When we hear that God knows everything about us, we might feel nervous. All of us have things about ourselves that we’d rather hide from God’s sight. But we don’t have to be afraid, because scripture tells us that what God sees in us is wonderful.

Vicar Jessica Christy
The Second Sunday of Epiphany, year B
Texts: Psalm 139:1-18; John 1:43-51

What exactly happens to Nathanael? This might be the strangest call story in any of the gospels. In the space of an instant, he goes from a tough-minded skeptic to praising Jesus as the son of God. And it’s hard for us to understand why. It all starts when Jesus calls Philip, who quickly believes that Jesus is the messiah. So Philip grabs Nathanael to share the news. But Nathanael’s not buying it. He doubts that anything good could come out of a poor little village like Nazareth. But Philip challenges him to come and see for himself. So Nathanael follows. When Jesus sees the pair coming, he greets Nathanael as an honest man. Again, Nathanael is guarded. “How do you know me?” he asks. Jesus responds that he saw him earlier, standing under a fig tree before Philip approached him. Maybe Jesus is referring to a supernatural vision of Nathanael or maybe he just saw him in passing, John’s Gospel isn’t clear. All we know is that Jesus saw him before they met, and understood something about him. That’s it. That’s the miracle, that Jesus saw and knew Nathanael. It doesn’t sound like much, and even Jesus is a bit taken aback that Nathanael responds with such enthusiasm. “You will see greater things than these,” Jesus promises his newest disciple. But Nathanael doesn’t need to see to believe. He only needs to be seen.

The idea that God sees us and knows us can be a source of joy, but too often, we hear it as a source of terror. In many Bibles, Psalm 139 is titled “the inescapable God.” The writer sings that there is nowhere we can go that is apart from God. If we go to heaven or Sheol or the far side of the sea, God will be there. God is above and below us, before us and behind us. Not even our innermost thoughts are hidden from God. It’s beautiful and comforting to hear that that nothing can separate us from God, but every time I’ve discussed this psalm over the past week, someone has joked about how ominous it sounds. “The inescapable God” – it sounds like a threat as much as a promise. You can run, but you can’t hide. In this age of stalkers and hackers and the NSA, we’re uneasy with the thought of some unseen force watching our every move. It makes our skin crawl.

But it’s not just our modern nervousness about surveillance that makes us uncomfortable with the idea that God knows us completely. We don’t like the thought of other people watching us because they could have bad intentions, but we know that God would never hurt us. No, we’re nervous because there are things about each of us that we’d rather God not see. All of us have parts of our soul that we have roped off and declared unhallowed ground. Our insecurities, our ugliest thoughts, our worst impulses – we’d much rather hide those away than entrust them to God. When we don’t love something about ourselves, we have trouble believing that God could love it. We have trouble believing that God could love us if God knew us too well. We’re terrified of being exposed as unlovable. And so we try to hide parts of ourselves – from each other, from ourselves, from God – and it scares us to be reminded that that doesn’t work. “Where can I go from your spirit, or where can I flee from your presence?” Nowhere? That’s not very reassuring in those moments when we’d prefer to run away and be alone.

If anyone knew about trying to hide from God, it was David, to whom our tradition attributes this psalm. Israel’s greatest king was far from a perfect person. He had plenty of things to be ashamed of. Whenever we think of the sins of David, we tend to think of his crimes against Bathsheba and Uriah, and that’s part of his story, but it was far from the only thing he did wrong. In his pursuit of power, he committed treason, extortion, and murder. His very last act before dying was to give his son a list of his surviving enemies, with orders to hunt them down and kill them. Scripture tells us that God gave the honor of building the temple to Solomon because David had too much blood on his hands. He was great, but he was rarely good. There are plenty of things he must’ve wished he could hide from God’s sight.

