Obviously Christmas is a kind of destination from where we sit now, smack in the middle of all the hustle and bustle of shopping and Christmas cards and preparations with a diminishing number of days left, throwing us into a tizzy. But Christmas is no destination. Of course, it's a point of departure. We're really getting ready for a journey. In a few minutes I'd like to take a look with you at Christmas as a kind of glory road leading into the wilderness of all the problems and evils that infest our world at Christmas 1970.

Here is one Prophet's picture of a glory road in the wilderness. It's in the 40th chapter of Isaiah. Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. 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 moun tain and hill be made low. The uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plank, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Darkness, silence. Strange voices crying in the dark out of the silence. A crazy highway in a wilderness of rock and desert with hills flapping out and valleys rising to meet it as it stretches out into the unknown. These are the images suggested in that passage from the 40th chapter of Isaiah read a few moments ago, and it's all supposed to add up to something about getting ready for Christmas. Well, first darkness. It's not mentioned, but it's there - pervading the whole passage as the darkened stage on which the tableau takes place. It's the darkness of exile fifty years of it now, fifty years ago, half a century ago. The finest of the people of Judah had been carted off to Babylon, and in all that time, not a direct word from the Lord in the dark. Some of them huddled there, singing their sad songs by the waters of Babylon. Others bustled about the great and shining city, making a living, sometimes very good living, and in the process, trying to forget. But it was still living in a strange and alien land, a flat land far removed in space and time from the reminders of the presence and powers of Yahweh, the land, the hills, the temple.

For fifty years, there had been no clear word from the Lord to His chosen people. It was dark. And fifty years would take us back to just after the end of World War One. And after fifty years, we live in a flat land too, unsure of any direct word from the Lord in all that time, unsure of old and trusted values and moralities. Even the visible signs and symbols of God's presence among us, now swallowed up by skyscrapers, high rise apartments and the ever proliferating shopping centers and supermarkets. Sometimes often, perhaps even though we too bustle about our shining cities, making a living, often a very good living, we feel like the exiles, as if we were living in a strange and alien land too. So a nationally known newspaper columnist wrote, not long ago, there is a sense of loneliness in the country, even of helplessness and doubt about the fidelity of our institutions. This is something new in our national life, something very dangerous to the American character, something to be approached with sympathy and a reconciling spirit, rather than trifled with and twisted into a party argument.

Maybe, maybe we're discovering that we really are exiles, after all, living in an alien land in increasing darkness. But not only darkness, silence. For fifty years, there had been bleak silence on the part of the prophets of God. Not since the days of Jeremiah, when Judah was being destroyed and taken off into exile, had there been a clear voice from the Lord. Now, after the years, there is a voice speaking in the silence. Comfort ye. Comfort ye my people. If there were no silence, you could not hear the voice. And maybe that's our trouble. There are so many voices clamoring for our ears, a great clatter of voices, hucksters, politicians, experts, students, hard hats, comedians, talk shows, neighbors, family, newscasters, TV chatter, preachers. Just turn the dial on your radio now a fraction of an inch in either direction. Voices, preachers like me, clowns, foolish enough to think that our voices can be heard in a world of clattering chatter.

Moreover, in the dark, voices are sometimes hushed, but more frequently, the voices are raised stagnantly, as if to puncture the dark. Years ago, when I was a counselor at a summer camp, we used to dread the noise in the dining room on dark and dismal days, because the voices of the kids always went up by decibels, noisy, strident when it was dark. In the sunshine, there's no need to raise your voice, but when the darkness presses in. So in our country because of the darkness of these days, the voices are strident and noisy. The rhetoric from student radicals on the one hand to rock rib conservatives on the other is extreme, strident as they shout to be heard in the dark. But the first voice you hear in this passage, comfort ye, comfort ye my people is not strident nor harsh. Handel in the opening strains of the Messiah, interpreting this passage, assigns the opening notes to a soft woodwind.

So after fifty years, a low voice of reassurance and encouragement and hope in the dark silence of exile, comfort, comfort my people speak tenderly to Jerusalem. It was a voice the exiles needed desperately to hear, and we need to hear it too. The days may be desperately dark, what with the problems in the world we've got on our hands, but the voice breaks through the silence and the clatter, and like a light, pierces the darkness with hope and promise. But then the voice of comfort and promise and hope turns into a crazy kind of highway, stretching out into a wilderness of rock and desert. 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 be made low. The uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.

Strange comfort. To carve a highway out of the wilderness and what lay at the end of it for the exiles, Jerusalem lay at the end of it a city in ruins, and at its center a temple in rubble wasn't shining. Babylon, lonely and estranged as they might be there, bad enough. At least, they were making ends meet. The children were at school. The old men poured over their ancient scriptures, and they had security. And they were expected to throw all that over for a crazy highway in the wilderness, out of the frying pan into the fire. What kind of comfort was this?

