Advent 2 2023

Isaiah 40.1-11, Mark 1.1-8

 

“Comfort, O comfort my people.” Those words, from the book of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah are probably familiar. Those who know Handel’s Messiah may have the music running through their heads already, because they are the first words in his oratorio which will go on to tell of Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection. For Handel at least, this is where the great story of Jesus begins - with God’s declaration that his people need to be “comforted”.

 

But if this is what it’s all about, then that little word “comfort” is obviously an important one, and it matters that we understand it.

 

What does comfort mean to you? Snuggling into an armchair under a blanket, in front of a log fire, with a mug of cocoa? The Scandinavian concept of ‘hygge’ has been all the rage in recent years; it’s a good way of selling  fairy lights, thick socks, scented candles, and all the other things that get people through long hard winters.

 

But that’s not really what Isaiah had in mind. You can’t buy the kind of comfort he was talking about. Even in English, that wasn’t originally what comfort meant. The “fort” in comfort gives that away. It’s linked to fortifications and fortitude. Soldiers live in forts. To be comforted was originally to be strengthened, not wrapped in a fluffy blanket.

 

But the Hebrew word Isaiah used carries an even richer set of meanings. It’s the word ‘nacham’, and it’s very hard to translate. It’s to do with changing someones mind or heart. Sometimes in the Bible “nacham” is translated as “repent” – not a very cosy word at all – or relent, or regret, or pity or have compassion on. In the book of Genesis, God decides to destroy the world he has made by flooding it, but he sees that there is one good man in it, Noah, and so, the story says, God “repents” – nacham - of his decision, and saves Noah, his family and a  pair of every living animal so that they can begin again. Nacham is a word that describes the things that transform you, the things that reach and change the places in you nothing else can, setting you on a different track.  That’s not something that a mug of cocoa and a log fire can do – at least not by themselves.

 

One of the great privileges of my job is that, as a priest, I get to listen to a lot of people’s stories. Clergy soon discover that people – sometimes completely random people – tell us stuff about themselves, about their hopes and fears, their regrets and sorrows, stuff they may never have told anyone else. There’s not usually anything we can do about what they tell us, but I sometimes wonder whether that’s precisely the point. All we can do is listen. We can’t write prescriptions or fix what is broken in their lives. We aren’t gatekeepers to the benefits system, but often simply to be heard and seen is the most powerful help of all, and something that is surprisingly rare in many lives. Whether we are priests or not, just being present to people as they are can be completely transformative. When people are listened to in love, not judgement, often they heal and blossom of their own accord. It seems to me that’s a good example of the power of “nacham”, that transformational comfort God calls Isaiah to proclaim. 

 

But there’s an added dimension to the “nacham” Isaiah is talking about. He was prophesying to people who had been in exile in Babylon for several generations, far away from home, and – they thought - far away from God. They thought God had abandoned them, and some thought they’d deserved that abandonment.

 

What is the comfort Isaiah is told to bring them? Isaiah isn’t sure at first. What shall I cry? he asks God.  The passage gradually works up to the big reveal. “Get you up to a high mountain, , O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength , O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear,; say to the cities of Judah – what are they going to say? – “here is your God!”  That’s it. “Here is your God,” God is present with you, on the journey with you as you return home, feeding the flock, carrying the lambs who can’t yet manage the journey by themselves, but most of all just being there. “His reward is with him” Isaiah says - or to put it another way, his presence is the reward. That presence tells them that the love they thought they had destroyed is indestructible. The God they thought had forgotten them is right there with them. That’s the comfort, the nacham, that they need to know, the knowledge that will transform them.

 

In the Gospel reading John the Baptist restates that message as he points people to Jesus. “The one who is more powerful than I is coming”, says John “the one who will baptise you with the Holy Spirit”.  “Here is your God” in this man.

 

Christianity can be made to sound very complicated, full of long theological words like atonement and sanctification and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. We can get ourselves lost in debates about the Trinity or the Eucharist, transubstantiation and consubstantiation and all the rest. But actually it’s very simple and it is all summed up in those four words. “Here is your God”. Four words, and none of them longer than one syllable. “Here is your God”, in the child in the manger, born to a poor family, in the friend of sinners, who sits with those others avoid, in the man on the cross, humiliated and beaten. “Here is your God,” the one who walks beside you, who is found not only where you expect him to be, but also where you don’t, not only in the love and goodness of our lives, but also in the grubby broken places we’d rather keep hidden. He is the one who sees us and hears us, knows us and loves us, whether we think we are lovable or not. A mug of cocoa by a warm fire is great, but this is the comfort we really need, the good news that can change us completely.

Amen