An Advent sermon preached at Calvary Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, CA

Dec 3, 2023

Introduction to Worship

O Holy Night is the hymn from which we came up with our theme for Advent. It came from a French poem “Minuit, Chrétiens” by Placide Cappeau, a wine merchant and leftist from southern France. Educated by Jesuit instructors in Avignon, Cappeau penned the complex text in 1843 on the occasion of the restoration of stained glass at the local church in Roquemaure. 

When it was put to music and then translated into English, the tone of the poem changed and became more upbeat. Here’s a translation from the French of the first stanza of the poem. 

Midnight, Christians, it is the solemn hour
When God as man descended among us
To expunge the stain of original sin
And to put an end to the wrath of his father.
The entire world thrills with hope
On this night which gives us a savior.
People, on your knees, behold your deliverance.
Christmas! Christmas! Here is the Redeemer!

Many elements in “Minuit, Chrétiens” did not sit well with church authorities. Soon after it was written, the 1848 Revolution broke out in France, and Adolphe Adam, the man who set the poem to music worried some observers by calling “O Holy Night” a “religious Marseillaise,” referring to the song adopted as a national anthem of the French people. Religious leaders tried to ban the song. They accused the composer of being Jewish. They accused the poet of being a socialist drunkard.

The truth is, Christmas should worry those in power. The story of Jesus is one that up-ends our understanding of what it means to be king and what it means to be servant. The story of Christmas contains songs by Mary and Zechariah and Isaiah, among other biblical voices, that all speak about how God wants human systems that are unjust to be overturned, how God cares for the outcast, the marginalized, the ones forgotten by society. 

We’ll hear one of those stories later in worship today, from the Prophet Isaiah. 

“Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother and in His name all oppression shall cease” is the line from O Holy Night that we’re exploring this week. The original poem’s language is even stronger. 

The Redeemer has overcome every obstacle.
The Earth is free, and Heaven is open.
He sees a brother where there was only a slave.
Love unites those whom iron had chained.
Who will tell him our gratitude?
It is for us all that he was born, that he suffered and died.
People, stand up, sing your deliverance!

The poem commands its listeners to get on their knees and behold the birth of their redeemer. And here, at the end of it, it tells people to stand up and sing of their redeemer.

It’s a fitting companion to our Advent journey. Let us listen to songs, old and new, in new ways this season and may God speak to us in the poetry. 

Scripture

Isaiah 40:1-11

Sermon

If you’ve been following along in the Advent devotional this week, you’ve already read these verses, and seen beautiful reflections by members of this community about this passage. This passage from the Book of Isaiah begins what is known as Isaiah’s Book of Consolation, also called Second Isaiah. The story told in the Book of Isaiah begins in 742 BCE, but by the time we get to chapter 40, scholars think we’re at least 100 years down the road. 

At the end of chapter 39, we’re told “Days are coming when all that is in your house, and that which your ancestors have stored up until this day, shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left, says the Lord.”

But as chapter 40 begins, that exile is ending, the penalty is paid, and people are to prepare to return home. It’s hard to say exactly how much time has passed, but more than one would expect between a chapter 39 and a chapter 40 in a book. 

This is the chapter that is quoted when the gospel accounts introduce John the Baptist. We often hear of John the Baptist during Advent. This year, we’ll instead read about him in January, but here’s what Mark’s gospel, chapter 1, says to introduce John: 

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”

Mark describes John as the embodiment of Isaiah’s prophecy, the messenger to prepare the way of Jesus. 

But the author of Isaiah didn’t know about John the Baptizer or about Jesus. He was writing to people in his own time, people facing their own dislocation. People who had been carted off to Babylon, collateral damage of the policies of unfaithful and unjust kings. 

I wonder what it would have been like for people who had been in exile, and who had heard the prophets’ cries about how the people’s own unfaithfulness had led to their calamity. What is it like to hear “comfort, o comfort my people” if you’re a person who has not known comfort at any point in your life? What is it like to be given a message of comfort after getting 39 chapters of prophetic blame and judgment? 

For some of us, perhaps the anxiety in our world has kept us from identifying with the word “comfort” for a while now. Job stress, family instability, disease, pandemic disruptions, money worries, or other factors can make you forget what “comfort” is like. 

Isaiah was speaking to a people in exile, offering comfort to a people who were facing real political troubles, reminding us that it is appropriate to see the political troubles of our world and respond to them with our faith. John the Baptizer heard those words of comfort and applied them to a different group of people facing a different kind of political reality, the first century occupation of the holy land by Rome.

