Isaiah 40:1-11

2 Peter 3:8-15a

Mark 1:1-8

“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.”

Isaiah 1:1

Comfort, Strengthen, and Prepare

I am a fan of C.S. Lewis, and I delight in his Chronicles of Narnia, particularly The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe which has been made into a movie coming out December 9. I encourage you to see it especially with children. My hope is that it is faithful to the depth of the book.

It was during the bombing blitz of London, World War II, when the Pevensie children – Lucy, Peter, Susan, and Edmund were sent to live with an old professor out in the country. While exploring the old house, Lucy walks into what seemed an ordinary wardrobe closet to discover a land where it was always winter and never Christmas. Narnia was under the evil spell of Deep Magic cast by the White Witch making it always winter.

Like Christina Rossetti who wrote the hymn we just sang, In the Bleak Midwinter, C.S. Lewis knew the harshness of England’s winter when “frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.” He evoked a feeling of cold hopelessness with the image of always winter and never Christmas. What comfort can be found in a land where it is always winter and never Christmas?

After years of exile in Babylon (current day Iraq), the prophet Isaiah was called by God to preach comfort to the Israelites. Comfort, O comfort my people says your God. The Hebrew word translated as comfort literally means “to have compassion for.” The prophet understood that the exile was a punishment and provided time for their repentance. They, who had lived unjustly without compassion for the poor, the orphan, and the widowed and, therefore, without the right worship of God, had served their term. Now, they would be comforted, strengthened, and gathered into the arms (embrace) of God’s love. Their hopelessness ended in the assurance of God’s loving presence – Here is your God, said the Herald of Good Tidings! The Israelites were not forever abandoned to captivity and exile, but would be again gathered into the embrace of God.

In Maine we live in a land where winter brings great anticipation for skiing and skating and sledding, hot cocoa around a warm fire and rosy red cheeks. Winter is not dreaded; well, maybe by a few. Winter is a time of new entertainment for those who can afford it, but for the homeless on the street it can seem always winter and never Christmas when hopelessness clutches your soul.

We, too, are in the clutches of a land where it is always winter and never Christmas when the comfort of the presence of God, is substituted by presents under the tree that lose their appeal in a month. It is always winter and never Christmas when rather than having compassion, comfort is equated with stability that gives us the illusion of being saved by our own good choices and hard work. It is always winter and never Christmas when comfort relegates sacrifice to only those who get paid to be in harm’s way for our safety and freedom.

With our youth present this morning, I want to focus particularly on comfort that has lost compassion and settles for stability. Reading the newspaper this last week, I, as you are, am grieved by the murder of a fourteen year old girl in Fayette, Maine. She seemed to have everything going for her. What makes this even more tragic is that her neighbor, also fourteen is charged with the crime. Two families are grieving for the children today. One is dead and the other lost. From what has been learned about the boy’s personal website, he has been enthralled with hate, with violence, and named Eric Harris, one of the Columbine killers, as a hero.

Just Friday, Portland High School was closed all day because a mother read a blog that alluded to youth going to the school with guns. Deering High School was evacuated due to a bomb threat. And, we all remember what happened at the Falmouth High School just recently that involved a fifteen year old and a shotgun. There is a subculture that thrives on gossip, innuendo, threats, and, to coin a Star Wars’ term, the dark side. Youth are as responsible as adults to expose this subculture and bring light into its darkness.

It is not enough to teach our children to make good choices, working hard to advance themselves for a stable and productive life. We must show them how to care enough, to have compassion enough to reach out beyond the security of their own world to make a world that is fit for all of us. Compassion is not practiced when it is convenient, but is a way of life following in the way of Jesus. That is the vision of our youth groups. That is what the High School Youth Group strives to make real, a group where there is room for all, an alternative culture that just by its existence calls into question any kind of subculture that spreads gossip, innuendo, threat, and darkness. We are not perfect, but we strive toward the vision.

Just about two months ago, we anguished with the family of another young woman who did make a bad choice in drinking so much she was out of control and walking the streets of the Old Port barefoot. Yes, she made a bad choice and her death is tragic. But, another question looms, why no one who saw her intervened. No one stopped. No one called for help. Is it so accepted as private business that a young woman can be so visibly drunk and alone and no one helps? Comfort, O comfort my people, just as God has compassion, should not we?

It is always winter and never Christmas when we become our own gods, comforted by our presents, our stability, and our hiring others to make sacrifices for us. But, Christmas impinges upon our winter when we make room for our God who truly comforts. By

God’s comfort we are strengthened to become truly human, receivers and givers of compassion, thus preparing the way to proclaim – Here is our God!