Where We Belong: The Place of Rest

 

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 (Luke 1:26-38)

When Mike and I were in Romania we had the privilege to be able to get to spend one night in a Peleș Palace, well the carriage house. It was the last castle built in Romania having been begun at the end of the 1800s. It is a picturesque castle whose façade is often used in TV and Movies when they want to make an idyllic palace as their setting. I often tease Mike saying that had we eloped while we were in Romania we could have stayed in a Palace for our honeymoon.

Peleș was built to be the home of King Carol I. This palace like so many others was built to be a reflection of the King and the Kingdom he rules. Palaces are often symbols of the values and culture of a nation. When Peleș was built it was the first palace anywhere to be completely powered by electricity (in fact the King had built a separate a power plant just to power the Palace and the surrounding buildings). Peleș being completely powered by electricity was a matter of national pride, and was a symbol of the King leading the Romanian people into the future. It brought Romania in to the modern age and secured them a place of belonging in the future as a stable nation.

It is a common idea that a king’s palace is a reflection of the nation and its people. A king with no palace at all would be seen as a weak king. It would be a signal to the surrounding nations that these people were a people who could be easily conquered. Most kings palaces are symbols to their people and are reflection to the world of the king’s power and authority

This is the thought process of David as he built his palace. He needed a palace to join the people of Israel together as a kingdom and to present to the nations around them that Israel was indeed a legitimate nation whom they could not bully. So once he has established Israel, he immediately begins by building a palace for himself, for the people and for the security of the nation. . David’s palace by providing a home and a place for their King to belong, gave the people of Israel stability and showed the world around them that they belonged here. This was their land, this was their home. As a people, it tied them to this place. They would not be easily chased from the place they belonged.

Once he has finished his palace, he looks around him and sees how far God has brought him, after all when God “found” him he was a boy in the countryside watching sheep. He was so much of “a nobody,” his father had not even bothered to ask him to come in from the field when the prophet asked to see all his father’s sons. He is grateful to God. He wants to show God that he is grateful. He sees how God has blessed him. He sees himself surrounded by all the trappings of a King and he can look out of his palace and see the little tent in which God “lives.” The same tent the Israelites carted around the dessert. The same tent that crossed the Jordan river with them. The same tent which has been God’s house since they arrived in the promised land and it looked mighty pitiful next to David’s fine palace.

This makes David want to build a place where God can belong among the people, a palace where God can dwell, a home for God. He wants to give God what he has. He has found rest, perhaps he should not rest until God also has a place to rest. David wants to give God what he would want if he was in God’s position. He wants to give God a house that befits the God of the universe. He wants to build God a proper place to dwell among the people, so God knows that he is grateful for all which God has done for him. He wants to build a temple where God could belong which would befitting of the God of the universe, so the nations around them will know that their God is the one and only living God.

God says, “No.” God says, “I don’t need a house.” Later the prophet Haggai will run up against the opposite problem, where God got upset with the people for waiting 18 years to rebuild the temple after Cyrus told them they could. In Haggai the problem was they spent time building their own houses while God’s house stood in ashes. But here at this time, God does not want David to build God a house, the tent is just fine. The temple can wait.

What God does want David to do? Right now? David has been busy, setting up the kingdom, expanding its borders, winning peace for the people and now that David has a place where he belongs, God wants David to be still for a while, to rest in the home he now has, to enjoy the place and be at peace in the place he belongs. David has done much work to bring the nation to the place it is right now, but now is the time for rest. From almost the moment David had been plucked out of his rural shepherding life, chosen, by God, through the prophet, to be the next King of God’s people, David’s life has been in chaos. When he was not a warrior fighting in Saul’s wars, he was in conflict with Saul either directly or indirectly and then even once he had gained the throne he had almost continually been at war with one nation or another defending and expanding the borders of the nation, until now they were finally at peace with all the nations around them. God had given David rest from all his enemies.

Now is not the time for building, or the time for more laborious work. Now is the time to be still, to be in one place. Now is the time for rest. Instead of building a house for God, God wants to take this time to build David’s house for him. David has been very busy, his life has been exhausting up until this point. Right now God want to allow David to rest for a bit, let God do some of the heavy lifting. Rest, relax. God can handle this, enjoy this time of peace. God will take this time to build up you and your house.