And yet, the sinful psalmist whom we name David says that God’s knowledge of him is wonderful – more wonderful than he can understand. He tells us that we are God’s creation, and as God’s creation, we are marvelous. God knows all that we think and do. If we had to see ourselves like that, as we really are, we might want to flinch away, but God keeps looking, and calls us good. We can give up on parts of ourselves. We can despair completely and say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,” but even the darkness is not dark to our God, for the night is as bright as the day, and darkness is as light. God looks at us in our wonderful, terrifying fullness, and God sees light in even our most shadowy places. It’s not because God thinks we’re perfect, or because God ignores our sins. No, it’s because God knows us, and God knows that each of us are made wonderfully, even when it’s hard for us to see. That’s the message we need to live. We all need to be loved for who we are. We need to hear that we don’t have to earn love, because we already have it. God loves us at our worst just as much as at our best. And when we accept that nothing in us is too ugly or sinful for God is when we can finally stop running and do something our sins.

On this Martin Luther King Sunday, we are called to face hard truths about our sinful nature. We are challenged to confess that, not only is this country still broken, but we are still broken too. Even in this wonderful community, where people try so hard to do justice and love kindness – none of us are free of sin. All of us contribute to the injustice of this world. Consciously or not, we perpetuate worldviews that place some human lives above others. We participate in economic systems that take advantage of those who have less than us. We look away when we see our fellow children of God suffering. These are scary things to face, because they mean admitting that terrible ugliness lives within us. We don’t want to deal with that. We don’t want add racism or classism or sexism to the pile of things that we dislike about ourselves. And so, when we hear that we have failed to live alongside all people as equals, our instinct is to push that truth away. We shut down or lash out because those things are so unlovable, and we desperately want to be loved.

But we can confront these sins, and all other sins, because God already sees them, and God loves us anyway. There’s nothing to hide, and there’s nothing to lose. The God who knit our cells together in the womb knows us more intimately than we know ourselves. God is better acquainted with our sins than we ever could be. God sees us in our entirety, and scripture tells us that what God sees is wonderful. That means we can finally stop trying to run away. We can follow Christ without being ashamed of all the ways we fall short. God knows us completely and loves us completely, and nothing we do can ever take that away. We are seen and known by God, and we can rejoice in that without fear.

Amen.

“God meets us where we are, as we are, and speaks to us in words we can understand. Christ’s star shines differently in each of our lives, leading us to where God calls. 

Vicar Jessica Christy
The Day of Epiphany
Text: Matthew 2:1-12

They watched the stars for their signs. They spoke the language of constellations and comets. They believed they could read the movements of the heavens to better understand events on this earth. We call them Wise Men, or Magi, but they were astrologers, and they came to Judea because they saw something unusual in the sky. These men bearing gifts for the newborn king were foreigners, with a foreign religion, and strange, foreign ideas about how to make sense of the world. The idea that there could be anything right or real about their astral predictions seems absurd, even blasphemous. We think astrology is silly now, but back then, it was evil to the people of Israel. The Bible repeatedly condemns those who claim to be able to discern God’s will by looking at the sky. The Magi weren’t just different; their difference was dangerous. And yet – they were looking at the stars, so God came to them through the stars. God had a plan for them, so God met them where they were, and spoke to them in a language they could understand. God called to Zechariah in the temple, to Mary in Nazareth, and to the Magi in a star chart.

This might sound unsettling, that God announced the birth of Christ through pagan divination, but it is an act that is full of promise for us. It says that God comes to us where we are, as we are. We don’t need to be more righteous, or more pious, or more learned, or more faithful to see Christ. We don’t need to be someone else in order to have a relationship with God. We only need to be ourselves, and Christ will find us, and speak to us in words that we can hear. We see this when Jesus explains the kingdom of God to peasants in Galilee using parables about things from their daily lives, teaching about eternity with seeds and sheep and weddings. We see this on Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit allows everyone in the crowd to hear the good news being proclaimed in their native language. We see this when Paul stands on the Areopagus, and defends the Gospel to the leaders of Athens using the terms of Athenian philosophy. We see this in scripture itself, where the words of Jesus, who spoke Aramaic, are preserved in Greek, so the good news could spread like wildfire across the Greek-speaking world. And we see this with startling clarity when God speaks to a group of foreign astrologers through an unusual star.

