frightful’ around us.   For you see, the source of Paul’s comfort, and the source of the prophet’s comfort, is not what’s going on around them, but it’s what’s going on inside of them.   We’ll never find comfort, until we let the voice gather and shepherd us, both in good times, as well as, in bad. 

As a child, one of the last things I remember saying to my Father was,  “Daddy, will you carry me!”  As he would pick me up, he would say, “Son, you’re getting about too big to carry.”   I didn’t want to hear that.  It was discomforting, thought I knew it was true.  I needed to walk on my own two feet.  Now, in my heart, when life is gets confusing and uncomfortable, I secretly say much the same,  “Father in Heaven, will you carry me?”   Can you hear the answer?  No matter how the answer comes, the answer now, is much like the answer then.  The answer was in the voice.   Where do we find comfort?   I find it in the voice.

Heavenly Father,  help me to find the comfort I need, not in the comfort I want, but in your the comfort that I find in hearing and following your voice.   Amen.