Rev. Chandler Stokes Isaiah 40:1-11 The Second Sunday in Advent December 10, 2017 Introduction to the Scripture Reading The title of our Advent series is LONGING FOR EMMANUEL. When I introduced the series, I said that in our longing we find God. And if we are longing for love, then surely we find God in that longing, as God is love. And yet it is more complicated and more blessed than that. We long for God as Emmanuel, as God with us, as incarnate, embodied love. And so it both bigger and more complex than the word love might first suggest. In today s text, you ll first hear an admonition to say something, to speak, to say a critical word. And then, you ll hear a debate between voices about whether it s worth it to say anything at all. The passage ends with an expression of God s most gentle and embodied love. Scripture Isaiah 40:1-11 Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord s hand double for all her sins. 3 A voice cries out: In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. 5 Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. 6 A voice says, Cry out! And I said, What shall I cry? All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. 7 The grass withers, the flower fades, Because sermons are prepared with an emphasis on verbal presentation, the written accounts may occasionally stray from proper grammar and punctuation.
when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. 8 The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever. 9 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, Here is your God! 10 See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. 11 He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep. * * * I m going back to an old story today. I was going to save it for later in Advent, but it just kept calling to me. A man was walking down a road when he fell into a hole. The walls were vertical, sheer, and tall, like a well there was no way he could get out. He yelled for help. A doctor walked by; the man yelled, Hey, Doc, give me a hand. I can t get out of here. The doctor wrote out a prescription and tossed it down into the hole. He went back to yelling for help. Then he saw a minister walk by. He said, Hey, Rev, give me a hand here! The minister wrote out a prayer and tossed it down in the hole. He went back to yelling. Finally, he saw a friend going by. He called out, Hey friend, give me a hand. I can t get out. The friend jumped down in the hole. The man looked at him and said, Great! Are you stupid? Now, we re both down here. The friend gave him his hand and said, Yeah, but I ve been here before and I know the way. 1 I know what it s like to be in that hole. So do you. Sometimes that place is lonely. We are lonely, we humans. Sometimes we are truly lonely. 1 This story is from memory; it is one of Aaron Sorkin s the creator of the television program The West Wing. Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI Page 2 of 6 December 10, 2017
You who know loss and grief know that it is a rare soul who will not treat you oddly when you are grieving. C.S. Lewis wrote in A Grief Observed, An odd by-product of my loss is that I m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet. [P]erhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated into special settlements like lepers. 2 Nobody really wants to know how bad you feel, or hear how hard it is, because your loss becomes for them a frightening prospect they are also vulnerable. Those going through divorce, bankruptcy, or other traumas experience the same reactions. Often, people keep their distance. They don t want to be pulled into the gravity well, that hole, of your hurt it feels contagious to them. But even without loss or trauma, we can still feel alone. A recent survey found that 20 per cent of Americans simply feel lonely. Some 12 per cent said that they simply have no one with whom to discuss important matters: that s some thirty-six million people. We are lonely. And sometimes it s just a great relief to have someone to talk to. A young American once went to Calcutta to see Mother Teresa; he told her that he was planning on attending medical school so that he could then work with her among the lepers of India. And she said, Why would you do that? There is a poverty in your country that is just as severe as our poorest of the poor. In the West there is a loneliness, which I call the leprosy of the West. In many ways, it is worse than our poor in Calcutta. 3 Sometimes it is just a great relief to have someone to talk to. Sometimes that wonderful, miraculous gift of language is the antidote to our loneliness and an answer of sorts to our longing. I ve spoken before of Paul Kalanithi s memoir When Breath Becomes Air. Kalanithi was a physician who studied English in depth and then became a neurosurgeon. He had a deep knowledge of the brain and was also familiar with the dignity and power of words. He wrote: I see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains, shielded in centimeter thick skulls, into communion. A word [means] something only between people, and life s meaning, its virtue, [has] something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. 4 Words matter. They matter particularly in forming relationships. Language helps bridge that lonely gap and reach down into that lonely hole. Isaiah explores that problem. Israel is mourning in lonely exile as O Come, Emmanuel says, and Isaiah is seeking to draw them out of that isolation. Isaiah repeatedly emphasizes speaking words of comfort: Speak. Cry out. Lift up your voice. Speak tenderly. Cry out forgiveness. But there 2 C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1989). 3 http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/mother-teresa-saw-loneliness-as-leprosy-of-the-250607.php. 4 Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air (New York: Random House, 2016), 39. Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI Page 3 of 6 December 10, 2017
ensues a debate about whether it makes a difference to say anything at all. It s as if Israel were depressed, saying that it just doesn t matter anymore; nothing can bring me back to life. And the words of comfort seem inadequate and aren t getting through. So there are limits. Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, says, We belong to groups of people, and to societies, and to individuals we love. In all these contexts we use the coinage of words and ideas and accept the compromise and imprecision of human communication. 