And today, God speaks to each of us in our own lives, using the language of our own hearts. We know that we meet God in this place, in our worship and the sacraments, but the Spirit is not bound by these walls. The God who made all things is present in all things and calls out to us through all things. Parents can meet God in their children. Musicians can meet God in their music. Scientists can meet God in their research. Lovers of literature can meet God in poetry. We find God in art, and in nature, and in our vocations, and in our relationships with each other. The light of Christ can flash forth out of anything. And so, the star that rises in my life to lead me to Christ is not going to look the same as the star that God sends for you. We all encounter God in different places, and hear God’s call in different words. It can be disorienting to realize how many paths there are to God. We can get distracted by jealousy or judgment when we see that someone else’s star shines differently than our own. We can be suspicious and possessive, wanting God to speak in only the language we understand. But in the end, it is a joyful thing that God is revealed to us in so many ways, because it means that all of us are surrounded by signs of God’s love, no matter who we are or what we do. It means that no one is unworthy, no one is unreachable. It means that we all can see God at work in our lives, if only we are willing to look.

But God doesn’t do all the work for us. Even though God meets us where we are, wherever we are, God doesn’t let us stay there. When God gives the Magi a sign in the stars, they have to get up and travel down a long road to see the promised child. They leave the comfort of their homes with no confirmation, no advance word, just the inner certainty that something special has been revealed to them. They’re willing to be strangers in a strange land so that they can pay tribute to the new king themselves. And that experience transforms them. God defies the expectations that they had at the beginning of our journey. Because as it turns out, the Wise Men don’t read the stars quite right. They head in the right direction, but they take a wrong turn at the very end. They’re looking for a king, so instead of going to Bethlehem, where the star points, they go to the palace in Jerusalem. They think they’re seeing the star clearly, but their sight is distorted by their bias. They need to change if they are going to understand the message that God is really revealing to them.

But they do change, despite their initial mistake. When the star leads them to an ordinary house in an ordinary little town, they aren’t confused or dismayed. Matthew says that they are overwhelmed with joy. What God is doing in them is bigger than their preconceptions. The revelation that God is giving them is far better than anything they expected to see. Instead of clinging to their assumptions, they’re delighted to discover that they were wrong. These proud, wealthy men who once looked up at the sky and claimed mastery of its movements now fall to their knees before an unremarkable child. These are powerful people. Mere days before, they marched into a foreign city and announced their desire to see the newborn king, apparently with every expectation that their wishes would be obeyed, but now they gladly hand over their riches to a little boy who has no obvious glory or grandeur. Instead of a star, they now see Christ, the light to all nations, and their understanding of the world is forever changed. The king they first met is exposed as a fearful tyrant, and the real king is a poor boy with no crown but the crown they have seen for him in the heavens. God has touched their hearts and transformed their lives – and they return home by a different road.

Finding God in our lives is only the first step. It’s a big and wonderful step, but it’s just the beginning. If we’re going to know Christ, we can’t just observe his star from a distance then move on with our lives. Like the Magi, we have to respond. We have to be ready to learn and to change. The real question is not where we will see God, but if we will follow where God leads. Will we have the courage to leave the lives we know, so we can get up and go see the promised king? Will we have the faith to keep following the road, even when it doesn’t lead where we thought it would? Will we be able to set aside our expectations and our pride to kneel before the Christ child, and offer up our gifts in service? It’s a tall order, but the good news is that we don’t just get one chance at this. Christ is always being born in us and around us, and God is always inviting us to witness to his presence. His star will keep rising for us, again and again, until we at last come to Bethlehem, where we will lay down our treasures before Christ, and find ourselves overwhelmed with joy.

