Isaiah 40:1-11 L.D. 1 "The Last Comfort" Scott Hoezee

My first theology professor at Seminary was Dr. Fred Klooster who was, among other things, a leading scholar and expert on the Heidelberg Catechism. Professor Klooster died recently but his funeral a couple of weeks ago provided some nice reminders of his instruction over the years. A main item on Dr. Klooster's agenda was to recover the depth of meaning contained in the word "comfort" in Lord's Day 1 of the Catechism. But Klooster feared that contemporary society has pretty well ruined the word.

Today "comfort" conjures up a cloud of images ranging from La-Z-Boy recliners to Royal Caribbean cruises. "Comfort food" is all about the personal satisfaction that can come from mashed potatoes and meatloaf. "Creature comforts" are all about having the nicest stuff even as the words "luxury and comfort" get yoked to describe things like the all-leather interior of a Lexus. "Comfort" connects to all that is warm and fuzzy and satisfying. Hence, we don't usually connect the idea of comfort to strength or power. Comfort is putting your feet up after a hard day of work, sipping some wine, and enjoying the cozy fire crackling on the hearth. Comfort, we think, is a soft concept. It is not "working" word.

But Professor Klooster knew that even as the English word "comfort" is a combination of the Latin words "cum-fortis" or "with strength," so the theological concept of comfort is likewise vigorous. That's why Klooster suggested that we do something we did in fact do at his funeral: namely, sing the hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" but substitute the word "comfort" for "fortress." If you sing, "A mighty comfort is our God," you start to get the idea that comfort is an active and tough phenomenon. Because listen: before it is some tender and cozy sigh of relief, comfort comes first as a bracing, in-your-face message about what is what in life. We need to be discomfited and made profoundly uneasy before we will be able to experience the depth of our only comfort.

Let me illustrate what I mean. Each Sunday the New York Times includes a section called "Sunday Style"--a title you will find deeply ironic once I tell you about the page one story in this section a week ago today. Because last Sunday the Times carried a story about what some in New York are now calling "the lifestyle." Without wishing to be unduly prurient or inappropriate, I will tell you that "the lifestyle" in question is a desperately immoral kind of private party now being thrown on a regular basis by a couple of agencies in New York. These invitation-only soirees are held at various nightclubs and are essentially orgies. At some point in the course of the party a gong sounds, signaling that it is time for all the guests to strip down to their underwear (if not down to nothing). From there things unfold pretty much as you might imagine and I will not say more.

All in all this is so sordid and lurid and wrong that you hardly know where to begin in saying how sordid and lurid and wrong it is. But for now it is sufficient to point out what may be the fundamental fault that undergirds such a phenomenon--in fact, it is the same fault that lies behind a great deal of what is wrong in life. Because in reading the article about these parties, I could not help but notice certain phrases that cropped up often. The people who arrange these parties talk about how important it is to give people a chance to explore "their own sexuality." Those who attend these gatherings likewise speak about the benefits of having "your own space" in which to "get comfortable" with your own sexuality. Women especially need to be able to take charge of their own selves and their own bodies in an environment where they can set some of their own parameters.

Probably you already see where I am heading. Because the Catechism begins by saying that we find lasting comfort when we give up on the notion that we are our own. We find comfort by dispensing with the idea that I have "my own space," "my own sexuality," or my own ability to take charge of my own body, my own identity, my own self. Comfort begins when we give up that kind of jargon, trading it in for the claim that body and soul we belong to Someone Else. Someone Else has a prior claim on anything you ordinarily would flag as belonging to you yourself alone. And if that is so, then you can no longer say things like, "What I do with my own body is no one's business but my own."

If you belong, body and soul and in life and in death, to Another who is Christ Jesus the Lord, then everything you do and everything are ties in with him. But to state the merely obvious, this is an idea that many people in society would find decidedly uncomfortable! Ironically, in this age of moral relativism, those who do not wish to appear judgmental refuse to say something like, "It is wrong to tell a lie" but rather they may say, "I'm just not comfortable with lying." The language of right and wrong has been replaced by talk of personal preference expressed via your personal comfort zone.

