Messiah opens on a somber chord, then the orchestra moves upward toward a clear, tenor voice: "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people...the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God."

Last Sunday Isaiah spoke for a people in the wilderness, in Babylonian exile, a people so lost, orphaned, that they could cry, "Thou hast hidden thy face from us" (Isaiah 64:7). Refusing to blame others for their situation, the prophet told the exiles, "We sinned….We have all become like one unclean. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away" (Isaiah 64:5-6).

Into this forlorn, self-deprecating exilic gloom, the preacher speaks, "Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God....'I the wilderness prepar…