Calling for David to be still and rest, does not mean God does not have plans for David. Calling for David to rest does not mean God is finished with David. God wants David to be a good Godly king. God wants David to rule God’s people the way they should be ruled. God wants David to be the kind of great king who will be praised throughout the generations, you know the kind of king David continues to be known to have been. putting God first, and the people’s needs and wants ahead of something God does not really “need” anyway, is not what God wants for David or the nation right now.

God wants David to be the “father” of the King of Kings. God has plans for David, they just don’t include building a temple. God has big plans for David. David will be the “father king” of this nation. He will be regarded as the finest king they will ever have. God is still at work with and through David, but God does not want David to build a temple, instead God wants David to take this time to be still and rest.

In the Gospel passage this morning we encounter Mary. Mary is just a girl, she is somewhere between the ages of 13-16. By all modern standards she is not even a grown woman at this time. But she is kind of amazing. Even at her young age, she is faithful and is ready to listen to God. How many of us, full grown adults, are ready to listen to God and has the kind of faith Mary exhibits here in this passage. Who among us, even at whatever age we are right now, is ready to allow God to work in our lives the way that Mary allowed God to work in hers? God tells her that she will have a baby (the Messiah). And she does not even seem to skip a beat. She like, “Oh, wow, ok.”

Can you think about a teenaged girl? Can you imagine how she must have felt in the moment she realized what was going on? Can you think about how her stomach must just fall right out of her, how sick she must feel in that moment (perhaps literally as well as figuratively), how scared she must be? What will she do? What does she need to do first? She realizes first things first, I have to go get a test.

So here is this young lady, sitting there waiting for the test to do its thing. We can imagine those long minutes as she waits. Then she sees that second little blue line that says so much while being so silent. We can imagine her fear and her anxiety. So many young girls who find out this news are alone and scared when they find out. Then there is young Mary, Mary doesn’t find out from an impersonal test, she finds out from the angel of God, but I am sure some of the same feelings had to be brewing inside her; the anxiety, the fear. She was human after all, and she was still very young.

Now, of course finding out from a messenger from God is the ultimate way to find out. The angel has already told her not to be afraid. He has already told her that she is favored by God. Then he tells her that she will conceive and bear a child. She asks a few obvious questions and then just accepts God’s plan for her life. She says, “Let it be for me as you say.”

Not my response:  my response would be. Umm, God, I don’t think this is a good idea. I don’t think people are going to buy the whole virgin birth thing. I am not sure this is a very good plan. Can I think this over and get back to you. I am not quite so sure I am the right person for this job.

No, Mary says, “Let it be for me as you have said.”  ????? What a humble response! What an obedient response! What an absolutely amazing response. If only I could be more like Mary!  If only all of us could be just a tiny bit more like Mary!

Sometimes we have great amazing plans. They are plans to do work for God, plans for the betterment of the kingdom, they are good plans. But sometimes God says, no, and calls for us to be still, for us to just rest. To sit back and let God do some work for a while. This kind of message to God does not usually sit well with us. We are a go, go, go, get it done kind of people. We always have a goal toward which we are striving. We always have somewhere we need to be. There is always a project we want to complete. We live in a culture in which we define ourselves by what we do. We actually take pride in being tired and overworked. It is a badge of honor to never rest, to be so busy you don’t have time for yourself. We live in a culture which sees nothing wrong with having to work 60-80 hour work weeks. So to hear a passage where God says,” no, don’t do this thing for me, even though it is a good thing, rest instead,” is almost complete and utter nonsense to us. We are not a people who rest, who relax, who like sit down in peace.

At this time of the year we, as a congregation, following Christmas we would usually move into what we call Sabbath month; a month in which we par back our congregational activities and slow down following the busy season of Advent. It is a time for us to remember God’s call for us to rest, a reminder that scripture tell us both Jesus while he walked this earth, as well as God following the creation, rested and that we too are to find time, days, and seasons in which to rest. Time for us to let God be in control and to listen intently to God’s voice. As I look at this passage this week, I cannot help but think this would be a great message for the beginning of Sabbath month. But this year Sabbath month seems to be a little redundant as we have already cut down our activities as a congregation during Corona times and are once again moving back to an all online format, as we wait out these colder months for the vaccine.  

Yet, even though this would be a perfect sermon to move us toward Sabbath month, it is probably also a good message for us all right now anyway. These past nine months have been exhausting. As a nation and as a world we have been fighting a pandemic. We have to wear masks anytime we leave the confines of our home, which is not as often as often as we used to. We work from home, while our children are schooled from home. All this is tiring even though we don’t go very many places anymore. We go to the grocery store, to necessary appointments, we may have travelled during the summer when the weather was warm and the cases were down, but not now.