5 That is not a wrong thing. We are in part a conglomeration of relationships and shared ideas. But, he says, that is not everything, and if we think it is, the result will be the grossest hollowness and unreality in our selfhood. There is always more to us than language can bear that is uniquely us. And it is vital that we not gloss over or trivialize our uniqueness 6 which can make us feel alone. Language is shared, and we are unique. How can we be in real communion, out of lonely exile, our lonely hole? I ve spoken to you before about communication theory, that 60 percent of what we communicate is physical, through our bodies; 30 percent is emotional, through our tone and inflection; and then only 10 percent is cognitive, the actual words we say. So to communicate effectively, to commune, to overcome the gaps between us takes more than words. So there is music. Love letters are one thing, but love songs are another. That s what this next selection is, a love song. It takes the notion of God s love, God s incarnate love, and adds the grace of music. And to whom else would you entrust a message of love than to the French? Its words are about the incarnation, about God becoming flesh among us. But its power is in more than that. Il est né, le divin enfant, Jouez hautbois, résonez musettes, (He is born, the divine Christchild, sound forth the oboes with pipes replying.) Il est né, le divin enfant, chantons tous son avénement. (He is born, the divine Christchild, sing we praise to the infant mild.) More than four thousand years on earth, seers his advent were prophesying, More than four thousand years on earth, we awaited this joyous birth. O what beauty and charm are thine, heavenly grace to our hearts supplying, O what beauty and charm are thine, O what sweetness thou child divine! 5 Rowan Williams, It s Intelligence All the Way Down, Theos, http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2014/10/20/its-intelligence-all-the-way-down 6 Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air, 125. Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI Page 4 of 6 December 10, 2017
In a manger thou deignst to be, straw the bed whereon thou art lying; In a manger thou deignst to be, for a God, what humility! Il est né, le divin enfant, jouez hautbois, résonez musettes, (He is born, the divine Christchild, sound forth the oboes with pipes replying.) Il est né, le divin enfant, chantons tous son avénement. (He is born, the divine Christchild, sing we praise to the infant mild.)] So we have the cognitive, the words. And there is the emotive, the music, as it were, of our communication. But there needs to be more. You can t just toss in a prayer or a prescription. Not even singing a song down from the edge of the hole will do. Much in the same way as Rowan Williams speaks of the necessary compromise and imprecision of human communication, therapist, Irvin Yalom says that the capacity to tolerate this uncertainty in language is a prerequisite for his work as a therapist. He warns against our over-confidence in language. The powerful temptation to achieve certainty [about a client] through embracing an ideological school and a tight therapeutic system is treacherous: such belief may block the uncertain and spontaneous encounter necessary for effective therapy. This encounter, the very heart of psychotherapy, is a caring, deeply human meeting between two people, 7 two unique people. One of Irvin Yalom s clients was a man in desperate loneliness and isolation. He was facing death and was increasingly anxious and depressed. The client saw himself out on the sea and utterly alone. But Yalom s trusted, and his experience as a therapist told him, that even at the point of death, the willingness of another to be fully present may penetrate [human] isolation. That same patient was in group therapy for part of his treatment, and that group became a transformative experience for him. And one day near the end of his life, he spoke to his group, Even though you re alone in your boat, it s always comforting to see the lights of other boats bobbing nearby. That is, they showed up for him. They got down into the hole with him. Three years ago, we created the Mental Health Referral Panel. This is a list of therapists whose practice we trust, and the panel is meant to be a means by which we can extend the safety of Westminster s heart beyond the bounds of the congregation. The practitioners listed in the panel were discovered and vetted through a faithful committee s suggestions and an interview process with them and our Pastoral Care Team. They are all outside Westminster, and yet they are those to whom we feel we can safely refer you, as lights bobbing 7 Irvin Yalom, Love s Executioner (New York: Basic Books, 1989), p. xx. Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI Page 5 of 6 December 10, 2017
near you. They have different approaches, different kinds of training, different specialties. You might find a good match there. What s key is this: we feel confident that they will be good therapists and will get down in there with you. As Susan Jennings has put it, they have widened the circle of safety that we try to provide here at Westminster. For instance, they will not pathologize you because you are gay or discerning your sexual identity or orientation. They will not pathologize you simply because you are angry with God or questioning or wondering if God is real. We have confidence that they will listen to you, listen to you and not project their own preconceived notions of how a Christian encounters, thinks about, or experiences the world. This is a way that we hope to embody and make incarnate the love of God for the world, to move beyond the idea of the incarnation to actual lights bobbing, beyond even a song of incarnation, to people actually showing up, getting down in there with us, to offer the great relief of having someone to talk to. And after we announced the creation of the panel, at first through the vision and generosity of John Molhoek and then others, we established a fund to help people have access to this therapy. It is very well funded. We have been trying to spend it, but there is more than twice the amount in it today than there was at the start. The insert in today s bulletin says more about it. Please, if you have half an inkling that it might be a relief to have someone to talk to, who will really show up, be another light bobbing nearby, and offer a deep meeting between two people, please take advantage of this panel and this fund. And let others you know and love know about this resource. We intend this to be our response to the scourge of loneliness in our world, how we hope to put flesh on God s love, just as Isaiah is trying to pull Israel out of its loneliness and isolation. I ve suffered with depression. I know how I can resist the pull of compassion, how I have pushed back against even the most comforting words. I also know that there are artists of the human soul who have been just the right match, who somehow communicated through my thick skull, my centimeter-thick skull and into my heart: some have been therapists, who could come close to the gravity well of pain and still be fully present; some have been friends, who have not been afraid to come close, who could see me. They have been those who have embodied incarnated the love of God, who could in gentleness speak forgiveness and truly forgive and love. The gentle and kind shepherd at the end of our text is how God shows up in those people you ve got to get down in the hole to be this intimate: She will feed her flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in her bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep. This is a God who, in the people on this panel or elsewhere in our lives, goes into that stuck place with us and can whisper kindness, or sits with us in silence, holds us when we are broken beyond words, who is bobbing nearby, showing up, down in there, with exactly who we uniquely are, and who knows us in love. Thanks be to God. Westminster Presbyterian Church, Grand Rapids, MI Page 6 of 6 December 10, 2017