But the glory wrote of God's comfort, His love for us always looks crazy, risky, uncomfortable, hard. Sometimes he calls it a narrow gate, as hard to get through as a full size camel through the eye of a needle. Sometimes he calls it, take up your cross and follow. Always a glory to it, of course, but always a risk. The road always goes through a wilderness. From churches into streets and ghettos, from a cozy white neighborhood into a mixed neighborhood of white, black, brown, yellow, red. From a desire for comfort and security to a willingness to risk security and comfort in battling poverty and prejudice and fear and disease and all the evils that infest the world. A high road, a glory road in the wilderness, indeed.

So faced with that kind of crazy highway, we often prefer to take detours. The enticing side roads which beckon at every corner. It's a road to get away from it all, an escape hatch. For the exiles have met a road leading right back to Babylon with its shining buildings, its idols and its wealth. Well, why not? You know, you only live once. Who wants to risk that one chance we've got at life on a crazy highway in the wilderness where God only knows what will happen to us. Where, despite the glory of the Lord shining on it, it looks mighty grim to us. So we fight the traffic on the detours, the side roads, because they're jammed with traffic. Of course, everyone's trying to get away to ski resorts, gambling casinos, TV, to smoking too much, drinking too much. Even going to church can be a detour from the glory road if it leads to a forgetting of the wilderness outside. Well, at least we won't be lonely. We'll have plenty of company with the traffic jams on the side roads leading to a forgetting.

Or there's another attractive road far more attractive to some of us than that crazy glory road in the wilderness. It's the road back. To find your way back to a simpler, easier, always more beautiful past. Like the hero in Jack Finney's Time and Again. Who decides to go back to the loveliness of winter in New York in the 1880s. Where, despite some problems in the wilderness, they were not so overwhelming, they were at least manageable. And at Christmas, the desire to take the road back is all but irresistible. The Christmas cards tell it with their Currier and Ives, pictures of the good old days, a lovely village, church, snow scenes in the country, or Old English carolers strolling through medieval streets. Of course, you and I know there is no road back to a lost innocence, to childhood, to the days when the stories of a star and angels and shepherds were believable. We know there's no road back in our minds, but we fight it in our hearts.

Not that we need not remember. At Christmas, much of the joy is not simply in being together with family and friends, but also in remembering. There's deep joy in repeating the customs and traditions each family has adopted for itself, often passed on from one generation to another. The special cookies, the ritual of hanging the stockings of traditional dinner, the olden time worn ornaments on the tree. It's a road back, of course, to a remembering. So in the churches, the same lovely story from the second chapter of Luke, the same carols, the same lights and wreaths and creche, the same Silent night, holy night. A road back, of course.

But it's a road back to hear the voice again here and now. Comfort ye. Comfort ye my people. For that voice in the silent darkness of exile was a road back, too to a remembering of the God who, though silent, had never forgotten them, even following them into exile with this soft, haunting voice, comfort ye. But the comfort was not the destination. It turned into a crazy highway in the wilderness, just as Christmas is not our destination either. Even though we are on the road to Christmas at the moment, as one December day follows another, with the increasing tempo of rushing about getting ready for it all. Yet Christmas is not the destination. It's the point of departure. It's where we hear the voice, comfort ye, turn into, prepare in the wilderness. The way of the Lord makes straight in the desert a highway for our God. And we're back on that crazy highway of the wilderness, with the hills falling down and the valleys filling up, all nature getting into the act where the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.

Now, if we're even half serious about Christmas, we know it's not the destination, it's the promise of new life, new horizons, new beginnings. Because God does not settle down as a child in a manger. He grows up to lead us on this crazy glory road in the wilderness, feeding the hungry, fighting for justice for others, battling prejudice, comforting the lonely and the heartsick, giving aid to the downtrodden and oppressed. Oh, I know it doesn't look like a high road or a glory road from where we sit. But it is.

Let us pray. Dear God in the darkness of the Virgin's womb the holy child grows. In the darkness of the world's pain the light begins to kindle. In the darkness of our own doubting of thee and of ourselves, the great hope begins to rise again like a lump in the throat,.The hope that thou wilt come to us truly, that the child will be born again in our midst, the Prince of Peace in a world at war, the hope that thou wilt ransom us and our world from the darkness that seeks to destroy us. Oh God, be born among us that we may ourselves be born. Be born within us, that by words and deeds of love, we may bear the tidings of Thy birth to a world that dies for lack of love. Through Christ, our Lord, Amen. The grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you now. Amen.