Gathering: Comfort
God’s Comfort Surpasses All Understanding
Isaiah 40:1-11
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. December 6, 2020
A Charlie Brown Christmas has been on network television for the Christmas season for 54 years. The majority of Americans do not remember a time before that depressing little tree and Hark the Herald Angels Sing. But this year Apple bought the rights to all the Peanuts specials, and so A Charlie Brown Christmas will only be available by streaming. I’ve heard a lot of people bothered by this move. For them watching A Charlie Brown Christmas was a tradition. Buying the special on DVD isn’t enough, it’s about gathering that evening and watching the special with the advertising. It’s about being connected to past memories. It’s about the comfort of knowing no matter what’s going on in the world, the tree will be decorated, Linus will give his monologue, and the kids will shout “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!”
This season is full of sentimental comforts like A Charlie Brown Christmas. We do not watch Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town for the plot or great acting. We don’t fear Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer won’t make his way back to Santa. And we don’t worry that the Grinch might, this time, steal Christmas. These specials remain because they remind enough people of their childhood. And for that they are comfortable. The Hallmark Channel has made an empire telling the same story over and over because it’s a comfortable story, no one’s ever afraid the girl might not settle in to the small town with the man of her dreams and celebrate Christmas together.
Christmas specials, old carols, hot chocolate, the warm glow of the lights on the tree, we make Christmas a sentimental season of comfort. But to be honest with you, I don’t know if I can watch enough of It’s a Wonderful Life to get into that sentimental Christmas spirit. Not even Die Hard can do the trick. Maybe for a blip, maybe for a moment, but we are in a Christmas like no other. This is a Christmas where we need hope more than nostalgia. Where we need a different sort of comfort than the warm glow of sentimentality. We need a comfort that can only come from God.
This morning Isaiah says, “Comfort, O Comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” God speaks “comfort” and I think we all long to hear that this morning. A comfort that comes from forgiveness. The comfort of a tender parent. The comfort of God’s lovingkindness, tender heartedness, and mercy.
Last week I spoke of the power of sin, and how sin is not just a matter of doing bad things but sin also comes with a consequence. Sin alienates, it divides, it tears us apart. Ancient Israel experienced this aspect of sin. They turned from God to idols, they turned from justice to injustice, they turned from righteousness to sin, and they were torn apart. They were scattered. They were made to stand alone in a strange land. They experienced exile.
But in spite of it all God speaks “comfort.” A comfort that is not just feeling better about our experience of exile, but the end of our exile. “A voice cries 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 be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, And all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
A highway! For the exiles this highway was from Babylon to Jerusalem. All the obstacles in wilderness were to be done away. The uneven ground made level, the rough places a plain. Their exile was to be undone, the shackles of their oppression broken, they were to be made God’s people again. Not on any account of their own righteousness, or the things that they did, but on account of God’s righteousness and God’s love for them.
This same word may be given to us today. We too may know the comfort of God. A comfort that is greater than a warm blanket or a hot chocolate or a Christmas special. A comfort that not only makes us feel better, but a comfort that makes our lives better. The comfort of God’s grace that would draw us back to him. The comfort of God’s forgiveness, of his love, and of being united with him with his family.
God’s plan for sin is not to leave us scattered, not to leave us in the exile of sin. But God’s plan for sin is to break it and to bring us back together in him. That is why he sends his son, whose coming we celebrate this Christmas. To draw us together, to die for our sake, that we might live in him.