Sermon for December 7, 2008 2 Advent Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8 by Jim Neal In this busiest time of year, O God,
 we come here this morning to be reminded of your love,
 your gift of grace, your incarnation.
 We come to be reminded again of your advent and your mysterious coming into the world in Bethlehem, but also into our hearts in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Someone once said that Christmas is all about God. Advent is probably equally so, because it is the season of beginnings, of preparation for the coming of God into closer identification with God's creatures here upon the earth. Advent means "coming" and nowhere is that concept forecast or even dramatized with more telling effect than in the writings of the prophet Isaiah in the sixth century before Christ was born: "Comfort, O Comfort my people, says your God." "Speak tenderly to Jerusalem." "Comfort, O Comfort to my people." That is the God of Israel speaking; that is your God speaking; that is my God speaking. The Israelites were approaching seventy years of exile in Babylon. They were in need of a word of comfort. Among those who would be liberated were some of the original exiles who remembered the comfort of their homeland. There were also those who had never lived outside of captivity; they only knew of their homeland through the stories of the elders. Questions about Israel's status as God's chosen people had undoubtedly arisen throughout these painful years. Had God forgotten Israel entirely, reneging on the promise to Abraham that through him all peoples of the earth will be blessed? These were homeless people living in a foreign land under foreign rulers with strange gods. They were discouraged, depressed, and powerless. It is our awareness of the emotional plight of these persons that can make these words, which are spoken to a people, a nation scattered far from home, become just as personal to each of us as individuals. Have you ever felt discouraged, depressed or powerless? When we look at the world in which we live, at times I feel in exile from the homeland of my childhood. Life seemed so much simpler back in the 40s and 50s in the Wood River valley of southern Idaho. But, now we can't help but share those same emotions: the economy; a world of war, hunger and sickness; these recent attacks on Mumbai, India, where many innocent people were killed -- some have called it India's 9/11. And what about our personal lives, our families, our friends, our neighbors? Every time we turn around we are confronted with another loved one who is confronting cancer, dementia, or financial

struggles. Has God forgotten us entirely, reneging on the promises of mercy and peace contained in today's Psalm, in the Lessons, and in the Gospel? It was no accident that George Frederick Handel chose the text from Isaiah 40 as the introductory aria for his magnificent composition, "The Messiah." He wanted to get the immediate attention of the listeners, and he succeeded. The first words sung are words of comfort and hope. They penetrate the air and impact upon the audience at a concert in a way similar to their purpose when written to a depressed and desolate people in exile. What makes this such a powerful passage is not only its poetic quality and its literary beauty, but the intimately personal relationship which had historically existed between the speaker, Yahweh, and the hearers, the exiled people of Israel. This was no stranger or foreign god speaking through Isaiah. This was the God and Father of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. This was family speaking, yet the same One who is the creator, ruler, and sustainer of the universe, the one true living God. The God of the universe is a personal God who is aware of distress, brings comfort, speaks tenderly, endures forever, and, like a shepherd, feeds, carries, and leads with gentleness. This image painted by the words at the end of today's reading from Isaiah marks a significant progression and maturity in religious thought in the development of the Hebrew faith, which culminates in the fleshing out of this promise in the form of Jesus, the Christ, the shepherd of the flock who will gather the lambs in his arms and gently lead. A people scattered far from home in need of being comforted. Does that strike a bell? It seems like our society has become a homeless society. In his book, "The Longing for Home," Frederick Buechner writes: "To be homeless the way people like you and me are apt to be homeless is to have had many homes in many places but not to be really at home in any of them. To be really at home is to be really at peace, at peace with ourselves and at peace with others." Buechner remembers his grandparents' grand home in Pittsburgh, where he and his mother and brother lived for a while after the trauma of his father's suicide. Buechner recalls the library with rows of books, the parlor, the portraits, the large moose-head on the wall, and "the smell of that house I remember best," he writes, "was the smell of cooking applesauce." Buechner says the older we get, the more we find ourselves remembering one particular home -- the home we knew and will always be homesick for. We each call our houses our home, but what memories, what images do we have when we think of that place our heart calls home, maybe the home of our youth or the home of our younger families.

