Sermon:  "Comfort on the Road to Christmas"
Date:   December 4, 2011
Minister:  The Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  Isaiah 40:1-11

“Comfort” is a word we associate with Christmas.  “I’ll be home for Christmas…”, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know…”  There are the favorite family recipes we bring out once a year, along with the cherished ornaments that remind us of Christmases past.  We long to be home—whether our own or that of our childhood—gathered in the comfort of the bosom of our family.  Yet in today’s Old Testament passage, a classic lectionary reading during Advent, the notion of comfort is used in a different manner.

After years in exile, a prophet is called by God to preach comfort to the people.  God is restoring Israel.  The Hebrew exiles will leave Babylon, as their ancestors left Egypt long ago, and return home in a procession through the wilderness between Babylon and Zion.  The pathway is so sure that it seems the valleys have been lifted up and the mountains leveled.  Nothing–no political or military power, or force of nature–will stand between the people and God’s promised comfort and strength in their homeland.

The Hebrew word translated as comfort means “to feel compassion and pity” and also includes the idea of repentance and sorrow.  The English word comfort comes from a Latin word meaning “to strengthen.”  In today’s reading, the prophet Isaiah proclaims to the Hebrew exiles that their time of repentance has come to an end, and that they will be comforted, strengthened, and borne up by God who puts an end to their sorrow.  God’s trusted strength will gather the people like a shepherd gathers the flock together, cradling the lambs and carrying them to safety and rest.

While many of us today might equate comfort with stability or lack of change, it is important to remember that our faith ancestors were living in a foreign land to which they had been taken by force.  Although they were able to build homes, plant fields, marry and have children, they were not free to leave.  For them, “comfort” meant being released–set free.  It meant change.  It meant mobility.  Babylon may have seemed like a place of refuge for some people:  not all of the Hebrew exiles left; some chose to stay, for they were comfortable there after so many generations.  But many were eager to return to Judah.

Just as the people of Israel long ago were told to clear a path for God, to make a way where there appeared to be no way, the text tells us during Advent, while we’re on the road to Christmas, to make a way for God to come into our lives, to remove the obstacles and impediments, to clear out old animosities and grievances, to cut back the weeds of doubt and greed, not just to make a nice little bed for the newborn babe, but to open up our lives to transforming grace.

To use the Hebrew meaning for comfort—to feel compassion and pity—allows us to seek comfort on the road to Christmas, not so much nestling up by the fireside, but having compassion for others, bringing true comfort to their lives. 

During this month, the Hallmark Channel runs a new TV Christmas movie each weekend, then replays them along with those from previous years during the next week.  I confess that we enjoy watching them in my house when we have time, although we always know how they’ll end.  I try to predict at which point in the final minutes the couple that didn’t look like they would get together will kiss.

In a movie last weekend, the prospective boyfriend befriended the single mother’s elementary age son.  He heard the boy was getting bullied at school, so he asked the mom if he could talk with her son.  He told how his own father had instructed him to “kill the bullies with kindness.”  “What do you mean?” the boy asked.  So the prospective boyfriend told him to invite the bully to join them at a skating rink where some major league hockey star was signing autographs.  The bully was so impressed that he exclaimed, “Cool!” to the boy he had been bullying, and invited him over to his house.  Oh, by the way, the kiss between the prospective boyfriend and the single mom came one minute before the closing commercial!

What it illustrated, though, was that comfort was rendered when the bully was befriended—shown compassion—by his classmate.

Several decades ago, in a previous church, the Pastoral Relations Committee was meeting with me.  In that church, I had no choice in the selection of those on the committee, as the ministers at Bay Shore do.  One woman, who had an antagonistic streak about her, said of my ministry style at one meeting, “So then, you’d rather comfort the afflicted than afflict the comfortable?” ( from Finley Peter Dunne, 20th century)  To which I replied, as will come as no surprise to anyone who’s experienced my ministry, “Yes, I would rather comfort the afflicted than afflict the comfortable.”

My notion is that we experience quite enough difficult and challenging times, pain and sorrow in life than to think that my role as a pastor is to afflict the comfortable.  I believe in the right to free speech, but it doesn’t seem the Occupy Wall Street, San Francisco, L.A., etc. crowds have yet been too successful in afflicting the one percent they wish to challenge.  I image those Wall Street bankers who get the big raises while their customers are being foreclosed on are just looking down at the occupiers from their offices on high.  Yet in contrast, in church settings, I have found those considered the “comfortable” have been some of the most caring, compassionate and generous people.

For us to offer comfort or feel comfort at Christmas, it isn’t about us; it’s about those whose lives we touch.  Certainly there was no comfort for a very pregnant Mary to make the journey on foot and donkey from Nazareth to Bethlehem.  There was no comfort for her to deliver a child in a stable or cave.  There was no comfort for the shepherds as they left their campfires and trudged down the hill to Bethlehem.  There was no comfort for those sages of old to “traverse afar, field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star.”  Yet all of this discomfort on the part of all parties involved resulted in a great “gift of comfort,” God’s only Son, born to be our Savior.

So using the Hebrew and Latin roots of comfort, how do we express “compassion and pity” and “strengthen” others while we’re on the road to Christmas?  We offer comfort to the Christmas families whose needs are so poignantly displayed in the Concert Hall.  Nearly everything that has been listed as their gifts are things we take for granted.  Thanks to you, they have beds with real mattresses to sleep on, with sheets and covers and pillows.  Coats and shoes to wear.  Pots and pans and dishes and silverware.  And do you know the other benefit in providing for them?  It brings comfort to us as well.  Those of you who volunteer to deliver on December 17 will come back home with a sense of comfort for what we together have accomplished.

Last Sunday afternoon, Peggy and I went to a store and, armed with some of the 3x5 cards, we bought $61 worth of bath towels, hand towels and washcloths.  We took them home; I clipped off all the tags, and ran them through the washer and dryer.  Peggy wrapped them up in Christmas paper.  And we felt GOOD!  Years ago I was turned on to the need for towels for our Christmas families when I heard one family was sharing one towel  YUCK!

Every third Wednesday of the month for the past 15 years, about two dozen of you are involved in the preparation and serving of dinner down at Christian Outreach in Action.  Every December, the Bay Shore Bells pack up all of this and go down there and play before the dinner.  Two years ago, we distributed hand-knitted scarves and mittens.  Last year it was 172 vinyl-backed fleece blankets with straps; another 53 went to the Multi-Service Center for the Homeless.  One of the workers at COA told me he still sees people carrying them around.  All of this brings comfort to the recipients, and comfort, as well, to all of us who participate.

Remember the advice given to the boy who was bullied?  “Kill them with kindness” he was advised.  And it worked.  I imagine there is at least one person in your extended family, among your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers, even someone here at church, with whom you’re on tenuous terms.  While you’re still on the road to this Christmas, I encourage you to be the one who has the willingness to reach out and repair the breech.  I predict both you and the other party will find comfort.

Sometimes on the road to Christmas we simply need to become better travelers.  And know that Christ travels with you.