Isaiah 40:1-8
Comfort, comfort my
people,
says your God.
2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.
says your God.
2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.
3 A
voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare
the way for the Lord[a];
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.[b]
4 Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
5 And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
“In the wilderness prepare
the way for the Lord[a];
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.[b]
4 Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
5 And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
6 A
voice says, “Cry out.”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
“All people are like grass,
and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
7 The grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God endures forever.”
and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
7 The grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God endures forever.”
Last weekend I was in North Carolina for a
funeral of my cousin.
You know how that is – we’ve all
been there.
At some point during the time when
we gather at such events there is that moment when you can speak to the spouse
of the person who has died, or the parent, or the child – and as you approach
them there is within your soul this haunting urging:
“Say something. Comfort the person.
Proclaim a message."
And we often find ourselves
wondering - "What message do I proclaim?"
What can one say?
It is an old question. It was asked by Isaiah in our Old Testament
lesson thousands of years ago.
As long as there have been human
relationships, there has been the demand, "Comfort them, encourage them,
proclaim a message."
With that demand there has also been
that crippling and paralyzing question, "What can I say?"
At the dawn of time, two parents sit
quietly. They wonder why their two sons have fought and why they could not have
loved one another. Now word has come that Cain has killed his brother Able and
the two parents sit and wonder.
Each wants to say something of
comfort, but both are crippled by the question, "What can I say?"
Years pass. Not just centuries, but
millennia passes by as nations and empires rise and fall, wars are fought, and
discoveries are made, and the question still remains "What can I
say?"
It is a question you have lived out
in your own lives.
A relative is fired from a job. What
can I say?
The fabric of a marriage is ripped
apart and your two best friends become enemies with each other. What can I say?
A neighbor's child has died. What
can I say?
And a friend writes a letter about
illness and death.
What can I say?
The question in Isaiah is a living
question and a haunting question. "Proclaim a message," declares the
Voice.
"What message shall I
proclaim," replies Isaiah.
We see the situation. We hear the
voice within telling us to say something comforting and encouraging. And we
feel our own inability as we think to ourselves about what we should say. What
do you say to someone who is dieing and suffering?
A lot of us helplessly and
hopelessly grope for clichés and platitudes that we've heard all too many times
before.
It'll be alright.
It'll turn out for the
best.
It's God's will.
But those clichés have never worked.
Sometime ago, Dear Abby's column ran
a letter from a woman who wrote to complain about some of the routine phrases
of comfort that people spoke to her in an unsuccessful attempt to console her
in the death of her 14 year old son.
"I know how you feel."
“It was God's
will."
"Don't
worry you can have other children."
"God needed him
more than you did."
Each phrase was inadequate. In some
cases they added to the pain. I suspect that we know from our own experiences
how useless some of these clichés are. Search your own memory and you will find
a time of loss or tragedy when someone came up to you and used those same words
of comfort. But they did not comfort.
And now, as we try to comfort
others, we find ourselves wanting to say SOMETHING. Not knowing what else to
say, we lean on the same time worn phrases, even though they do not comfort.
We see our friend in the hospital
bed, tubes running up his nose and an I.V. needle stuck in his arm.
Death is near.
There is no denying it.
What comfort can there be in hearing
us say, "It'll be alright," when everyone knows that it won't be.
A mother and father sit in chairs
under a mortuary's tent. They sit facing the tiny casket that is waiting to be
lowered into the grave. Silently and bravely they endure the pain of hearing us
say, "It was all for the best."
A lonely man faces the hardship of
unemployment. He hears us say, "Trust in God," while he wonders if
God even cares.
The platitudes and empty phrases
give no comfort to the people we see suffering. But we don't know what else to
say.
We want to say something. We hear
that persistent voice within us crying out, "Comfort them. Encourage them. Proclaim a message." We
want to give hope and comfort, even if it is an empty hope and a false comfort.
The author of our Scripture reading
from Isaiah's book is too honest to do this, however. The old prophet hears a
voice cry out, "Proclaim a message!"
