“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.” Advent is by far my favorite season of the year. Every year on the night before Advent begins, my husband Tom and I set up the Advent wreath on our dining room table, then hang a Moravian Advent star on our front porch. Each week we add more lights inside and out, working to keep at bay the growing darkness as we prepare in heart and mind for Christmas.
This year, though, we blew our traditions out of the water. After setting up the Advent wreath and hanging the Advent star, we put up our Christmas tree. In any other year I’d be embarrassed to admit it! This year, though, the darkness has been darker than usual. This year, we need the light to be more visible than ever. We haven’t decorated the tree yet, but it is up and the lights are lit. And in those lights we are finding comfort.
“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God,” we heard today from the book of the prophet Isaiah. Comfort, O comfort. Said twice for emphasis, twice to indicate tenderness and compassion, twice because people needed a double measure of comfort.
The people of Judea, the southern territory of the biblical holy lands, had been conquered by the Babylonian Empire in the year 587 BCE. The beloved Temple, the center of worship and cultural identity, was torn to the ground and hundreds of people were force marched to far off Babylon where they lived in exile. Far from home, far from the land they loved, the people mourned. They lamented in prayers like Psalm 137:
By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our harps.
For there our captors asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How could we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?
The people grieved for their loved ones who died in the attack on their city. They grieved for the Temple, the concrete sign of their faith. They grieved for their lost homes and lands and possessions, for life as they once knew it. And they experienced remorse and guilt, because they believed that Jerusalem was captured and destroyed as a punishment from God for their lack of faithfulness. In a foreign land, they suffered. Children grew and married in exile. Babies were born in exile. People died in exile. For forty years they lived in exile, and yearned with all their hearts to return home.
God spoke to them through the prophet:
“Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid . . .”
Words of comfort were spoken. An end was in sight. Forgiveness was granted. The people were still in exile, and would be for some months longer until the Persian Empire conquered Babylonia and the Persian King Cyrus set the captives free. The people were still in exile, but they had comfort and hope at last. Comfort and hope because God is tender, because God loves creation and all humanity deeply, because God is present and acts in the world.
Comfort and hope because God forgives and because God is good. Comfort for the present and hope for the future.
Today we are living in exile, not in a foreign land, but exiled by the Coronavirus to months of quarantine and separation in our own homes. In this exile, we grieve for what we have lost. We grieve for well over a quarter of a million people who have died of COVID-19 in the United States alone, far more than in any other nation of the world. We grieve for more than 63 million people who have been infected worldwide. We grieve for events that have been cancelled, trips we couldn’t take, friends and family we haven’t seen in person since March. We grieve the loss of jobs, the loss of income, the loss of livelihoods. We grieve that we will remain separated for a while longer, and that our Christmas celebrations will be as changed as were our celebrations of Easter, Pentecost and Thanksgiving.
Like the exiles in Babylon, some of us also wonder about the part sin has played in our exile. I don’t believe for a moment, the way they did, that God sent this exile upon as as a punishment for our unfaithfulness. I don’t believe that God who is tender, who symbolically carries the lambs in his arms, sends punishment indiscriminately, causing those who are already vulnerable to suffer even more. But I have seen how our human sin has made things worse. The Catechism at the back of our Book of Common Prayer says that “Sin is the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation.” Sin breaks relationships. So, neglecting to protect one another when the virus first broke out, claiming that personal liberty is more important that communal safety, is sin that plays a part in spreading the virus. Turning the virus into a political battle zone, instead of focusing our battle on the virus itself, is sin that breaks relationship. Choosing financial well-being for some over the health and safety for all is sinful. This is hard news, because Americans take pride in our individuality, our political system and our economy. It’s hard to hear that every aspect of our lives, even those we cling to most tightly, can become occasions for sin and can pull us from being all that God created us to be. This pandemic, I believe, is not God’s punishment for sin, but human sin has made it worse. We grieve that brokenness, that sinfulness, along with all the rest that we have lost in this pandemic time.
In our grief, God speaks to us today. “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.” God sends us comfort that, although we’ll still be in this exile when Christmas comes, we will not be here forever. Although we’ll still be separated from loved ones and from our beloved church buildings for some months more, we won’t be apart forever. Although our sinfulness has helped make this pandemic far worse in the United States than in any other nation on earth, this pandemic will not last forever. The end is in sight. Effective vaccines are on the horizon. It will be an exile of over a year by the time it is over, but it won’t be 40 years as it was for the Judeans in Babylonia. God comforts us with that assurance today.
And God commands us to offer comfort to others. “Comfort, O comfort my people.” In this passage comfort is a verb in command form, and it is plural. Many commentaries imagine these as God’s words spoken to the angels. “Go, angels, go my messengers, go and comfort my people.”
God commands us to do the same. You, all of you, you in the middle of coronavirus exile, go and comfort my people, says our God. Comfort others. Keep reminding your family and friends that we’ve come so far and the end is in sight, so don’t give up now, don’t let your guard down now. Send texts and letters and old-fashioned Christmas cards, offering comfort. Make old fashioned phone calls. Give comfort and hope everywhere you can. In the words of Isaiah, “lift up your voice with strength, . . . Lift it up, do not fear, . . . Say to the cities of Judah, [to the cities of Virginia and beyond] ‘Here is your God!’” Be a part of obeying the command to comfort God’s people.
And if part of comforting others is to hang those Christmas lights early, do it boldly. Don’t worry, I’m assured that the Advent Pharisees are being quite lenient this year. Just be assured of God's comforting presence as you go and comfort others.
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