In the infant Christ, God is so powerless that Jesus cannot even name himself. The name that is above every name must be breathed into being by someone else. Christ became helpless for us, and meets us in our places of greatest weakness.

Vicar Jessica Christy
The Feast of the Name of Jesus
Texts: Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 2:15-21 

The Apostle Paul was in prison when he wrote his letter to the church in Philippi. He had crossed the wrong people as he shared the gospel, and now he was in chains, waiting to learn his fate. He didn’t know if he would live or die – and the traditions of the church say that the epistle to the Philippians was the last letter that Paul wrote before his execution in Rome. The words in this letter may come from the apostle’s last days on earth. He is completely at the mercy of others. But in spite of his captivity and his helplessness, Paul writes about gratitude and joy. Philippians is his happiest letter. He is thankful for all that he has experienced in witnessing to Christ, and he has made his peace with whatever happens to him next. Either he will die for his faith and join Christ in heaven, or he will walk free and continue his work. Whatever is coming, whatever relief or whatever suffering, it will be for the glory of God, and so he can write about joy from a jail cell.

It’s an amazing attitude for him to have, but Paul doesn’t have to find this peace for himself. He says that he has learned it by following the example of Jesus. And he finds strength in that example by recalling the words of a familiar song. That’s what we read from Philippians today. It’s called the Christ hymn, and it may well be one of the very first statements of the Christian faith. Paul is quoting it, and Paul’s letters are the oldest writings in the New Testament, so these words have to be one of the very earliest Christian documents that we have. It’s not long, but it says what it needs to say. It tells of Christ’s preexistence with God, his birth as a human being, his death on a cross, his exaltation from the grave, and his glorious reign over all creation. It’s a familiar story. But the first stanza uses some compelling language that didn’t make it into any of our creeds. It says that although Christ Jesus “was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.” Before entering this earth, Christ had all the power in the universe. All things were his to command. All mysteries were his to know. He could have held fast to this power, could have used it for his own advantage, could have forced all of creation to bow before him. But the hymn tells us that’s not how God views power. The misuse of power belongs to humans, not to God.

We all know how naturally we human beings exploit power. In the public realm and in our private lives, we have all seen people pursue power just for the sake of being powerful. And the state of our world testifies to how rarely that power is used wisely. All of us could easily name people who we’ve seen misusing their status to benefit themselves and hurt those below them – but we can’t just point fingers at others. It’s safe to say that all of us have, at some moment, abused power ourselves, even if it was a just childish impulse like laughing at a less popular kid on the playground or bossing around a younger sibling. Our world is full of hierarchies, and we are so anxious to protect our place within them. Falling down a pecking order is embarrassing at best and dangerous at worst, and so we cling to what we have.

Even the gospel can be a means by which we try to set ourselves above one another. As Paul writes to the Philippians, “Some proclaim Christ from envy, rivalry, and selfish ambition, not sincerely or out of love.” In our grasping hands, even the good news can be a tool for declaring who’s in and who’s out, who’s righteous and who’s sinful, who wins and who loses. We can use Christ to try to get ahead, to prove that we are better than others, to show that we and those who think like us are the real Christians. That’s obviously missing the point, but the church has long demonstrated how easily we turn the gospel into a cudgel for beating others into line. If we can gain advantage from something, our instinct is to take advantage of that thing, and the gospel is no exception.