But when morality is individually defined, it comes as no surprise that the one thing many people are not at all comfortable with today are moral rules and precepts that apply to all people whether they like it or not. Instead each person must decide for him- or herself what works best and what feels the most comfortable. So the Catechism's idea that you are not free to make personal lifestyle choices is considered a most antiquated and dreadful idea. Many today do not feel comfortable with our Christian definition of comfort.

This is why I suggested a moment ago that comfort, as a theological concept, can get in your face and unsettle you long before it becomes a sigh of relief. If comfort is going to come to us at all, it needs to begin by confronting all that is wrong with life. Isaiah 40 says the same thing. Although this is one of the Bible's more famous passages about comfort, we sometimes forget how stark these same verses are, too. Obviously the comfort Isaiah is commanded to proclaim is valuable only because the people had been suffering recently. What's more, verse 2 makes clear that the source of their suffering had been their own sinfulness. Comfort comes not to those who deserve a reward but instead to those who have already felt the pain and the sting of where sin can lead you in life.

But the rest of this passage also conveys the link between getting serious about life's jagged edges and the emergence of true comfort. Verse 3 says that the way of the Lord begins smack in the middle of the desert. It is in the wilderness, that biblical location of evil, that God begins to construct his highway to shalom. If the salvation of God is going to emerge from anywhere, it will be from the middle of life's ugliness. What's more, the following verses say that we need God to be the One who will lead us out of the wilderness because on our own we can do nothing in that we are like fragile grass.

Apparently, if we want to access the comfort Isaiah is declaring, we need to do so first of all by acknowledging all that is difficult, even ugly, about life and about our own lives and hearts, too, while we're at it. We need to own up to the reality of sin. We need to meet God in the wilderness and then admit that we are too weak, too grass-like ever to save ourselves. In fact, given our sin, considering the mess we are in, and being weak, we need to turn ourselves over to God completely. If we do, then the bottom line of Isaiah 40 can become our reality: we will be the lambs safely nestled into the arms of the shepherd.

That is, of course, a lyric image and as images go, it will receive a mighty boost in the New Testament when Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd. The stained glass window over this sanctuary's main doorway can remind you of this pastoral picture every time you enter this place for worship. But how often do we realize that to some people, that may not seem like a comforting image at all? Because the way you get into that shepherd's strong arms is precisely the path of self-denial captured in Lord's Day 1 of the Catechism.

We need to be carried by Another precisely because we cannot make our own way, we cannot construct our own highway out of sin's desert wasteland. So we turn ourselves over to God in Christ and, in so doing, declare that we are not our own anymore. We do not belong to our own selves. Another has a prior (and a total) claim on us. Again, however, some people find that idea to be anything but comforting.

It is difficult for those of us who are so thoroughly familiar with the gospel to conceive of how this may sound in the ears of an outsider to the faith. In fact, it may even strike some of us as bizarre that anyone could look at the image of the Good Shepherd and see something offensive in it. But let's give the world some credit: maybe those who are offended by that image are more in touch with its radical nature than those of us who look at it without batting an eye.

You see, what we too easily forget is the truth captured by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his classic work, The Cost of Discipleship. "When Christ calls a man to follow him," Bonhoeffer wrote, "he bids that man to come and die." We sacrifice our sense of self. We don't stop using the personal pronouns "I" and "me" (even the Catechism uses those words). But we place our sense of self in the context of who we are in relationship to Jesus.

Sometimes we forget how difficult that self-sacrifice is. But maybe part of the reason is because we fail to live this out in our day-to-day lives. We might do well to ask ourselves how often we reflect on our being owned by Christ. These days slavery has become thoroughly offensive to us, and mostly that is a good thing, of course. What we forget in our proper rejection of one human being owning another is that even so we need to see ourselves as willing slaves of Jesus. When people make profession of faith here in church, they are asked if they trust Jesus as Savior and Lord. So when I meet with people in my study to prepare them for their profession, I always ask them if they can define the terms "Savior" and "Lord." Virtually no one has a problem with the Savior part. Jesus died to save me.