As the cases have gone up, we all realize it is not the best choice to travel to all the places we might at this time of year. So we continue to stay at home and are getting just a bit antsy. We want to do something, something other than just being at home all the time. Wouldn’t a trip to go see relatives, be nice? Can’t we go somewhere, do something, anything? And the voice of God in this passage comes to us as God speaks to David saying, “No, not right now.”

Right now is the time to rest. We may have taken time to venture to other places this past Summer when the weather was warm and the more humid conditions slowed the virus down and made it harder to pass from person to person. But the virus thrives in this cold dry season and now it is the time to stay put. We have the peace which comes with knowing the vaccine is coming but right now we need to rest; to be still, to slow down. We need to stop for a little while and catch our breath. And trust God.

Stopping, resting, relaxing, being still is about trusting God. I really think our antsy-ness right now, our need to go somewhere, do something, something fun, something else, is a byproduct of our inability to be still, to step back, take our hands off the plow and rest. It is a symptom of our continual desire to be in control. Doing all the things is a by-product of our need to always be in control. When we can’t do something, we want to go somewhere, when we can’t go somewhere, we really don’t know what to do with ourselves and we feel out of control. Most of us are conditioned to think, if we aren’t getting things done, then nothing will be done. If we are not working, if we are not striving, if we are not doing, if we are not go, go, going all the time, then what needs to happen will not happen. We do not know the good in being still, in resting. We do not know how to trust God to do some of the work which needs to be done.

I know we all had plans, we had great plans. But right now, we can’t do those plans. They are not the right plans for right now, they are for another time, another year. Right now they are not God’s plans. They are our plans. That does not mean God does not have plans for us, great, amazing plans but they may not be the plans we had wanted or hoped for. For right now, we need to set aside our go, go, go plans, and our need to keep moving and our desire to go somewhere. Right now is the time to rest and let God do what God needs to do right now, to relinquish our need to be in control.

It is time to give over the control we want to have in and over our lives and give it to God. In many ways we need to let God be God. We can’t make plans for God, we have to allow God to make plans for us, even if those plans are for us to be still, to rest, to take this time to slow down and listen to God. Perhaps the things we are wanting to do are fine things to do, greats things which were for the furtherance of the Kingdom, but whatever it is we wanted to do, if it is not what God wants us to do, it is the wrong thing to do. Right now is the time to slow down, to rest, to stop, to be still. Right now is the time to stop, to be still, to wait, and to listen.  So often we are so busy, busy busy, we are making the plans, giving the directions. Perhaps right now is the time to allow God to do the work God needs to do and to allow God to direct our plans; allow God to make the plans to give the directions.

When we are resting, when we are still, and we are able to better listen. When we are listening, that is when we are able to actually listen, we are able to hear what it is God wants from us, what God needs from us. Sometimes it is not simply that God has “other” plans. It is not simply that our plans are different than God’s plans. Perhaps God’s plans for us are so completely amazing that we would never have thought about it on our own because God’s plans would blow our minds – like with the plans God had for Mary.

Now wouldn’t that be cool, to get to be Mary. Sometimes, sometime we get to be like Mary and what God is calling us to do is so beyond our grasp of understanding that we would never think of doing those things ourselves. Sometimes the plans that God is giving us sound crazy and scary and absolutely unobtainable. But they are God’s plans. They are the plans that God is putting before us and we need to respond obediently, as Mary did. We need to say, “Let it be for me as you have said.” But first we need to be still enough to listen. First we need to rest. To allow God to do what God needs to do, so that we are ready to do what we need to do, so we are rested, rejuvenated, relaxed enough, have learned enough to trust God that we can, are able to say, “Let it be for me as you have said.”

 

Where We Belong: Salvation is Coming!

 

Isaiah 61:1-11

As our days grow shorter and our night grow longer, and the darkness around us grows, literally, as we approach the Winter solstice on Jan 21^st and figuratively, as the numbers of COVID cases grows daily, the death rate climbs, our governor has rolled back which step in which phase we are in, and we have as a congregation made the tough decision to move our services back online in two weeks’ time. A person we know can’t get needed a surgery, because the hospital says they do not have beds for non-COVID patients. Another friend of mine had a surgery moved up to this week, so that she does not face this same problem when the surgery was originally scheduled for early next year. There are more fires in California. There continue to be refugee children lost in our system too young to tell us who their parents are. Injustices in our world continue to mount, and yet another black man was shot dead entering his own house bringing sandwiches home to his family.