It’s all because we’re afraid. Life is so tenuous. Everything we know can be upended in a single moment. Power is how we try to run from our frailty. We flee helplessness with everything we have. We run from the thought that our fate could be outside our control. But we all know that’s how it really works. All of us are under the control of countless forces that give us little say in how we live our lives. We’re subject to the demands of our fragile bodies. We’re enmeshed in economic systems that dictate our fortunes. We live under the authority of the planet, and geopolitical powers, and social trends, and the whims of the people around us. So little about our lives is truly under our control. And we hate that. We want to be autonomous, invulnerable, free. So we strive and strive to hold on to something that will make us the masters of our own destiny. For some of us, that thing is the pursuit of physical fitness. For others, it’s money. It might be influence, or knowledge, or professional success, or the perfect family – whatever it is that makes us feel like we’re in control of our lives. But nothing can free us from our vulnerability. Nothing can free us from our mortality. So we keep on trying, and are never satisfied.

But Paul shows us that we can be free of all this anxiety. We all know that Paul wasn’t a perfect man, but when push came to shove, when his life was on the line, he found peace. Remembering that Christ made himself helpless, even to death on a cross, he discovered the grace of helplessness for himself. Because helplessness is where we find Christ. Paired with this letter written by a man in prison, we read a story about Christ being named and circumcised as a tiny infant. We think of the newborn Jesus as sweet and beautiful, and of course those things were true of him as they are true of all babies, but here we are called to witness his absolute vulnerability, his absolute dependence on others. The second person of the Trinity, the living Word who existed before time itself and through whom all things came into being – that God made flesh has given up the ability to even name himself. It’s absurd. The Word cannot say his own name. The name that is above every name must be breathed into being by someone else. This is how God chose to come to us. This is how we meet Christ, and how Christ meets us: weak, fragile, human.

Christ was equal with God, but he poured himself out and became equal with us. He embraced our weakness for himself. He experienced our birth and our life and our death for himself. And then, when God raised him up from death, Jesus lifted up the rest of us with him. It is in Christ that our human weakness is known and loved, and it is in Christ alone that our human weakness is overcome. The way out of our fear is not in grasping for power that can hold our weakness at bay, but in following the path of Christ and choosing to embrace our vulnerability. We want flee from our frailty, our vulnerability, our mortality – but we don’t need to run away, because our helplessness is where God knows us best. We have to open ourselves to weakness, even to death, to feel Christ at our side. But when we learn to humble ourselves is when we can sing for joy in spite of our frailty, in spite of our fear, in spite of our chains. That’s when we know Christ is right there with us, holding us in love, and promising us that weakness is the way to God’s true power, and that the way of the cross is the way to eternal life.

When the angel calls Mary God’s favored one, she’s rightfully confused and afraid about what this greeting will mean for the life she has known. With Mary, we must decide: will we throw up our defenses when we feel uncertain, or will we stay open to God?

Vicar Jessica Christy
The Second Sunday of Advent, year B
Texts: Luke 1:26-38; Luke 1:46b-55

She had a plan for her life. Whether or not Mary was excited about her path, she knew what it was going to be. She was about to be married, with children soon to follow, just like generations of mothers before her, and generations of mothers to come. It wasn’t going to be anything special – she calls herself lowly, this world rarely lets lowly people live extraordinary lives – but at least it was a familiar story.

But then the angel tells this ordinary woman that she is God’s favored one, and her familiar world spins off its axis. Is there anything so terrifying as hearing that you have found God’s favor? God’s favor might sound nice in theory, but most of us just want to live in quiet control of our lives, making our humble contributions to our world. How many of us want to be swept up in something greater than ourselves, something vast and wild and overwhelming? Because that’s what God’s favor really is. As Mary’s people had long known, God’s favor isn’t innocuous. You can’t passively receive it, then go on your way. God’s favor makes terrible and wonderful demands of God’s chosen servants. God’s favor kept Noah and his family safe in the ark while the world flooded around them. God’s favor carried Joseph from his home to a prison cell to a king’s right hand. God’s favor raised up Moses to lead his people out of Egypt and into a new land, a new law, a new way of being. God’s favor never lets people stay put.

