“Comfort, O comfort my people,” we read in Isaiah . . .

words of hope spoken to a people in exile.  Perhaps we understand exile a little better these days as we hear the stories of exiles in our own country. Exiles from Katrina, exiles from countries at war. I had a little taste of it myself when I had to evacuate during Hurricane Rita. While it was temporary, it was disconcerting. Even though I was in the home of a loved one, it wasn’t MY home. I didn’t have my stuff or my routine or my meals or my friends or the comfort of an ordinary day. 

Stress was increased by not knowing how long the exile would be, and by imagining what might happen as I sat in front of a television set and watched that large spinning mass bear down on the coast of Texas. For a little while, I didn’t know to what, if anything would be there when, and if I could go home.

    Comfort was in short supply there for a little while.

     I cannot keep from thinking these days of all those who live in exile now because of Katrina, or tsunamis, earthquakes, or war.  Those who lack the comforts of home: familiar things, familiar faces, and the comfort of ordinary days. And for whom exile is more than a week . . . it lasts for months, years . . . in some cases, lifetimes.

    When we read Isaiah, we taste the pain of those exiles far from home in Babylon.

There is no knowing ‘when’ for those in exile. No predicting the future. No illusion of control.  Over time, hope grows dim. The people lose their memories of home, and the ability to imagine. Despair sets in. The greatest obstacle in times like those is neither distance nor rough places, it is the captive mind and heart that cannot imagine the way.  A miscarriage of imagination. No room for spirit, no thought of new life, no pregnant hope.

     To lose place, to lose sight of home, to lose one’s identity, to lose the way, to lose the ability to imagine that things could be different, to lose the ability to dream, to forget to long . . . it is to lose connection with God. Some in exile just quit being the people of God.  They simply accepted the status quo, adjusted to the culture where they were, adapted to bondage. They got comfortable with what was. It is always a temptation-- because it is easier, of course.

Keeping the faith, keeping the faith when the going gets tough-- that’s hard. Almost as hard as keeping the faith when the going is easy.

    But for these exiles, to whom Isaiah writes, if they want to be faithful, there is no settling in. There is only waiting, enduring, and perhaps hoping, and longing.  

It is important in advent to recognize our exile, and to own our longing, and our discomfort with the way things are. For longing has it’s own value.  

In her little book, Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson writes about the power of longing:

    “Imagine a Carthage sown with salt, and all the sowers gone, and the seeds lain however long in the earth, till there rose finally in vegetable profusion leaves and trees of rime and brine. What flowering would there be in such a garden? Light would force each salt calyx to open in prisms, and to fruit heavily with bright globes of water—peaches and grapes are little more than that, and where the world was salt, there would be greater need of slaking. For need can blossom into all the compensation it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing—the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one’s hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smoothes our hair, and brings us wild strawberries.”   

What is pregnancy, after all, than the longing for life? What is advent if not the longing for the world to be different – filled with peace and justice and joy – for new life for all creation?  Isn’t it a longing for humanity, for ourselves to be more like the Christ? For the promises – the promises—to be fulfilled?

“Comfort, comfort ye my people. . . “

 I imagine God with a cool wet cloth soothing the tense and fevered brow of a woman in labor. . . much as my own grandmother tended me during my labor with my firstborn.

Since my first grandson’s birth, I have come to see Advent as a series of overlapping pregnancies: Mary pregnant with Jesus. Each of us, like little Mary’s; pregnant with the Christ within . . . as we are called to bear Christ into the world.

The Holy One also pregnant with the promise of the new heaven and new earth:  the kin-dom that is coming --  all creation being made new within that warm dark womb of God.

The image gives me great comfort, but is not embraced widely by others. . . we don’t want to spend time in the dark – we rush for the light so quickly.

 I have been wondering lately about why embracing the dark season of advent is resisted so in our culture.

    In Birthings and Blessings, a wonderful resource for inclusive churches, written by Rosemary Catalano Mitchell and Gail Anderson Ricciuti during work at the Downtown United Presbyterian Church in Rochester, NY. I think they are onto something as they offer this Advent reflection:

    “The symbols of darkness and light have always played an important role in expression of the most profound theological truths. Using that contrast, the faith community often speaks of the experiences of conversion and redemption and describes the struggle between good and evil. However, in emphasizing the polarity between light as good and darkness as evil, we have unwittingly robbed ourselves of the awareness that darkness can be a source of birth and blessing, a place where God waits to meet us. We have also been guilty of the sin of racism with an unexamined definition of light/white as “holy” and darkness/blackness as “sinister.”

    Advent, the season when our northern hemisphere moves deeper and deeper into shadow, is a time to reacquaint ourselves theologically with the blessed dark . . . and perhaps to re-enter our own dark places as we wait once more for Emmanuel to be born in us. What may initially seem frightful to us, as her pregnancy must surely have seemed to Mary, can be transformed to sacred space.

    In her book, Godding, Dr. Virginia Ramey Mollenkott reflects on “Godding in the Dark.” She recommends that we recover a positive theology of darkness, with its creative and healing significance, and thereby deepen our connection with the often-neglected right brain. It is this right side of the brain that directs the “feminine” or “dark” side of the body, according to the ancient theory of bodily “humors.” Since the “masculine” elements were believed to be air and fire and the “feminine” elements earth and water, Mollenkott writes, “What a relief to realize that roots grow and thrive in dirt, in the moist cold darkness of the earth, and therefore suggest that God, the Ground of our Being and Becoming, is darkness as well as light!”