Then on top of the national and international crises, each of us go home to our own struggles, the crises we are facing within our own families, and within ourselves. The darkness is deep, the darkness is thick and it seems to only envelop and surround us covering us with a thick blanket, like an ongoing winter snowstorm. I know this is not the darkest period of time which has ever been, it is not even the darkest it has been this century, but that knowledge does not change that this is the part of the journey on which we all find ourselves right now, is dark.

As we look at the world around us, we look around knowing this is not the world to which we belong. We are immersed in darkness and we are children of the light. This is the deep of winter and we are spring and summer people, just as assuredly as we are Resurrection and Pentecost people. This is a cold cruel world and we belong to a world of love and warmth. We do not belong here. We do not live here. For now we make our home here, but it is not a permanent home it is temporary and even as we settle in this place, in this time, for now, we are people of longing, who are continually looking to the horizon for the dawning light that will show us where our home truly is.  

But for now, in this time, we find ourselves in the darkness. It is as we face this darkness that we come to the word of the prophet, this morning, as he continues to speak into the darkness the people of God living in exile were experiencing. It is into this darkness, God, through the words of the prophet, plants a dream of a world made right, a world where the oppressed are set free, where fears are assuaged, people are fed and clothed, and have a home, each person is treated with dignity and respect no matter who they are, what they believe, or their ethnic origin, where we are all healed from that ails us, where peace reigns in our lives, in our homes, in our nations and within ourselves and all those captured and enslaved in systems of injustice are released.

We stand in our dark place in this world, surrounded by the darkness of the unjust systems at work in our culture, and in our country, we are enveloped in the darkness created by COVID, hospitals full of people on ventilators, by friends, relatives, co-workers sick, or dying. The darkness is so thick, so deep, that we hold our breath, as if we are underwater. It in is this darkness in this world in which we are exiled one from another, exiled from the touch of others, from hugs, from handshakes from the cheerful smiles of strangers we pass on the street or our grocery store clerk. And in this place we listen and hear this message of freedom, of release, of liberty, justice and comfort. And long for it to be true in our world, in our homes, in our neighborhoods and in our lives, today.

“Oh, Lord God, Yes!”

“Bring your goodness to us this morning!”

“Bind up our broken hearts! Liberate us! Set us free!”

“Proclaim to us a new year! We are finished with 2020; give us the year of the Lord’s favor!”

“Comfort us!”

“Raise us up out of our devastations! Build up the ruins of our lives, of the world which has been demolished since March.”

“Lord, let us see your glory!”

“Come Lord, Jesus come!”

And even as we cry out, do we truly know for what it is we are crying out? What would it mean for the Year of God’s favor to be upon us? What would it truly mean for us, for our world for Christ’s reign to be made manifest all around us? What we are ultimately calling for is God’s justice; for God to come and set all things right, for all that is wrong to be corrected, and all who perpetuate that wrong to face the consequences of their misdeeds. Do we really want all the wrongs to be set right? What about the wrongs from which we benefit? What about the wrongs in which we participate? What would God’s justice flooding this world, our cities, our neighborhoods and each of our lives truly look like?

We all like the idea of justice in our world. But when someone stands up and attempts to do something about it, the reaction is a little less than the celebratory jubilation one would expect. We all want to be treated fairly, we all want there to be no suffering in the world. We want children to live “childlike” lives. We want people to be fed, clothed and housed. We do not want anyone living in slavery. We want everyone to have the “American dream.” We want no one to contract COVID much less suffer or die because of it. As long as them being able to do so does not affect me, as long as I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do to make that happen and it does not cause me to have to change my way of living.

Most of us like the idea of justice. We like the idea of a world where everyone is treated fairly, where we all get what “we have worked for,” where our work is valued and the payment we receive for it is just and fair, will put food on our tables, roofs above our heads and get us the medical care we need when we are ailing, where everyone’s needs are met, where nobody is mistreated, or marginalized, enslaved, or killed.

