(a sermon preached in St Lens 10 Dec 2023 Advent 2)
*Comfort ye my people, speak ye tenderly unto Jerusalem! (Handel’s Messiah)
Marvelous! Comfort ye my people! What a great way to start Handel’s Messiah. Of all the scriptures in the whole bible and Handel goes and picks this one as the opening line to a wonderful work that sings scripture after scripture of the transforming redeeming love of God in Jesus.
Comfort my people, Speak tenderly – this is a good place to start.
The context here is 700bc and most of the Tribes of the family of God are in Exile, and those who are in Jerusalem are not having a good time either.
They could really do with some good news.
It might be that you could do with some good news. Then pray for open ears and an open heart to hear it, receive it, do something with it.
Prophets – we tend to use this word to mean ‘Foretelling’ – telling what is going to happen in the future. That’s not quite right. And alas Christmas doesn’t help because we tend to remind everyone of the prophecies that foretold ‘Where the Messiah was to be born’, that the messiah would be ‘Immanuel, God with us’, that a ‘virgin would conceive’ and so on. So we don’t help ourselves here.
But most prophets in the bible spend most of their time telling us about what is on God’s heart. Not about what is going to happen when and how. Okay sometimes this means that the prophets do talk quite a lot about sin, and how if we carry on being horrible to the Orphans, the widows, the Foreigners, if we continue to hide behind our pretense of a religion whilst taxing the poor – then we should not be surprised if this all ends in tears.
And this is why no one likes prophets. If God ever asks you to be a prophet, my advice would be to say “Thank you but no, I’ve seen what they do to prophets, no one will thank me, no thank you!”
Isaiah is told by God to tell his people good news that God is coming back to them. The people hearing this would have been tired, bruised, people. They will have felt abandoned, yes by God but also by their kings and their priests.
Isaiah’s message is a simple one, that God has not forgotten them, that God is coming for them, The message is, very much like the angels – Don’t be afraid, Here is your God!
So step one is wherever you are do your best to be a Comfort, to speak tenderly into people’s hurts.
Not to belittle their pain, not to explain it away, but to urge them to hold on to some of the Comfort that God has given you. And we do that by listening and speaking tenderly.
Step two is to Pre-e-e-pare ye the way of the Lord – (Godspel)
We often talk about the importance of your need to find God. But most of the examples in the bible show God finding us. Parable of the lost sheep, lost coin – yes? Okay the lost son, the prodigal son -is a bit of both.
Isaiah is talking about God coming to us. All the prophecies talk about God coming to us.
I suppose with Zacchaeus we could argue over who found who – but its really Jesus who found Zacchaeus first, and then you might say Zacchaeus found Jesus.
What was it for you? And if Jesus hasn’t found you yet then keep listening.
For me, I was in the middle of my confirmation service (13years)– the bishop said ‘DO you turn to Christ?’ And I thought, ‘I don’t know’. But I do know that God has been with me through some turbulent times and so Okay, lets do this, ‘YES I turn to Christ’.
Did I find Christ? I rather think that Jesus had already found me.
Step one is about the importance of being Comfort, of speaking tenderly, and that will involve some deep listening.
Step two is about allowing God to find you, making straight in the desert a highway for God.
We do make things difficult for ourselves. I remember asking someone in a youth group I used to run about their new boyfriend – ‘oh you wouldn’t like him, she said, he smokes, he drinks, he swears a lot’.
And I thought well that’s a good start, you’re already telling me I wont like him, you’re already presuming that I don’t like Those sort of people, you’re putting quite a lot of prejudices on to me.
I actually never did meet her boyfriend. But it did get me wondering about the presumptions that she might have about whether she thinks God would like her new boyfriend?
If she presumes that God wont, then not only will she not invite that boyfriend to an alpha course, a carol service, but as likely as not she might start to think that God doesn’t like her either so maybe she wont come.
Gosh we do over think these things, we do put prejudices onto God that God would rather we didn’t do that.
Make straight paths. IN a bible book called The Acts of the Apostles, just as the Church is starting to get going, its struggling with people who aren’t as Jewish as most people, they don’t know the bible very well, they might not be circumcised, we don’t think God likes these people. But God says, through the Holy Spirit, and the Church concludes – we should not make it difficult for those who are turning to God. And you and I are here, quite literally because of that decision.
I wonder what prejudices we do actually have that we need to repent of and to ask God to help us not to put those up as a barrier. I wonder what presumptions other people have of our prejudices – we must pray that they come to see this God who wants to come to them, to speak tenderly, to comfort them.
So Step one is to Comfort people, speak tenderly.
Step two is to make straight in the desert a highway for God. How can we make it easier for God to find me, you, to refresh us, to bring us His good news.
Dear God give us open ears and an open heart
Isaiah is prophesying Good News. And we could do with some of that.
And That’s how Mark’s Gospel starts. The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ.
So John is doing his bit to help make a straight path. He’s doing it by preaching a message of New Starts. That God is offering a new start – so come and show that you want to be in that by immersing yourself, its like a wild Mikveh, the original form of Jewish baptism.
Now John looks the real deal, a wild man, with a wild diet – you and I would be impressed – but you and I, we’re not like John.
The call to make straight paths, that’s going to look different for each of us. But it must start with me myself, with you.
So look at another John – he was called John Mark and he wrote this Gospel, we think with St Peter’s help.
So Mark’s way of making things straight is to write this Gospel.
You can read more about him in the Acts of the Apostles where you’ll find he went with St Paul and St Barnabas on some of their missionary journeys.
But something happened. Paul could only put up with so much of Mark but Barnabas wanted to encourage Mark and the whole thing got so out of hand and Paul and Barnabas split.
I find this encouraging. That St Mark did something, didn’t do something, and it resulted in Paul and Barnabas having a sharp disagreement.
You will try being the best saint you can be. But that might still result in sharp disagreements with other saints. I think Barnabas was right to persist with St Mark because I think that this Gospel came out of it.
Perhaps Mark wasn’t cut out for the life of a travelling missionary, perhaps he was more cut out to be a Gospel writer.
You might not be cut out for wearing Camel shirts and being like John the Baptiser,
You might not be cut out for being a Gospel writer like John Mark. That’s okay.
But you will still have to find your way of making a straight path, of not making it difficult for those people who are looking for a new start, for meaning and purpose in their lives.
What we find in Mark’s Gospel is that page after page we come across people whose lives are changed, transformed, by their encounter with Jesus. Perhaps healing, perhaps a miracle, perhaps some teaching, certainly a calling.
Perhaps the place to start is to make sure that you are found, that you have begun to receive this good news, that you have encountered the living God, in Christ Jesus, – do that in worship, in the sacrament, in prayer and in further prayer. And you will find Jesus as you read this gospel. And you’ll find that Jesus had already found you.
Then with the beginnings of this Good News in you, you’ll have the power to be a comforting presence, to speak tenderly, and you’ll find your voice, to help make a straight path, to say, as Isaiah did, as the Angels do, Do not be afraid, Here is your God, Here is your God. Amen.