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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

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Amen.

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Seminary orientation, Fall 2017, when I started the seminary, I remember a few of the words

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that Dr. Meyer shared with my incoming class.

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I'll spare you the impression, but he said, never meet a stranger on this campus.

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And what I think a bunch of my classmates felt or remembered or experienced was this

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place isn't like other places.

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This is a great community.

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This is a wonderful place to be.

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What I heard in sort of a little sense of fear was keep your head up.

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Don't be looking down at your phone, scrolling emails or checking text messages, scrolling

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Facebook.

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Even, maybe even, don't look at that latest grading that you got on your pass fail systems

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paper.

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No, keep your head up.

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And so what I would do is I would go around campus from class to class, building to building,

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and I quite honestly would have my head down.

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But then I'd see somebody out of the corner of my eye coming down a sidewalk or maybe

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passing by my way, and I would put whatever it was that I had away, and I would be available

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in just a moment to maybe share a soft smile, maybe even to acknowledge their existence

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and say hi if I knew them enough.

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But then as soon as the moment would pass, as soon as they were kind of out of my area,

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I would put my head right back down.

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Up it went, down it went.

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But lately, over the last couple of months, I've been trying, I've really been trying

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to keep my head up.

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I've been trying to look around as I go over the buildings from class to class, from my

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office to other offices, and I've been noticing some things.

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One of the things I noticed was a student walking across the quad, the little diagonal

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portion going across that sidewalk, and this student, he had his head down, his face was

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kind of scrunched up, his teeth were gritted together like he was kind of going through

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something, and quite honestly, he was.

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We all know the feeling from Thanksgiving to December 15th, it can feel like forever

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and it can go like that.

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This student had pain and discomfort kind of written all over their face.

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It was almost like somebody had taken a Sharpie and in big bold letters had written on their

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forehead, warfare.

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Now whether you've seen that or experienced that, we all have experiences where time in

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those moments feels like it's standing still.

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Or maybe in those moments, the only thing that can break through the tension, that can

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allow a person to see beyond it to a future circumstance that gets them through it, is

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a word.

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It's not a word that says, hey, I've got all my stuff done, what about you?

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Hey, it was easy this semester, we didn't have that big of a workload.

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It's certainly not a professor coming to you and saying, there's no more requirements,

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I've taken them all away, that's just unrealistic.

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But in any case, we've seen those moments before.

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Maybe it's on a sidewalk with somebody that we don't really care to interact with.

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Maybe it's at a conference table with those we work with and we don't really want to get

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more familiar with and share more words of comfort with those people.

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It might be, quite honestly, at the dinner table, where pain in that situation is palpable.

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Everybody can feel it.

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Warfare can be written on everybody's forehead at the dinner table.

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But even if none of those are true, even if it's not the sidewalk or the conference table

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or the dinner table, this one is true.

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We've seen it in the mirror, where our own pain, our own discomfort, our own warfare,

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sometimes of our own doing, often of our own doing, is right there in front of us.

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And in moments like that, it's hard to see beyond through them to the end.

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In moments like that, time feels like it's standing still.

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And that's a feeling not all too unfamiliar from the people in our text, from the people

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that God through Isaiah is issuing a command to share words of comfort to one another.

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Did you notice when we sang, it's comfort, comfort, ye my people?

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There's a plural there.

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All the people sharing all sorts of comfort with a lot of people.

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Not just a single person, but a group of people.

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This group of people called together.

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And they can't really do any comforting of one another if they've got their heads down.

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They need to keep them up.

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But if they need comforting, what exactly was it that they needed comforting from?

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And so I took a look back.

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We went just one verse backwards, okay, in Isaiah chapter 39.

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The final verse, we have King Hezekiah and he says, there will be peace and security

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in my days.

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Peace and security, needing comfort, comfort.

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And something wasn't matching up.

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There's a bit of dramatic irony going on here.

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You have King Hezekiah, you know, who just had Assyria at his doorstep.

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And now he just had this deathly illness.

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He prays to the Lord fervently.

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He grants him another 15 years of his life.

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And what does Hezekiah do?

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Well, he invites the next world power into his house to show him all things.

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And here's what Isaiah says to him.

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Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house and all that what your fathers

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have stored up to this day shall be carried to Babylon.

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Nothing shall be left, says the Lord.

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Now that doesn't sound like peace and security to me.

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That sounds like warfare.

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It sounds like a moment where time can feel like it's standing still.