And so when Mary hears the angel call her favored, we read that she is much perplexed. That’s the nice way of putting it. We could also translate that word, “perplexed,” as troubled, agitated, distressed. She’s worried, deeply worried about what this greeting is going to do to her life. She’s conflicted about what it means to hear God calling her. And it’s not because she’s a coward, or weak in faith. It’s because she knows her people’s story, and she knows her God. She knows that God’s favor means that nothing is ever going to be the same. What is God’s favor going to demand of her? Where is it going to take her, and how is it going to change her? Gabriel’s encouragement not to be afraid isn’t coming out of nowhere – the angel knows that he bears unsettling news. God wants to overturn everything that Mary has ever expected from the world. Her entire story could be rewritten. That would be enough to worry anyone.

When we have our understanding of our place in the world challenged, our instinct is to defend ourselves. We naturally pull back and close ourselves off to the threat. That’s why it’s so difficult for us to talk meaningfully with people who hold opposing views, why it’s so much easier for us to shout at each other than it is to listen. It’s hard for us to take in information that challenges our worldview, and so easy to discount different perspectives as falsehoods. We don’t want to consider the possibility that we could be wrong. We don’t like to change our minds, and we definitely don’t like to change our plans. When we’re unsure and nervous, we often just want to retreat to a place of certainty and safety. We throw up our walls to protect what we know and love.

And that’s just the effect that other people have on us. If we seek safety and certainty in our human relationships, then how much more do we long for those things from God! We want to be certain about how God is acting in our lives, to point to the clear and confident movement of the spirit through history. We want God’s plan to be transparent. But that’s not how God works. God’s story brings us down long and dangerous paths through the wilderness before we see the Promised Land. We encounter God’s grace in turmoil and overturning, in difficult transformations and times of trial. In the Magnificat, Mary sings that God’s promises are kept when God upends the world, casting down the proud and mighty and lifting up the weak. When the spirit collides with history, it shakes things up. It shakes us up. Salvation is not serene, and it’s not safe. We say we want God in our lives, but we can be quick to shut ourselves off to the work of the spirit, because God wants to change us, and we rarely want to be changed.

I confess I have felt this in my own life in recent weeks. I know what it means to celebrate the movement of the Magnificat – to rejoice at the casting down of the mighty – until it suddenly hits too close to home. When the comic Louis CK was taken down by allegations of sexual misconduct, I cheered. I’d seen the rumors online for years, so when all those whispers grew into a shout that could topple a giant, it felt like such a victory. I thought of all those stories in scripture that tell of God rising up to create justice where it looked like justice was impossible, and it felt like I was watching one of those amazing moments where God was breaking into history to set things right. When the same thing happened to Al Franken, I cried. It was so confusing, and so sad, to watch this movement I believed in turn its wrath on a person I admired. And as I watched other people on the political left also go through this confusion, I saw their defenses fly up. People who had days before proclaimed, “believe women,” were now calling Franken’s accusers lying right-wing operatives…and other, far worse insults. They were happy to see powerful men being taken down, so long as it didn’t make them lose anyone they cherished. When I read and heard these kinds of comments, I was sickened their hypocrisy – but there was a part of me that also found them satisfying. I wanted to believe that they were right. They opened the tempting possibility that nothing about my world would have to change, that God’s unsettling of history would only touch other people. When the world felt fearful and perplexing, there was something in me that just wanted to retreat to the safety of the way things used to be.

But Mary, she stays open. When the angel greets her and calls her favored, she’s confused. She’s scared. She’s not sure she’s ready for whatever God is going to ask of her. But she keeps listening. She pushes back, asks questions, but she doesn’t close herself off to God’s possibilities. She doesn’t retreat, and she doesn’t shut down. And in the end, in spite of her perplexity and fear, Mary says yes. She wants to be a part of God’s plan because she knows that, whatever turmoil she is going to experience, whatever pain and loss and fear, whatever uncertainty about what God is doing – God has something better in store on the other side. God’s favor is going to take her from her ordinary life to the foot of the cross where she will watch her son die in agony, but that same favor will bring her to the empty tomb, and to a place of glory among the saints. God’s path for her and her son leads through fear and hurt and despair, but in the end, it saves us all. Mary doesn’t know what’s in store for her, but she is certain in the faith that God is transforming the world, and her, for the better.