That is one of the gifts of Scripture, to be able to reach across the years. A passage written by Isaiah as a response to a specific situation becomes the living word of God, hundreds of years later to 1^st century Palestinians, and then again become the living word of God to us here in San Francisco in 2023, speaking specifically to our lives, our political realities, today. 

We hear “speak tenderly to Jerusalem” and think of the Israeli and Palestinian people today—Jews, Muslims, and Christians— living in the midst of conflict, terror, and war. I was thankful to hear of a temporary ceasefire this past week, and the return of some hostages, but am aware that everyone there is in need of comfort, hope, and peace. 

Scripture is inherently political. We hope to keep it from being partisan. God’s word is bigger than any political party, or ideology, or national agenda. But it was written in the midst of political challenges to give meaning and guidance to people’s real challenges. 

Comfort ye. Comfort ye, my people, 

This passage is also the opening aria from Handel’s Messiah. And I listened to Messiah the whole time I was writing this sermon.

One thing that gets obscured in this passage, perhaps because we equate it to John, singularly preparing a way, or we hear it sung as a solo in Messiah, but “Comfort my people” in the Hebrew text is a plural imperative. It isn’t the work for one person. It isn’t an instruction to one person. 

Scholars aren’t exactly sure why it is plural. One thought is that it is like other places in Scripture where the heavenly host is present. We see that in the book of Job, or in Psalms. 

Psalm 148 opens with:

Praise the Lord from the heavens;
praise him in the heights!
Praise him, all his angels;
praise him, all his host!

The heavenly host also appears to shepherds at Jesus’ birth. That’s why Joann, Victor, and I all read the passage together. It’s a conversation of a passage, like earlier in Isaiah, in chapter 6, when seraphim and cherubim are gathered around God’s throne. 

I think it is also voiced in a plural imperative because it is a reminder that none of us are called do the work required by ourselves. Preparing the way for God is not work that can be done alone in isolation from others. 

I don’t know about you, but I think our society hasn’t been doing well with plural imperative living for a while, where people recognize the need to respond collectively for the good of others, to provide comfort. It got worse because of Covid, but our descent into isolating individualism began before 2020. 

It’s possible that those of us who gather for worship on a regular basis may be better equipped against the lure of lone ranger individualism than some. 

We sing together and our individual voices become more than any one of them are on their own. 

We volunteer and serve together and the help we give the community is magnified. 

We give money together which allows our individual gifts to combine with those of other people to make more of an impact in the community than any of us can do alone. 

We worship together, and as Isaiah says:
Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together. 

In this season of Advent, in this mad dash to Christmas, I suspect we both need comfort, and we need the discomfort that comes with preparing the way for God. We are the preparers of the way and also the people for whom the way is prepared. 

What does Isaiah say we need to do to prepare the way for the coming of our Lord? 

The text is clear. We are called to comfort. We are called to prepare the way. We are called to use our voices and cry out about where God is at work in the world. 

Isaiah is calling the people to work together for all people. But when the voice says, “cry out!”, the heavenly host has no better sense about what they are to do to prepare than we do. “What shall I cry?”, they ask.

Isaiah tells them to get up to a high mountain and lift up their voices with strength to proclaim. 

“HERE IS YOUR GOD!”

That is what we are to point out to people. We are to boldly and with confidence stand on the mountaintops and show people where we have seen God. 

As worship began this morning, I spoke about the French poem that became the hymn O Holy Night. When Unitarian minister, John Sullivan Dwight translated it into English in 1855, he showed people where he had seen God. 

The French verse was:

The Redeemer has overcome every obstacle.
The Earth is free, and Heaven is open.
He sees a brother where there was only a slave.
Love unites those whom iron had chained. 

Dwight translated the verse to:

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His Gospel is Peace.
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother
And in His name, all oppression shall cease. 

In 1855, in a country about to be divided by war over slavery, he connected the work of God to the plight of the slaves. 

Where have you seen God? I invite you to be on the lookout for where God is at work in the world and in your life. 

I’m thankful to hear that voice in Isaiah telling us to lift up our voices. And I’m thankful to have this community because your voices ‘cry out’ together for God better than any of our individual voices ever could, amplifying the message so people may know of a God who, as Isaiah says, 

“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.

And as we work together to prepare the way for God, I hope that we’ll be able to go about it with love and great joy. I hope, like Isaiah, we can say to the cities of Judah (and San Francisco)—“Here is your God!”. 

Comfort, oh comfort, my people. Prepare the way!

Thanks be to God. Amen.