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So I guess Hezekiah isn't really the king to hope in.

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See, he thinks there's peace and security, but for his children and for his children's

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children there was not.

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There was warfare, foreign occupation, pain, exile, captivity, judgment, there was judgment.

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70 years of judgment according to Jeremiah.

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Now I don't know at all what 70 years of waiting feels like.

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Honestly, I don't even know what 30 years of waiting feels like.

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But I know the experience of when it feels like time is standing still, when you can't

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see beyond the circumstance, when you can't see toward the end to any kind of resolution.

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And I can tell you that those years would require much more than just putting your head

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down, scrunching your face up, gritting your teeth and pushing through.

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They would require words of comfort, words of real comfort, not just the crass unconcerned

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and not the unrealistic ones.

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And that's comfort that God delivered, comfort that God spoke to His people for His people

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to share.

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Tender words to Jerusalem, that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity, you know, the

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iniquity that got her brought into Babylon in the first place, that iniquity is pardoned.

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Where there's harsh realities, harsh pain, palpable pain, warfare on the forehead.

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In those moments, it is pardoned, it is free and the warfare is dispelled.

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But if Hezekiah wasn't it, if he wasn't the one to bring peace and security even

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though he thought there was for his days, who was it?

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His anointed, his Messiah, Cyrus.

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Isaiah 45.

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Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to his Messiah, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have

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grasped to subdue nations before him and to loose the belts of kings, to open doors before

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him that the gates may not be closed, to say it another way, to take those envoys from

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Babylon that Hezekiah invited in and to send them packing, to send them away.

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Where there has been warfare, there is now rescue.

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Where there is pain, there is tender words of comfort.

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Where there is captivity, there is now freedom for God's people.

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The peace of coming home, the peace of a restored home.

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Comfort, comfort ye my people.

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God commanded them to be sharers of comfort in the midst of this situation, to help them

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see beyond it, to see a future reality that God has promised.

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And it's a word that God accomplished by speaking.

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God used his anointed one to depose Babylon, to take them away and to allow his people

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to come home to a restored home.

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He provided the situation that they could speak of with hope and joy.

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Good tidings and great joy.

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But he didn't just provide them with words of comfort to share in that situation.

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God also spoke a final, definitive, ultimate word of comfort, not in Hezekiah, not in Cyrus,

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but in his Messiah Jesus.

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The one that the hills bow down to meet and the valleys rise to greet.

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The Jesus who spreads his comforting hands out, who takes his head, puts it down, squinches

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his face, grits his teeth, moves forward onto a cross for you and for me.

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The Jesus who doesn't just take away Jerusalem's warfare, no he ends warfare completely.

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The Jesus who doesn't just pardon Jerusalem of her iniquity, but pardons you and me and

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all of creation.

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The one who doesn't just take Jerusalem out of her captivity, but releases you and I from

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ours as well.

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The Jesus who helps us see beyond our current pain, our current situation and sees beyond

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to the plan that he has for us.

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When warfare is close, when it's written on your forehead, when it's written on a family

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member's forehead, somebody you care about, it's hard to see beyond, but right there in

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those moments and in that place.

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Certainly in Babylon where there's captivity, exile and warfare, but also in your life in those

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specific moments, Jesus draws near and speaks.

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He has spoken ultimately definitively in His work on the cross and in His resurrection

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and His promise of new life to you, but He continues to speak through His people and

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He continues to speak to His people.

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He speaks words of comfort and grace and new life and pardon.

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What if Jesus, this unbroken word of comfort, were not just shared in this place in our

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public proclamation, but also defined our life together here?

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What if we took seriously that we are ambassadors of reconciliation, that we have this ministry

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of reconciliation to continue to share those words of comfort, that Jesus with one another?

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What if the conversation and consolation of brothers and sisters wasn't just a point of

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doctrinal articulation, but something we continually did, continually made our lives surrounded

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around?

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What if instead of those crass words that, hey, I got all my stuff done, it really doesn't

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matter, or those unrealistic words that they're taken away, what if those words were instead

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words of hope, comfort, of Jesus?

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Maybe at the dinner table it looks like I'm sorry and right away I forgive you.

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I love you.

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Welcome home.

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Maybe instead on the sidewalk it's not those crass words, but it's I'm sorry.

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I can't imagine the pain.

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How can I pray for you?

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How can I give you Jesus?

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Comfort comfort ye my people.

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In the name of Jesus.

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Amen."