"What did you go out into the wilderness to look at?" Jesus asks the crowd. "Someone dressed in soft robes? Those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet." The crowds went out to see one arrayed not in comfortable soft raiment but in the rugged prophet's garb of camel hair and leather. The old saw has it that the preacher's task is to comfort the afflicted... and afflict the comfortable.

As we approach our Advent scriptures this morning, it occurs to me: There is a world of difference between being comforted and being comfortable, a difference as stark as the difference between soft raiment and camel's hair. Being comfortable implies, at least in our culture, an absence of disturbing, distressing …