What awaits us on the other side of our fears is better than anything we could build on our own. The world that God wants for us is more wonderful than the world we have, more wonderful than even the world we could imagine. Life in the resurrection is fuller than the life we could make for ourselves. God peace is more complete than the peace this world offers – but the uneasy compromises that we call peace must be shaken up for the peace of Christ to break through. It’s hard to let go of the things we know, so that we might live into the things that God has planned for us. Until our new world takes shape, we will be perplexed, much perplexed about where God is. We’ll question if and how God plans are possible. We will fearfully wonder at our place in God’s work. But with Mary, we can hold all these things in our heart, and still say, “Here am I, a servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” And in that moment, Christ will grow within us, and nothing will ever be the same.

Amen.

 

Like the prophet Isaiah, we proclaim that God is coming to change our world, but all manner of valleys and mountains block our vision of God’s glory. How can we be certain that God really is near? And how do we prepare for something we cannot see?

Vicar Jessica Christy
The Second Sunday of Advent, year B
Texts: Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8

The year was 539 BCE, and the story should have been over. The nation of Judah had been conquered by the mighty Babylonian empire. The holy city of Jerusalem was destroyed, its temple lay in ruins, and its exiled leaders wept tears of helpless despair by the waters of Babylon. Like the lost tribes of Israel before them, the people of Judah and Benjamin had every reason to expect that violence, displacement, and forced assimilation were about to erase them from history. But then, history miraculously shifted around them. That mighty, brutal empire collapsed, and the exiles suddenly had hope that they could return home. And so an exiled prophet heard the voice of God saying, “Comfort, O comfort my people. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term.” Isaiah learned that God was approaching through the wilderness to bring the chosen people home. The story wasn’t over after all.

But even though the prophet knows that God is coming near, not everyone can see that. He hears the promise: “Every valley will be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low, and then the glory of the Lord will be revealed.” Even at this amazing moment in history, there are hills and valleys that stand between the people and God, blocking their vision of God’s glory. So Isaiah is telling them to prepare for something they can’t fully see, and don’t yet understand. They have to take his word that God really is coming to meet them in a new way. God’s presence still isn’t clear.

That feels very true for us today, as we prepare once again to greet God’s arrival. 2500 years later, there are many things that still block our view of God. Valleys trap us, and mountains limit our line of sight. Many of those barriers are external to us. The world erects all sorts of obstacles that can get in the way of encountering God. For some people, like Isaiah’s own community, those obstacles can be painfully obvious. Violence, displacement, and injustice all make it hard to see that God is near. Too many of God’s children are still hemmed in by poverty, persecution, and war.

But there are more subtle barriers that also limit our vision. Our world puts up all manner of obstacles, idols, and distractions that get between us and God. For instance, as this congregation has been exploring in recent weeks, our economy is very good at setting itself up as a false God. It’s hard for us to search out God’s will when our minds and bodies are so subject to the idols of the market. We might say we worship the Triune God, but when push comes to shove, our decisions are usually dictated not by God, but by what makes good economic sense according to the rules of the system. It’s very hard for us to look over this barrier and even imagine that the world could be governed by a different set of rules, or set afire by a different set of dreams.

Or there are the sinful hierarchies that teach us that some humans are valuable, while others are disposable. Structures of inequality make us believe that certain people are less deserving of belonging, love, or even life itself, and so keep us from seeing the fullness of the body of Christ. We can keep looking for God as much as we want, but we can’t hope to see God when we refuse to see and love each other. But the world makes it hard for us to embrace all our neighbors as the image of God, so we keep on searching.

