This is the second Sunday of Advent.  The season of anticipation.  Waiting, waiting and hoping.  The question is, who is this God for whom we wait?  Who is this Emmanuel, this God with us, for whom we long?  Return to the words of the prophet Isaiah, sang so beautifully by the choir.  “Comfort, comfort my people says your God.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for her sin.  A voice cries, in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.  Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.  Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill made low, the uneven ground shall be made level and the rough places plain.  And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”  These words of Isaiah to Israel was the word of a prophet knowing what Israel was waiting for, knowing that Israel needed the word of comfort of hope.  They were in exile from their homeland, suffering in captivity, homeless, homesick, heartsick.  They were guilt stricken because they knew their exile was a result of their sin.  To them it appeared impossible that God would set them free, much less forgive and restore them to their homeland.  So they cried in the words of the hymn, “come thou long expected Jesus, come and set thy people free.”  They knew who they were waiting for.  They were waiting for a deliverer, someone to ransom them from captivity.  Who are we waiting for?  Our captivity may be different from theirs.  Our exile may not be geographical, but we need a deliverer, someone to ransom us, don’t we? 

Last year at Christmas time, a friend of mine sent out those printed letters that have become so common during the Christmas season, the kind of letters that you send to all your friends and family to catch them up on what you’ve been doing all year long.  It was a kind of running account of the family’s involvement.  But with her printed note for public consumption, she enclosed a personal handwritten word to me, in which she confessed, and I quote her, I wish I had the guts to write a Christmas letter that told it like it is.  ‘My daughter, Martha, experimented with drugs.  My son, Tim, gave the finger to a motorist and got his glasses broken.  I had an affair and the result is that John is so upset that he keeps running back and forth to the bathroom.  We had a fight with our neighbors over mid-block lighting, and the sewer backed up from the septic tank one day after the guarantee expired.’    

If you told it like it was this morning, what would you tell?  What is the real situation in your personal life, in your family, in that configuration that makes up your daily living?  If God could do for you exactly what you need, if he could come to you at the precise point of your despair or disappointment or grief or sin or failure or loneliness, where would that point be?  In The Courier this week, I asked you to prepare for the sermon today by doing some reflecting.  Why don’t you look at the front page of The Courier now to that message?  If you could take the time this morning, fill in the blanks that are there.  Being precise in your mind.  I need strength in the following area of my life.  What would you write in that blank?  Are you enslaved by a habit, a weakness, a sin from which you need to be delivered?  Think about it and be specific.  I need deliverance from – what is it that you need deliverance from?  Are you caring a burden of guilt?  Is there something in our life for which you need forgiveness and cleansing?  It helps to name it.  So do so in your mind.  I’m guilt stricken over – fill in the blank – and I need forgiveness.  You’ll be honest in your mind in responding to these questions and filling in the blanks.  It will help you know who you’re waiting for.  It may help you rescue this hectic advent season from shallowness and superficial celebration and preparation and make it the most significant event of your life. 

Listen again to the prophet speaking to the longing, despairing exiles of Israel.  “To whom will you liken God and in what likeness will you compare him?  Have you not known, have you not heard, the Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.  He does not faint or grow weary, He gives power to the faint and to him who has not might, He increases strength.  Even youth shall faint and grow weary and young men shall fall exhausted, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.  They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”  This is an Advent shout.  Long before Jesus arrived on the scene to flesh out this dream of Israel, the prophet had a clear idea as to who this God was and what he was about in history and in the life of persons.  He was the God who comes as comfort for our aloneness, as light for our darkness, as strength for our weakness, our fainting hearts and buckling knees, as forgiveness for our sins.  Does that sound too pious?  Too much like a preacher ought to say it? 

Here it is in a more common language, the language that we’re all familiar with because we’re barraged by it every day, and here I am again back at television.  Supposedly a young girl wrote this and brought it to her minister – she had been watching a lot of television, so she did it this way.  “God is like a Ford – he has a better idea.  God is like a Coke – he’s the real thing.  God is like PanAm – he makes the going great.  God is like Bayer aspirin – he works wonders.  God is like General Electric – he lights your path.  God is like Hallmark cards – he carried enough to send the best.  God is like Tide – he gets the stain out that others leave behind.”  She had a lot more to say, ending up with this.  “God is like Pepsi – he has a lot to give.”  We grin at this, it is contrived, even trite - perhaps a bit irreverent.  But when you reflect on what is being said here, we realize that it would take a lot of theologians many words and many long hours of dissertation and debate to produce the weighted thoughts of that one little member of God’s kingdom.  And she operated out of the style of God himself.  God knew that not many would rise to the understanding of the prophet Isaiah, so when the time came, when the time was right, he sent us his son to show us who he was, to fulfill our longings, to answer our questions about who he is, and what he is like.  This is what, this is what advent is all about.  And if we miss this, we miss everything. 

I don’t know what’s going on in the depth of your soul today.  I don’t know how you filled in those blanks in your mind a few moments ago.  I don’t know the point of your desperate need, but I know this, Christmas is the witness at that very point of your deepest need. It is the intersection where God is going to come to you.  A despised tax collector was up a tree escaping from the crowd, a crowd that could never accept him.  He wanted to see Jesus, but he had no hope of Jesus seeing him.  But God is like a Ford, he has a better idea – Jesus saw him and called him down to new life.  A woman estranged from her community, an outcast really, went to the well in the heat of the day to fetch water, but she forgot what she went for.  God is like Pepsi – he has a lot to give.  Jesus gave her the water of eternal life.  A man all torn up inside, possessed by demons, moved out to the cemetery to live among the dead.  He thought there was no peace for him among the living.  But God is like Bayer aspirin – he works miracles.  Jesus came to the man, cast out the demons, set his soul free and at ease and the scripture says he went back to his family clothed in his right mind.  A woman’s life was stained by affair after affair – caught in the sin of adultery, she was brought to Jesus.  The penalty for her sin was death by stoning, but God is like Tide – he gets the stains out that others leave behind.  “Neither do I condemn thee,” said Jesus, “go your way and sin no more.” 

We could on and on with that account of God coming to us in Jesus.  And lest you think it ended with the scriptural events, come with me in your mind for a moment.  A woman sits in a chair across from me and pours out her fear.  In a few days, she will go to the hospital for surgery, it may be a malignancy.  As we talk, we discover that something else is there.  Devastating fear is present and there is guilt.  There is the confession of estrangement from God, she opens her life to that fact, and receives God’s love and forgiveness as I lay my hands upon her head, pray for her and the place is transferred into a holy altar and the miracle of God’s presence and power is worked all over again.  A man, long retired from an active location, is home from the hospital, and the diagnosis is not clear.  He’s not sure what surgery will be called for next.  He wants and needs patience in his discomfort and uncertainty.  In his living room, we talk and pray together, and that ancient word of Isaiah comes alive.  They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.  They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.  The man is in the walking stage of life, and that’s probably the toughest time.  But God is coming alive to him, he’s walking and fainting.  A young man has violated the personhood of a young woman, used her for his own selfish satisfaction.  He can’t stand the guilt any longer, he pours out his confession in a penitential kind of way - hears the word of forgiveness that I have offer, and goes his way to sin no more and to live responsibly.  This is the meaning of Christmas.  God comes to us at the point of our deepest need.   At this point, he intersects our life with his loving presence in Jesus Christ.  That’s who I’m waiting for.  What about you?  Let’s pray.