Second Sunday of Advent (#2)

Where our hearts are closed

Clearly the readings today match the first readings of Isaiah with the beginning of Mark's Gospel where we have all this talk about somebody preparing the way... So I'd like to use this reading from Isaiah to advance the proposal I made last week about working to save Advent from disappearing out of our lives, because it is really under assault from all kinds of forces. So the reading from Isaiah last Sunday suggested that what was necessary was to become aware of where our hearts are unmovable, of where our hearts are closed, or where we are not conscious or generous enough, or alive enough, really...

This passage from Isaiah needs to be explained a little bit, that is today's passage, because it looks like it's saying: "Ahh, everything's okay..., comfort, comfort, my people, you're all fine..," which is not the historical situation at all. This is the beginning of the fortieth chapter of Isaiah and everybody, the specialists who study this stuff, says that this is a different person who was talking in the first thirty-nine chapters and that the historical situation is enormously different. In the first part of the Book of Isaiah, the guy who's called First Isaiah, was preaching in the southern part of Palestine to his fellow Jews and warning them over and over again that they were being unfaithful to God. There is this heavy, heavy, heavy, threatening tone all through those first thirty-nine chapters, and then, all of a sudden, it brightens up. "Comfort..., comfort, my people" speaks tenderly, as opposed to all this harshness. What had happened meanwhile between these two guys was that Jerusalem was over-run by the Babylonians in 587 and all the bosses and lots of other people among the Jews were deported and were living as refugees in Babylon. So they had lost everything. It seemed that God had forsaken them; the land that they believed God had promised them was gone, the temple was gone, the King was gone, their status as God's elect seemed to be gone too..., and all of a sudden in this desperate, hopeless situation you have another prophet that the people thought was the real thing saying, "comfort, my people..."

So it is not some easy, cheap kind of comfort that we're talking about here. But then we need to figure out what this business of comfort is. When I hear "comfort," I think of shoes that fit nicely and have been around for a long time, or a friend that I've known for a long time, or an old shirt that's moulded to my body, or comfort-food when I'm feeling depressed and I stuff my face with chocolate or something like that... Comfort normally, I think for me, and I suspect for most of us, just means a kind of recess-time so you don't have to worry about anything; just make yourself feel good, forget all your troubles, and just relax... But that's not what the word comfort means; the Latin word "comfort," the same root is the word for "fortitude," or "fortify"--the Latin adjective "fortis" means "strong." So according to that, this is a fair translation of the Hebrew, I think what this guy is trying to say is: "don't fall apart, don't give up..., be strong..." And, of course, he's saying this because he believed that God had not in fact abandoned the people in Babylon..., that God was still real, and still operating in the world, no matter how utterly empty it seemed to be...

So what I'm going to propose is a question which will help us to get to that other business of "the hardness of our hearts;" namely, to ask "What is it in my life that that gives me comfort?"--comfort in this real sense of the world, not the sense of relaxation, but the sense of being strengthened and encouraged..., fortified... I think that is an enormously useful question because, if we chase it very far into our lives, it is useful to learn a great deal about who we really are, and where we really live, and what is really significant, and what does support us. And, in doing that, I think it is possible to discover, I've tried this in the past and I hope to do it again this week, that I can locate those places in my heart that are simply made inaccessible to God, and to everybody else for that matter.

It is possible, therefore, to ask the question, "What is the source of my comfort?"--to find out who I am, and, therefore, to do something about it..., to make myself accessible to God. That's the whole point of this thing, do you see?--to come to the point where I can say with a straight face, and I certainly can't, or at least most of the time, that God is the source of my comfort... I mean usually it's days off, or a good meal, or a class where nobody hassles me too much, or a schedule that's kind of clearing away so that I don't have to read too many essays and exams, and other stuff..., and the prospect of nothing to do.

Well, what the proverb and the readings today, next Sunday we're going to talk about this mysterious figure of John the Baptist and how he feels, are asking is something much deeper... You just look at John the Baptist... Imagine John the Baptist as a comfortable person, someone you could go out and have a beer with... "Ahh, good old John..." No, this is a very prickly character it seems from what little we know of him. And what he's trying to do is, as we will see, precisely ask that question: "What is the source of my real comfort?"--in order to make us available to God..., to make this a real period of Advent and waiting.

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