    By honoring the darkness during this time of holy expectancy, we seek to nurture those roots that ultimately will yield the fruits of God’s Spirit for ministry in the world. 

    Once we are willing to claim the season as a time of pregnancy – a womb time – a birthing time-- we begin to see connections we may have missed . . .. 

    Advent hope for the exiles is so like pregnancy, isn’t it?   . . . not knowing when . . . not being able to rush the birth. . .  but waiting, enduring, hoping, and longing. . .  those in exile must hang on, must watch for signs, must nurture hope within. Just knowing one day, one day, it will be over. If we can only endure until then. Hang on until them. . .

That’s why those words bring comfort: there will come a day. A time when this will be over, when your term has ended. “Look! The prophet shouts: a highway! If you can’t see it, you can’t walk it.

    “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term. . . “

    Terms. Schools have terms and prisons have terms. But so does a pregnancy. An end. It does not go on forever. The hope is of course that the baby will be full term, come in ‘the fullness of time.’ To know that what they have experienced has a limit – that the term will end: there is good news – glad tidings!!    

There is a way out!!

This famous ‘way’ seems to be something of a two-way street. On it the Holy One comes, a sovereign processing royally into the captured city. But it is for the exiles also a way out, the way home, the route of a new exodus straight through the wilderness, every obstacle overcome. A birth canal into new life.

    “Comfort, O comfort my people.” Here is comfort: here is a dream to dream. Here is something for which to long. Here is your God. You have not been forgotten. It won’t always be like this. It’s going to get better.

 “God will feed the flock like a shepherd; the Holy One will gather the lambs with tender arms, and carry them cradled near God’s own heart, and gently lead the mother sheep.”   

We don’t know when, but we know it will happen. We even know that God’s time is different than our time. Our epistle reminds us of that:

 “. . .with the Holy One one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Holy One is not slow about the promise as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish. . .

    “But the Day of the Holy One will come. . . we wait for a new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.”

    Here, within the womb of God, we are given a view of what is to come through scripture. In advent, we are called to immerse ourselves in these images and let them be our source of sustenance. The new heaven and the new earth.  This is a womb with a view: a view of the way things will one day be. 

Allow me the indulgence of reminiscing this morning. For, in the coming week two of my beloved grandchildren will be celebrating their birthdays. Abby turns six on December 7 and Trent turns four on December 8. It will be the first time I have not been with them to celebrate their special days, since their actual BIRTHING days.   Both D’Arcy and Becca delivered at home with midwives attending. All of those births were such a joyous occasion, and each one life-changing for me.

    I have given birth. And I had been present at the births of several of my friend’s children. But being present as part of the birth team when one’s own child gives birth to a grandchild is an amazing blessing.

    Seth, the eldest of the grandchildren, was born on August 10. He was due nearer the middle of July, and his Aunts had flown to town to be present for the birth. We spent time preparing. We waited and waited.  But his due date came and went. So, finally, with tears of great disappointment,  Aunt D’Arcy had to return to Memphis were she was living and working, and Aunt Julia had to return to New York and her studies and job.

And still we waited.  Becca often found herself weeping.  The advent of Seth – or any birth – is wrapped up in waiting, watching, frustration at not knowing, and impatient longing for signs that something is happening.

    There were some false starts and false labor. . . some cries of “he’s never going to come!” and even—is it because she is a PK? – the impassioned plea, “How long, O God, how long??”

    And then, just when we thought she was going to be the first ever eternally pregnant human being – signs of change actually appeared, her water broke, and soon, she was fully in labor. Through the night she labored, all of us talking about the child that was coming, and the future that was in sight, as we did our best to bring comfort to Becca in her labor.   In the morning, Seth William came into the world:  our lives forever changed.

    So, too, is it with the birthing imagery of Advent. There are elements of prophetic call in these texts, so it’s no wonder that John the Baptist should find a ‘vocation’ here – as strange a midwife as he might be. But in this, John’s signature text, things are a little different. The people are in exile in their own homeland, occupied as it is. They think like captive exiles. They have become comfortable with the status quo. They have forgotten to long for things to be different. Could Jerusalem become Babylon?

    John seems to think like Second Isaiah. He shouts. He provokes them to be uncomfortable because things are not as they should be.  He wants them to imagine a way and come out.

Water breaking is a sign of imminent labor. Baptismal water is just as surely a sign of new life. 

    In Mark we shall see ‘way’ become a synonym for discipleship, a metaphor for the movement. Another birth canal for the new humanity, the new creation.

John’s marginal life and renegade ritual provoke the imagination. They summon us to prepare for the One who comes. To prepare; to pack our bags for the new world that is on the way.

    So, we continue our Advent journey, embracing the darkness, being embraced by the darkness: rich, warm, moist and nurturing. . .  dreaming of what is to come, the fulfillment of the promises. Comfort for all who are in exile. A new world and a new world order.  Float in it. . .  this hope, this future that is surely coming . . . imagine the new heaven and the new earth that is surely coming --  can’t you see it all-- here in our womb with a view?