We all desire justice, but have you ever looked at the lives of people who have worked for justice in our world. Can you quickly in your head put together a list of people you have heard about who worked for bring justice, equality, peace to this world?  You got a list?  How well did their lives go?  Their biographies go like this right. “So-N-So fought for justice and when that justice was made complete, lived a peaceful life and died at a ripe old age surrounded children, and grandchildren and people who loved and cared about them.” No.

  Dr. King had a dream of justice and equality and they killed him. Gandhi fought for independence for the Indian people and they killed him. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, yeah they killed him too. I am sure there are people on your list, and my guess is for the vast majority of them, because of their work and their efforts to bring the kind justice to the world, which God is seeking in this passage, things did not turn out too well for them either.

  Jesus stood up in the synagogue one morning and simply read this passage; a passage in which God declares justice will be and he was nearly thrown off a cliff (not to mention that whole crucifixion thing that happened three years later). Mary quoted it in her song about her unborn son, and her virtue was questioned. Still not the response one would expect. We all want justice; we just don’t treat those who are seeking it, very well.

The problem is, even though most of us are pretty good people, we live in a world where the systems of injustice are the poisoned waters in which we swim. Even when they do not wholly benefit us, we have acclimated to them, the poison does not bother us, perhaps we are immune to it and are completely unaffected by it. We have learned to survive. We may, without our knowledge be benefiting from the way things are. We are aware of the poison, but we are not willing to actually do anything to remove the poison. We may feel powerless, unable to do anything about it. We may even realize that if the poison was removed we would be worse off. The adaptations we have made, unintentionally, would made would be superfluous. We would lose the benefits we are experiencing. We really do not know how to live in un-poisoned waters. We would have to completely change how we live. It would be hard for us to adapt. And so when we are faced with the reality of what that justice looks like, we are paralyzed, we don’t want to take the measures needed; we are unwilling to make the needed changes. Right now, some people are unwilling to wear a mask, because it is too uncomfortable, or simply because they don’t want to. Others are unwilling to stop spending time with people outside of their households, or to forgo traditional holiday travel, to keep this virus from rapidly spreading. We are willing to make some concessions, as long as those concessions do not inconvenience us in ways we do not like. We will make changes in our lives as long as those changes will have the results we want, and will not include any of the consequences we are unwilling to face.

At the same time there are people all around us, they are suffering because of this poisonous water in which we all live, their lives are ruled by the poison, and it dictates even the smallest aspects of their lives. We want to do something about it. We don’t want them to be dying, we don’t want them to be suffering from the injustices we see them experiencing. But we feel unable to move, unable to act, unable to make their lives better. We don’t know what to do.

God speaks to us, though the words of the prophet here in this passage. God sees their struggle, God sees our struggle and God says there will be justice, there will be wholeness, slavery will cease, the hungry will be fed, there will be healing, (dare I say there will be a vaccine which will release us), and all will be set right.

Whenever we see wrongs being set right, wherever we see the hungry being fed, whenever an un-homed person finds a home, whenever, wherever things that were once broken are made whole, whenever someone finds healing and whose health is restored, that is God at work bringing this passage to its completion. Whenever we see justice being done, people being made whole, broken systems being overthrown, that is our God bringing about salvation, not just for you and me, but for the world.

We can rejoice. We can proclaim this passages in the public spaces, we can sing, with Mary, we can cry out with Isaiah, God is at work to “bringing good news to the oppressed, to bind the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners;. . . [and] to comfort all who mourn.” 

We can rejoice with God and all those who belong to God and say, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for God has clothed me with the garments of salvation, God has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.”

When we acknowledge God’s salvific work in this world we can know that that salvation wherever it is, whoever is experiencing its’ benefits, we can know it is on not simply on their behalf, the one who is receiving the immediate benefits, but it is also our behalf. God’s work is always for me, for you, for us. God is at work bringing redemption, salvation to all the nations, before all the nations, but also for you and for me. So whenever we see justice, peace, hope, goodness, rightness, wholeness we can rejoice because THAT is God at working making our redemption, our salvation a reality in this world; for us and for all peoples.

Wholeness is coming, justice is coming. This is what we remember in Advent. Advent is a reminder that we once waited for salvation to come and now that that salvation has come, we are watching and waiting for salvation to be made complete. We are watching and waiting for redemption to come to fullness. We can see it at work. We can see the darkness around us parting, more and more. There is light, where ever there is light we can see it, breaking the darkness, transforming the darkness from a place of bleakness and to a place of hope.

