Before the Comfort
Jay Rowland
Isaiah 40:1-11 (Psalm 85)
One of the major themes in the Old Testament is the social disruption and difficulties experienced by our religious ancestors, the Hebrew people, but also God’s faithfulness and guidance along the way. Exodus describes their suffering as slaves in Egypt, but also their deliverance by God through Moses leading them to freedom. In between the lines, we discover that God’s ways usually defy expectations and assumptions. For instance, all would agree that freedom is good and slavery is bad, but the process of extracting them from slavery involved unanticipated struggle and social upheaval: forty long years of living in transition, traveling on foot through the wilderness until they reached the land God chose for them.
Another major theme is the struggle of God’s people to trust and obey the God who adopted them, saved them and delivered them. From Exodus onward we learn of their settlement into a land of their own which is surrounded by warring nations and superpowers who have their own gods, customs, laws and expectations all of which clash with their identity as God’s people. Ultimately this results in the unimaginable invasion and destruction of their capital Jerusalem including the Temple where they believed God resided. It’s hard for us to imagine the trauma of living as an occupied territory, and the deportation of the best and the brightest religious, community and civic leaders, as well as artists, tradesmen, craftsmen, etc.
Today’s passage from Isaiah is addressed to these exiles “but also to people in all times and places who have experienced intense feelings of dislocation and anger about the way things are or about what they have suffered.”** The phrase that jumps off the page for me is God’s cry through the prophet, “Comfort, comfort my people”. We hear this every year during Advent. But for the first time it has dawned on me that the comfort we long for from God requires more from us than simply waiting passively for it to happen. For the first time I see in this passage that the process leading to the comfort of God’s people is just as messy as the process that created discomfort and suffering in the first place.
“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.”
I’m all-in on the good tidings implied announced by God first through Isaiah, then John the Baptist, that God is preparing a way home, a return from living in exile—both actual and metaphorical exile. Hearing this lyrical announcement every year during Advent I seem to have stopped paying attention. I’ve managed to overlook the possibility that these familiar words may describe the challenges yet to come, before the promised comfort, that the way “home” the journey to home and comfort involves a deep valley, a rough and twisting road, even a mountain standing in the way.
Perhaps it’s taken the upheaval of the COVID19 pandemic and the social, racial, and political upheaval of this past year to hear this announcement of comfort with different ears. This year the imagery of the prophet’s cry hit home:
wilderness … desert … valley … mountain … uneven ground … rough places
These terms, these images could sum up the year 2020. What my heart and spirit “hear” through Isaiah after this year is that perhaps we have yet to fully realize how much we have yet to learn about God’s promise of comfort and what it will take to get there from here.
It’s not as if life before the pandemic was without struggle or discomfort. It’s just that this year we’ve felt the sting of everyday losses much more deeply and devastatingly than ever before because of the overwhelming limits and impositions unleashed by this pandemic upon previously “normal” everyday life. Loss is always disruptive if not traumatizing. “Sometimes loss is sudden and searing. Sometimes it includes a long, aching decline. Sometimes loss comes from injustices that demand every possible individual and institutional redress. And sometimes loss just happens … by no fault of our own or anyone else: loss of work, loss of opportunities and dreams … seasons, semesters, ceremonies, … friendships, marriages, loved ones, identities, … able bodies, healthy minds, ... possessions,^ etc.
Whether or not we accept it, loss is part of life. But so is joy. And yet we seem to have an expectation that we’re supposed to figure a way out of (or around) loss and the suffering it inflicts, as if loss is some sort of accident or foreign evil rather than a natural, fundamental component of life.
Sometimes we do contribute directly or indirectly to the losses we suffer. That’s sin in a nutshell. But many if not most of the loss and heartache we suffer have no one to blame, no reason to help us understand it. And yet we often seem to seek comfort there. But when there’s no one to blame or no reasonable explanation, sometimes we blame ourselves--perhaps without even realizing it.
Meanwhile, God longs to comfort us in the midst of our most inexplicable loss, in the depths of our grief. God desperately wants to free us from the burdens to which we cling—especially those we impose upon ourselves. Even so, I’ve learned that God does not force comfort upon us. God does not rip our grief or our guilt or our shame from our spirit or our body. Whatever reason or reasons we tell ourselves to justify our self-imposed burdens, God honors our choice. God waits for us to decide we’ve had enough of shouldering life’s burdens by ourselves. God is ready to unburden us but unless and until we trust God enough to ask God to help us with these heavy burdens, God waits.
Meanwhile, our self-imposed guilt and shame weigh us down. Our faces, our necks and our backs bend downward, groundward. The Lord walks alongside, longing to see our faces and our eyes again. When our faces are lifted, we are better able to see life in all its fullness and we are better able to cultivate hope.
Seeing life in all its fullness is to see how our lives are marked not only by the pain of our losses but also by the balm of hope. To see life in all its fullness is to understand and accept that “even amidst loss, life-giving goodness still resides in this world and invites our participation....” ^ To recover life in all its fullness can “rekindle the fire in our bones in ways that bless us and enable us to be a blessing to others. And however unclear the way forward lies, we each radiate gifts and graces that the world needs, that can brighten the lives of neighbors near and far.”^
Every loss we suffer “is something love divine not only mourns alongside us, but leads the resurrecting charge against, inviting us to join (or re-join) God’s life-giving ways. The comfort God longs to give to us is hidden in trust. Trusting that no matter what is happening right now,
The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase. Righteousness will go before him, and will make a path for his steps. (Psalm 85)
Precisely how and when we will experience the unique comfort only God can provide is beyond our knowing. Ultimately, though, the comfort of God constantly seeks us out to sustain us through every desert, every twist and turn on the road, every valley, every rock-strewn path and every mountain rising before us on our way.
Perhaps Advent isn’t so much about our waiting for Messiah, but Messiah waiting for us, waiting to be asked to join us, even now, before the comfort.
** From “Looking Into the Lectionary: 2nd Sunday of Advent, with Roger Gench” of the Presbyterian Outlook (https://pres-outlook.org/category/ministry-resources/looking-into-the-lectionary/
^ Nelson Reveley, “Wrestling with Loss,” The Presbyterian Outlook, November 20, 2020 (online)
