“Consolation” based on Isaiah 61:10-62:3 and Luke 2:22-40

A
month ago, the words to the hymn “Come Ye Disconsolate” jumped
off the page at me.  It isn’t a hymn well known to me, until that
point I’d picked it once in 14 years, but it fit the moment too well
to ignore:

Come, ye disconsolate, where’er
ye languish;
Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel.
Here
bring your wounded hearts; here tell your anguish.
Earth has no
sorrow that heaven cannot heal.¹

Disconsolate
means “without consolation or comfort.”²
 I checked to be sure I had that right.  

Perhaps,
then, it is not surprising what I heard and noticed in today’s Gospel
lesson that had never pulled my attention before.  Parker read verse
25, “ Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this
man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of
Israel,…”  and I thought “consolation!? I never noticed that
before”  Followed by, “what does that really mean?”  I figured
it meant …. something to do with the Messiah.  

The
New Interpreter’s Bible says, “The ‘consolation of Israel’ was a
term for the restoration of the people and the fulfillment of God’s
redemptive work.  … The term comes from references in Isaiah:

Comfort, O comfort my people
says your God.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem (Isaiah 40:1-2 NRVS
cf. 49:13)

For the Lord will comfort
Zion (Isaiah 51:3 NRSV)

Break forth together into
singing, you ruins of Jerusalem;

for the LORD has comforted
his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem (Isaiah 52:9 NRSV, cf
66:10-13)”³

Right.
So this was about the Messiah, who for the Jewish people was the one
would bring the fulfillment of God’s promises of restoration.

How
interesting it is that it is called the “consolation” and focuses
on comfort!  Simeon is a man introduced as waiting for God to act to
bring comfort, and trusting that God would.  Then, when he sees the
baby Jesus, he sees this as the fulfillment of the promise that he
would see God’s Messiah.  The story also says that a holy prophet,
Anna, saw and understood who Jesus was.

Jesus
as comforter, Jesus as consolation.  That is both a familiar and
unfamiliar idea to me.  I grew up with it, but that version was
very… milquetoast.   Jesus was presented as available to me to make
me feel better when I was sad, to listen to me, to be my friend.
And, I think all of that is true.  But as I’ve grown, I’ve become
equally interested in the idea that God wants good things for
EVERYONE, and in order to make that possible, I need to participate
in building a just society.  God doesn’t just LISTEN, God wants to
help, and we are God’s hands and feet in the world.

The
expectations for the Messiah at the time of Jesus were for a king /
prophet / general who would restore the nation of Israel to political
and military prominence.  As you may have noticed, Jesus didn’t do
that, but as Christians we tend to claim that what he did do was
better!

I’ve
been told many times that my job is to comfort the afflicted and
afflict the comforted, which interestingly was originally said about
the role of journalists.    This year, I think we’re all the
afflicted, so my attention has been largely on comfort.

This
week I read a wonderful article entitled, “Jesus wasn’t born in a
stable and that makes all the difference.”⁴
I bet you can deduce the point from the title 😉  The author makes a
substantive argument that the word “inn” is mistranslated in Luke
2:7(b) “She wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in the
manger because there was no room for them in the inn.”  A better
word would be “spare room.”  As in “she was out in the main
family room with the family and the livestock because the spare room
was already overflowing.”  Jewish peasants at the time kept animals
with them in their homes.  And throughout the Middle East it would be
UNTHINKABLE not to stay with family if you have family.

The
author’s primary point is that when we think of Jesus being born out
in a stable, his family rejected by everyone, alone and distanced
from everyone. That is, we tend to think of Jesus being born
APART.   Luke’s actual story puts Jesus in the middle of a small
house filled with a lot of family, so stuffed that the only
reasonable place left to put the baby down was in the
dug-into-the-ground animal feeding troughs.  (A place he wouldn’t
roll away.)

The
“spare room” translation makes it clear that Jesus was part of
the Jewish peasantry.  So does the detail in today’s reading about
giving a sacrifice, and the fact that what was given was the poor
person’s gift, for those who couldn’t afford the more expensive “a
whole lamb” option.

Remembering
that Jesus was born into a devout, poor, Jewish family helps me
understand his role as comforter.  There is an understanding of pain
and a yearning for justice that fits having grown up both poor and
devout.

I
do think that old quote is true, of journalists, of preachers, and
even of Jesus himself.  Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the
comfortable.  And, dear ones, most of us are both.  And, more than at
most points in our lives, we’re the afflicted.  So, may you make
space in your being to accept the comfort and love of God.  “Earth
has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.”  NOT EVEN 2020.

And
that’s some good Christmas news.

Amen

1United
Methodist Hymnal #510

2Summarized
from Apple Dictionary

3
 R. Alan Culpepper, “Luke,” in The New Interpreter’s
Bible Vol. 9 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994): 70.

4https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/jesus-wasnt-born-in-a-stable-and-that-makes-all-the-difference/