And so we remember that we are waiting and we remember, this poison in which we live is not where we belong. The world where we belong, the place to which we belong is a place of wholeness and healing, of comfort and fullness, of salvation and justice. It is the place where Jesus is Lord and God is incarnate. One in which the glory of the Lord rings forth and is known from generation to generation And it is for this home for which we are waiting.  Redemption is coming, just as surely as we can see the dawn arriving as that darkness of the night fades, we can see God at work all around us bringing wholeness and justice to our lost and broken world. Let us rejoice with God, let us rejoice with those who are made whole and let us do whatever we can do to join God in God’s redemptive work all around. Let work out our salvation, God’s redemption for us, for our world. Let Advent be!

 

 

Where We Belong: Where the Wild Things are

 

Isaiah 40:1-11

There are times when I am on one of my yearly backpacking trips with Melissa when we come upon a box attached to a tree in the middle of the trail. A sign on the box will read. “Entering a ‘Wilderness Area’ please sign in before entering.” The box when opened will contain a logbook and a pencil, which is to be used to write your name there will be another box at the other side of the wilderness area which is used to sign out, so when the trail rangers come by to check on it, they can keep track of everyone who enters and leaves the wilderness area.

When on the trail, when we are near state or national parks, or even near roads with trail heads, we will often run into other hikers, mostly day hikers hiking to the top of a nearby mountain or a popular loop trail. Something which can be done in a few hours, so they can return home before evening. When we are in wilderness areas, we are certain to not run into other people. Perhaps, occasionally we will pass by someone else who has planned a two to three day trip covering this section of the trail, or a through hiker who is somewhere along their Appalachian trail journey, who have set aside 3-4 months of their lives to hike from Georgia to Maine. But mostly we are alone.

These wilderness areas, are quiet still places. The human influence is minimal. The wilderness is a place where truly the wild things are, and live and call their home. Along these sections of the trail we will often see deer or moose poop. In these wild places where the beauty of God’s creation surrounds us, when we are far from any town, road or trailhead, the only things around us are trees and wild life. And although when we are safe in our kitchens pouring over trail maps and trail books, we might think to ourselves, it might be neat to see some of the local wild life, the last thing we would want actually to do is to startle a deer, or a moose, or a bear, because we have been too quiet.

The wilderness is a wild place, where only wild things live. These are lonely and abandoned places. Visiting such places is aweing and a bit frightening. Losing the trail, wandering too far off of the path, coming up on an animal all of these are real dangers. They are places where humans really don’t “belong”; places which are truly unsafe for humans. When we enter wilderness places we do so carefully and cautiously.

The wilderness, which is a more literal translation for the word “desert,” used in the translation I read this morning, would have been a was similar kind of place as a wilderness would be for us, except the wilderness, the desert, for them, was an even wilder place, more lonely, more abandoned, and even less touched by human presence than almost any place we might find here in the US. The wilderness places, for them, were places without out water, without ready food, teaming with wild animals and any humans who managed to remain there were likely to be bandits and thieves. Wild places, full of wild things and were fraught with dangers. They were places to be avoided and when traveling anywhere all roads would take the long way around them and no traveler would dare to take a “short cut” through.

The people who are addressed in this passage are God’s people in exile. They had wandered away from the kind of lives God had called for them to live. They had not taken care of the widow, the orphan, or the foreigner. God had accused them of swindling one another with dishonest scales, for trampling the poor and the needy, as well as for abandoning God, worshipping other gods alongside God, as well as instead of God. God had instructed them to change their ways through the words of prophets. They had been chastised, they had been warned, but they heeded nothing and no one. And so, as they had been told would happen if they remained living as they were, they were taken away into the exile, where they lived for several generations. And it is to these people who are living so far from their home, from the land of their ancestors, from the place where they belong, which the words of this passage are addressed.

God calls to these people, living in exile, from across the wilderness, from across the barren and desolate places, to these people in exile, and calls them home. These are people who actually have no memory, except cultural memory of the place called home. But like any displaced people they long for a place they have never been. They know they do not belong where they are. We can only image how lost and abandoned they must have felt. Their parents had told them why they were here. God had abandoned them, had allowed them to be destroyed and taken away. As much as they had been taught to long for “home” they did not truly understand what home meant, what it was to actually belong somewhere.