Or, in these past months, the news cycle has grown into quite the mountain range. It’s important to keep on top of what’s happening around us, but the obsessive onslaught of this past year has been something different. I can’t speak for you, but I know I’ve become fretful and distracted. I’m constantly checking the headlines, needing to know what disaster or humiliation or tragedy we’re going to be talking about this week. I can’t look away, and it drains me. And I wonder how much closer to God I’d feel if I spent half as much time praying as I spend refreshing my phone. But the distractions are everywhere, and it’s so easy to give in to them – and so God feels far away.

And then, in addition to all those external barriers, there are the internal barriers that make it hard for us to see God. Each of us must struggle through our own inner mountain ranges, where sin and anxiety cloud our vision. Ego tells us that we don’t need God, even as sin and self-doubt tell us that we’re not worthy of God’s love. Illness and addiction drag us down into valleys of despair. Impatience festers into resentment when God doesn’t show up on our terms, and our lack of faith whispers that we’re wasting our time waiting for God to arrive at all. It takes time and energy to find our way through this rocky terrain, but at this hectic time of year, it’s hard to even give ourselves space to breathe, and look around us, and see what God is doing in our lives. We can get so wrapped up in all that we need to do that we start to see each day as an obstacle to be overcome, not as a gift to be lived in the presence of God and one another. All our worries and commitments take God’s place at the center of our lives – and so our mountains grow taller, and our valleys deeper.

All of these barriers are real. Whether they’re mental or physical, whether they’re internal or external, whether they’re walls or chasms, there are serious obstacles that separate us from God and from each other. There are problems that are too big for us to overcome on our own – but these problems aren’t bigger than God. In the face of all these overwhelming peaks and valleys that fill our landscape, Isaiah says, Comfort, comfort my people. Comfort one another with the knowledge that God’s power is greater than any mountain, and God’s love runs deeper than any valley. Comfort each other with the sacred story that teaches us that there is no obstacle, no distance, no army, and no sin that can keep God away from us. Comfort each other with the proclamation that God is close at hand. “The uneven ground shall become level,” Isaiah proclaims, “The rough places shall become a plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together.” Those seemingly insurmountable mountains and valleys that stood between us and God will vanish into nothing, and God’s awesome presence will be revealed. The prophet says that one day, all our barriers to God will melt away, and all humanity will see God together. Notice – God’s work does not end when just we catch a glimpse of God among us – God will keep coming again and again until every single person is united in the vision of glory. Isaiah claims it and we dare to believe him, because we believe that God’s love is greater than human ignorance, fear, and pride.

So how do we prepare for God’s approach? How do we help one another see God’s glory, when we haven’t fully seen it ourselves? We step out into the wilderness of this hurting world to chip away at those mountains of injustice that block our vision of God’s reign. We extend a hand to pull each other out of our valleys of despair. We comfort each other with the knowledge that our barriers to seeing God will not stand forever, and, secure in that knowledge, we get to work tearing them down. It’s what John the Baptist did. He went out into the desert and told his people that it was time for the world to change, and for them to change with it. He listened to their sins, he met them in their deepest inner valleys, then dared to tell them that they were forgiven, because God was near. And when he did that, the people who came to him got to see God in a new way. When he proclaimed God’s love and forgiveness, he brought God closer to his people.

John the Baptist did this work, and Isaiah before him, and now it’s our turn to look down that road in the wilderness and say that God is coming. And here’s the good news: we don’t do this alone. We don’t yet see the fullness of God’s reign, but in Christ, we know its presence. Yes, we are working and waiting and hoping for God’s glory to be revealed, but that very word, “revealed,” tells us that God is already here, just waiting to shine forth among us. God who makes a way in the wilderness is here. God who melts mountains is here. That will always be true, no matter what. But when we proclaim that truth, when we strive to reveal it to each other, then we see past our valleys and mountains, and touch that glory that will one day unite us all.

Amen.