Have You Not Known?
Sermon for Longest Night Service
Isaiah 40:1–11, 27–31
December 21, 2006
University Christian Church, Seattle, WA
Rev. Sandy Messick

• It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Except when it’s not. And it’s not for a lot of people. Christmas can be a very difficult and painful time for many people, and for many reasons.
• For some, Christmas never was a good time. It recalls to mind feelings of loneliness, of being left out. It brings back memories of family arguments, or abusive parents, or addictions of alcohol.
• For some, it once was good, but then life, and death intervened. And now Christmas recalls the empty chair at the table, the person who isn’t there and never will be again, because of death, or divorce or estrangement.
• Or perhaps, for some, it’s just this year. Maybe next year you’ll be ready to deck the halls again and you’ll be singing “fa-la-la-la-la” with the best of them, but this year… well this year the grief is just too fresh, too new, too raw.

• Whatever it is that brought you here tonight, God has good news for you.
• The story of Christmas is the story of the incarnation of God; God becoming one of us, so that we might know God, and so we might know that God knows what it is to be us.
• In Jesus, Emmanuel, which means “God with us” God came and dwelt with us and so knew, and knows, all the joys and pains of being us.
• The shortest verse in the bible is John 11:35, “Jesus wept” He wept over the death of his friend Lazarus. He wept because to be human is to weep, and to feel sorrow, and to grieve over lost loved ones. And in that passage, we know again that God weeps, with us, and for us.
• The message of Christmas is that we are not left alone in our pain, God does not abandon us in the midst of our pain, and indeed, pain itself is not a sign of God’s displeasure or God’s absence. It is in our pain that God draws closest to us, Emmanuel, God with us.
• And like us, God knows poverty for in our Christmas story Christ was born to a poor peasant family in a stable because the world could not make room for him. And like us, God knows society’s scorn for Jesus and his family was forced to flee Bethlehem because society in the form of King Herod sought to kill him. And like us, God knows betrayal, for in a courtyard when Jesus was arrested, his closest friends all abandoned him, and the one closest of all denied even knowing him. And like us, God knows what it is to grieve, for when the Son of God breathed his last and gave up his spirit on a lonely hill at Calvary, God wept.

• Indeed, God knows our pain, but God does not leave us alone in our pain.
• The words of Isaiah are words of comfort: “Speak words of comfort to my people. Tell them their suffering is over, that hope is on the way…” Then he goes on to say, “Wait for it, trust in it, for God will move you through this time of suffering and God will renew your strength, and you will soar through the air as eagles.”
• Perhaps you can glimpse that hope today, or perhaps not. Either way, the good news is that wherever you are, God is with you, even in your deepest, darkest places, and even more, God will not abandon you there. Thanks be to God. Amen.