It is to these lost, alone and abandoned people God spoke. “Comfort, Comfort, my people.” God says. Comfort them by telling them they are going home. God will bring them home. They will finally return to the place where they belong. And a voice calls out, “prepare the way!” Make a highway, build a road, plan a route, have it go straight through the desert, don’t let it divert this way or that, make it straight and smooth and even, make it the easiest road to travel which has ever been built. This is the road for my people. This is the road down which they will travel to take them to the promise land.

That is where God is taking them, out across the desert, through the wilderness to the land flowing with milk and honey. God is taking them to the land God had promised to their ancestors Abraham and Isaac. God has heard their cry and once again God is setting them free. God is rescuing them from the repressive rule of their captors. God will once again lead them across the vast wilderness to the land flowing with milk and honey, just has God had done before. But this time, in this second Exodus, God will lead them down out of Babylon and straight home. They will not take a long circuitous 40 year wandering. God will not even divert along the wildly traveled route going around the desert wilderness following the rivers and valleys, the along the “safe,” well-travelled way. God will make a wide, straight, highway, through the desert, across the wilderness, down which they will travel, a way which will take them home via the quickest route possible. God will lead them through the wilderness, watching and guarding them all along the way.

And then God lets them know these words of promise are not like anything else which springs up in this world. God’s words are not like the flowers or the grass, which all will wither and decay. When everything else passes away, God’s promise will stand. God will lead them home, upon this they can rest assured.

The final word they hear is a description of their God. “Here is your God,” the voice cries out. Your God is a shepherd, who will lift you up. Like a shepherd carrying the lambs, God will carry you. You will be held close to the bosom of God, and gently led. “Here is your God,” a loving shepherd carrying for the sheep, gently, kindly, leading you home, where you will be safe. Guiding you to the place where you belong.

In these days, when travel is discouraged, so many of us are perhaps longing for home, but even those of us who do not live far from the places we call home, we can find a deep longing for another time, another place when and where things were different than they are right now. It is December at the end of the year 2020 and we are living in a foreign world, from the one we entered at the beginning of this last year. This is a world where we all wear masks, unless we are inside our own houses. This is a world where there is no singing in our worship services, no handshakes or hugs or the caring touch on our shoulder when we need to be comforted.  Our sanctuaries are unrecognizable with pews taped off and signs telling which direction we must go. And some of us continue to be unable to be here in person and you “watch” church from your living rooms. If you were able to make a recording of even simple visit to the grocery store and send it to your January self, your January self would not believe that it was a recording from life in just a few months’ time. We live in a foreign land; a land of COVID and social distancing. And I don’t know about each of you, but I long to go home, to go back to the place where I belong, back to a world which makes sense and felt so much safer than the world does today.

Although this passage is addressed to the people of God living in exile in Babylon, we too can listen and hear the words of God, as if they were for us. “Comfort, comfort my people.” God will bring us comfort. God is with us in this place, where we are, at this time, even with all that is going on. God has heard our cries. God will make a way for us. A highway which will take us home, a safe way, a straight way and God will lead us down that way. God will bring us Home. God will bring us to the place where we belong.

I don’t know about you all, but I need to hear these words this morning. I need to hear words of comfort from God this morning. It brings me peace to hear and to say, “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.” God will speak tenderly to us this morning and remind us where it is we belong. As God promises a road home, a road back to a more familiar world, a safer world, we can know this is a promise which God is making for us today, just as God made it to those people in their exile so long ago. God will make a way for us too.  God will bring us out of this COVID exile. The place to which we are going may not look like the place we remember from last January, but it will be a better place, a place where God will be our comfort, to which God will lead us, a place where God will care for us and guide us like a shepherd does the sheep.

As we look around at our world in chaos, as we see the fear and confusion in which our nation currently finds itself we can find our rest, our comfort, our peace in God. We will not live here forever. And we know that “Here” was never really home. Even as God promises to lead us out of this troubling time we find ourselves in, we can also know the home to which God ultimately leads is a greater home, a better home. A world where God’s will is done, where God reigns and God’s peace is known throughout the earth. One day we will be home again. Here in our place of exile we can hear the words of the Lord to us this morning. Because the Lord is our shepherd, God will hold us close, will take care of us and will bring us home again. And now in this season of Advent waiting we are reminded even as we are waiting for a vaccine, for a better world, a more stable world, we are really waiting for something which this world cannot provide, the peace we will know when Christ returns and where we will truly and finally be where we belong. We can rest in the peace of God’s promise this morning to bring us comfort, to make a way for us and to finally bring us home.