Psalm 85

2 Peter 3: 8-1

Mark 1:1-8

I can't imagine a more beautifully comforting passage in all of literature than the first words and the entire passage we hear in today's first Scripture Reading: "Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God." As a lover of music, soon as I hear those words, I hear a gorgeous tenor voice singing from Handel's Messiah, "Comfort, comfort ye my people." No matter where I am or what horrible pictures of violence I may be seeing on TV news, that text and melody draw me into deep and expansive prayer: a feeling of awe at being held in God's hands ... and of being compelled to share God's comfort with those many people who need it.

That text was written when God came to the Israelites in a time of desperation and tremendous loss: of their king, their nation, their homeland, their Temple. Chapter 40 begins a section in Isaiah which biblical people call "Second Isaiah", and it is addressed to the Israelites in Babylonian captivity, after 586 BC. "First Isaiah" (chapters 1-39) was meant to warn the people in Jerusalem of what would happen if they didn't change their ways. They didn't, and were taken into exile. Being imprisoned and far from home was an experience of feeling abandoned by God. But God sends a prophet to speak to them words of comfort. This messenger tells them that God has never abandoned them, and much more, that God is preparing for them a smooth highway on which their true Shepherd (God) "gathering them in his arms and carrying them in his bosom," will lead them home. They are to cry out from a high mountain glad tidings, "Here is your God! Here comes with power the Lord God."  Indeed, they did return rejoicing to Jerusalem after Cyrus the Persian conquered Babylonia.

But more profound comfort is coming. We move from the first words of Second Isaiah to the terse first words of Mark: "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God." He states unequivocally who this Jesus is. Now not only is God sending another powerful prophet, John the Baptist, but John will prepare people for the coming of God's own Son into human history. This most gentle and powerful Shepherd will liberate not just one people, but all people, in all times, from desolation, violence, sickness, injustice, loss (as in life, homes, jobs, health, dignity today).

Last Sunday, we heard Jesus' word "Watch" three times. Be alert. Stay awake. You don't know when the Day of the Lord is coming (the Second Coming of Christ). On this Second Sunday, the operative word or phrase may be, "Be ready." So what must we do to "Be ready", to "Prepare the way of the Lord"?  Listen to Peter: "What sort of persons ought you to be, conducting yourselves in holiness and devotion, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God. ...We await new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells."  We must not only wait, hard enough, but hasten that new earth of righteousness. We must "Be ready" by actively opening our hearts to God's coming, like Ebenezer Scrooge did in The Christmas Carol.

Scrooge changed his life after his dreams of Jacob Marley warning him of the resultant hell if one lives in a self-imprisoned, close-fisted way. Many need comfort in our difficult times, and many need hope. Who will dare to forego the hectic distractions of a commercial Christmas, and creatively bring comfort and hope to everyone around them? Who will be ready to cry out with deeds the glad tidings of our God, who comes with the greatest power, that of love?