But the term "Lord" usually causes at least a moment's hesitation. Sometimes I try to help by coming up with a current-day synonym. Maybe "lord" is a little like the term "manager" or "boss," I say. But the truth is that those words do not quite capture it. Jesus is our Lord because he is something we don't much encounter in our democratic and free society: he is our master, our owner. Maybe the reason my profession of faith candidates hesitate on getting the right definition of "Lord" is not just because we do not often use that word in our everyday speech. Maybe it's also because we don't often bump into this concept. Maybe, deep down, we don't even much like it.

And indeed, how often does the fact of Jesus' claim on you influence a decision you make? Does your body-and-soul allegiance to Jesus cross your mind when perusing the video options at Blockbuster or when channel surfing on cable TV? What does being owned by God in Christ do to your identity at work? What does being owned by God in Christ do to the attitude you take toward your income and lifestyle?

Some while back I mentioned an observation made by Barbara Brown Taylor. We all know, she said in one of her sermons, that if a man in the church loses his job, the pastor may well call this person to offer sympathy and prayer. But suppose that a pastor one day got wind of the fact that a certain member of his congregation had gotten a big promotion at work along with significantly more pay. And suppose the pastor then called this person and said, "Charlie, I've heard your news and so was wondering if it would be OK if I came by sometime to pray with you about this. I'm concerned about the temptations this new venture may throw your way as well as what it may do to your ability to serve here at church. So I'd like to pray for God's strength for you in the face of this new success."

Probably we'd be taken aback. But as Brown Taylor notes, that is only because we do cordon off parts of our lives from the total claims Jesus makes on us. We act as though we are our own after all and so why would the church have anything to say to us so long as life is chugging along smoothly? If we ask that, however, we reveal that we, too, quietly resist the same self-denying sacrifice that seems so offensive to some outside the church.

It looks as though the only way you will ever see this self-denial as a source of comfort is if you die and are reborn. You need to kill off ordinary ways of defining value and bring to life a whole new set of values. The place to start is by admitting that without God, you are lost in sin's wilderness and unable to find your own way out.

Because left to your own devices, you will only make matters worse. Left to your own devices, your own self will try to snag more and more power and prestige until your pride swells so big that there is no room left in your heart for God. People who pride themselves on being "self-made individuals" forget that when you pour all your life's energy into making your own self, all you have succeeded in doing is fertilizing the grass of your life for a little longer. But you're still grass. And when the grass withers and the flower falls and your life is finished, you may discover too late that self-made people have nothing more to go on once that self dies.

The article I mentioned earlier in the New York Times did not make any moral judgment on those orgy-like parties. However, near the end of the article there was a quote from a psychologist who said that these people may well be ruining themselves. By allowing their sexuality to be defined by and exercised in these swinging parties they may well discover some day that they have ruined themselves ever to be content with, or able to function in, a committed and monogamous relationship such as marriage.

But that kind of sad result is what you would expect whenever people take a gift of God's good creation and then exercise that gift without reference to that same God's rules for living. Having been created in God's image, we were made to extend ourselves outward and upward to God. When we live only for self and our own pleasures, we draw more and more into ourselves until we finally become not creatures who can give God the glory but instead dense wads of ego. We become like a blackhole in space. A blackhole is not really a hole but is a once-bright star that has collapsed in on itself. It finally becomes so densely heavy with matter that its gravity sucks in everything in the vicinity--even beams of light fall into the dead star's gravity and disappear into the blackness. So also those who live only for their own selves: eventually they collapse under their own egotistical weight. Luminous beings originally created in God's image and so designed to shine like stars become ruined cinders where even the light becomes as night.

The Bible says that instead we must deny ourselves. We need to admit, of course, that doing this is not easy. Those who find all this offensive because it is so hard to do are on to something. This is difficult--it's fatal in fact. But the gospel's central paradox is that those who are willing to lose their lives for Jesus' sake get those lives back again.

People often ask, "Do you think we will know and recognize each other in heaven?" My answer is that of course we will. The God who saved us by having the Son of God become a very specific human named Jesus is not aiming at a heaven filled with anonymous globs of humanity who neither know nor are known. Of course we will know each other because we will be there more fully ourselves than is possible for now. The funny thing is that you become that unique self only when you forget about yourself so as to ponder Jesus first of all. The more you become like Jesus, the more you are yourself. This is not an easy truth but when God's kingdom fully comes, we will most certainly discover that it is a profoundly comforting truth at the last! Amen.