When I reflect on this thought, I have trouble focusing on any one of my family's homes. We lived in six different houses while I was growing up, but my grandparents lived in the same house, the same home for all the many years I knew them. I remember the smell of my grandfather's gun cabinet where he also kept his fly-tying equipment; wonderful indescribable aromas. And I remember the smell of my grandmother's chicken and dumplings. I can even remember the taste. Now, I can also remember being with my grandfather when he killed the chickens and then soaked them in boiling water to pluck them; a terrible smell, but I loved what they did to gravy and dumplings. Think of the many songs written on this theme of home: "When Johnny comes marching home again."
 "I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams." "There’s no place like home for the holidays." "Swing low, sweet chariot, comin' for to carry me home." That song was sung originally by people, like the Israelites, forcibly and violently torn from their homes and villages in West Africa, transported in crowded, filthy ships into slavery in the United States. A people who, incredibly, accepted the religion of their oppressors as their own and refined it, made it a far better religion, by remembering their actual home and their ultimate home in a God who never forgets about anyone; a God whose gracious love and mercy extends to every man, woman, and child; a God who, at the end of the day, welcomes all the exiles, all the wanderers, all the lost, all the captive, home again: "If you get there before I do,
 Tell all-a my friends I'm comin' along too,
 Comin' for to carry me Home." To those exiled slaves, and hopefully to us, we are home where Christ is. The home to which we return, regardless of the geography of that place during this Advent season; home can be there, that simple manger scene where we know we belong, where we know once again the strong, saving news that there is One who loves the world so much as to be born into it, loves the world so much as to never give up on it, loves the world so much as to continue to work for redemption and peace in unexpected and surprising ways. That’s where we’re headed this Advent: Home, where we know ourselves to be loved and cared for and never forgotten—and ultimately, fully, safe, whole, at peace. Home. Think back in time. Do you have memories of a place or a time that your heart calls home? Think for a few moments on the images of your earlier homes and focus on a place of acceptance and comfort. The good news of Advent comes in those ancient words from Isaiah; in the words from the first verse of Handle's Messiah; as well as the words of our Gospel lessons:

Comfort, comfort my people -You are going home.
 A shepherd will lead you home,
 and carry the lambs, carry any who,
 for whatever reason, can’t make it on their own. John is saying one is coming who speaks tenderly and gathers up all who stumble and fall; all who are sick; all who labor and are heavily burdened; all who are weary or sad; all those who are ill and frightened; all whose illness is critical and final; all who are anxious and worried; all who are discouraged and depressed; all who are alone and lonely and homesick. One is coming who gathers them all up and gently leads them -all of them, all of us -- home. His parents were homeless, after all. They left their home in Nazareth to travel all the way to Bethlehem and after that to Egypt. In Bethlehem, they made a home for their child as best they could. They wrapped him in bands of swaddling clothes to keep him warm and secure. They laid him in a manger and watched over him and kept him safe.
 
 The Israelites would have heard two messages in that voice that cried out, "In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill will be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places, a plain." The journey from Israel to Babylon was over rugged mountains and rough terrain but the return trip would seem much easier, even if it was over the same route, because they would be going home. Also, those who doubted God's continued blessing on them would feel renewed and would make clean their hearts to be open to Gods guidance for this journey that they had only been able to dream of. Mark repeats this message: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." Mark is talking to us at this time of the year, as we prepare for the coming of the birth of Jesus. That is the purpose of Advent, a time of beginning again; and a time to prepare our hearts and our homes for this blessed season. I was at a Standing Committee retreat these past two days, but I wish I could have been at the Quiet Day yesterday. It sounds like it was a wonderful, guided opportunity to open our hearts for the Christmas presence of Christ this season. Perhaps we could say that John announces and Jesus delivers God's good gifts to humankind. Joseph and Mary must have had great expectations on that first Advent. A young couple, a man and a woman heavily pregnant, traveling many miles, over rough terrain, to return home, and when they arrive, making a home, a birth place in a cow stall, transforming a manger into a home into which we all, in some way, are invited to return.

While we might lack John's courage to prophesy, we might at least ponder like him a vision of the cross in the way a traditional Appalachian Christmas carol does it: "I wonder as I wander, out under the sky, how Jesus the Savior did come for to die for poor orn'ry people like you and like I; I wonder as I wander, out under the sky." The gospel depicts John as baptizer, and as preacher, but mainly as the one who points to the one who comes after him. This is the one Mark clearly identifies as "Jesus Christ, the Son of God", the reason for the season. Amen.