The prophet, who has been hardened
by the experience of a lifetime of seeing tragedy, despair, death and sorrow,
asks "What message shall I proclaim? All humanity is like grass. They last no longer than wild flowers. Grass
withers and flowers fade when the Lord sends the wind blowing over them. People are no more enduring than the grass."
The prophet resists what many of us
are unable to resist -- the old temptation to comfort others with meaningless,
empty phrases.
But what does he offer in its place?
Nothing, except perhaps a hopelessness and a despair. We know that won't
comfort.
If clichés don't work and if the
prophets realistic pessimism doesn't work, then how will we comfort those in
despair and in trouble?
Maybe if we could understand the
answer to the question of why God allows this or that to happen, then we would
find comfort for our friends and neighbors.
"Why" is a natural
question to ask when facing tragedy.
Frederick Buechner, in his book Wishful
Thinking, has a brief essay on the life of Job, the Old Testament character
who suffered so much. His children die, his property is destroyed, and his
health gives way to a painful disease. Buechner says that while Job never takes
his wife's advice and curses God, he comes very close to it. What Job doe do is
to ask some unpleasant questions.
"If God is all he's cracked up
to be, how come houses blow down on innocent people? Why does a good man die of
cancer in his prime while old men who can't remember their names or hold their
water go on and on in nursing homes forever? Why are there so many crooks
riding around in Cadillac’s and so many children going to bed hungry at night?
“Job's friends offer an assortment
of theological explanations, but God doesn't offer one. God doesn't
explain."
If we would try to comfort those in
sorrow by trying to give some explanation as to why God does what he does or
allows what he allows, then we have a problem. Beuchner is right about what Job
discovers. God doesn't always explain.
In our Old Testament reading from
Isaiah 40, there is a haunting phrase that reminds us, "No one understands
the thoughts of God."
Where is the comfortable message we
can speak?
It is not in the cliché.
It is not in the Prophet Isaiah's
pessimism.
It is not in reasoning out a REASON
why tragedy occurs.
All of this may lead us to wonder as
Israel
must have in our Scripture lesson, does God really know our troubles? Does God
care if we suffer? Is he really with us in our despair.
Elie Wiesel is a Jewish survivor of
the Holocaust of the Second World War. In his book, Night, tells a story
of one of the executions he witnessed. It was an hanging of three people. Two
were adults, but one was a child. The three victims were forced to sit in
chairs on the gallows. Nooses were secured around their necks. The two adults
cried out to the witnesses "Long live liberty," but the child was
silent. One of the witnesses near Wiesel asked quietly, "Where is God?
Where is He?"
The chairs were tipped and the three
were hung. The adults died quickly. The child survived for more than half an
hour, his body too light to secure a quick death from the rope.
Watching this child struggle between
life and death, Wiesel felt a voice within say, "Where is God? Here He is.
He is hanging here on the gallows."
While the question "why"
often does not have an answer, the question of "where" always does.
The answer is "here."
God is here with us and present with
us in our tragedy.
The prophet wonders what words of
comfort he can proclaim. In response, a second voice tells him to tell the
people that God is to be present with them.
A voice says, "Proclaim a
message" and Isaiah asks, "What shall I proclaim?" And the
answer is: "You who bring Zion good news, up with you to the mountain top;
lift up your voice and shout, you who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift it up
fearlessly. Proclaim to the cities of Judah : Your God is here."
There are no words of explanation of
why there had been a tragedy. In this particular case, the people of the
prophet's time had been in exile. There were no empty clichés. There was simply
a promise from God to be with his people. That is all -- just a promise to be
with us. Nothing more. Nothing less. But then, what more could we want or need?
This is, in fact,
the very message of the Season of Advent – a season of hope and joy and
anticipation because God is here – Christ, the Son of God is born into the
world!
So that – in times of death,
illness, tragedy, when we are called to proclaim a message of comfort, what can
we say?
God is here! God is with us! God is with you.
Copyright 2014, Dr. Maynard Pittendreigh
All rights
reserved.
For copies of other sermons, visit www.Pittendreigh.com