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"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 features in one's life. More specifically, it carries the connotation of a standard of living that is more than sufficient. And so we say: "She makes a comfortable salary. They enjoy a very comfortable lifestyle."

When we look for synonyms, we think of such words as content, untroubled, carefree and secure. All of these things, taken together, give the term comfortable the faint aroma of complacency and a whiff of self-satisfaction.

Some who are comfortable protect their comfortableness by choosing to avoid the disturbing, distressing and painful features of this life and these times. Hunger, homelessness, and violence; fires in California, earthquakes in India, floods in the American heartland; genuine give-and-take, listen-as-well-as-speak debates over the morality of abortion, homosexuality and gun control; to say nothing about the quiet desperation of many individuals, the substitution of family busyness for family cohesiveness, the collapse of community and the resulting loneliness that is the identifying characteristic of life in late twentieth century suburban America: all of these things and dozens more are guaranteed to make us uncomfortable. Those who are determined to keep their comfort level high therefore avoid dealing with these things, or at least minimize their exposure to them.

Let's be careful: Not all people of wealth are comfortable in this sense of the word, nor does one have to be wealthy to be comfortable in this way. What one needs to be in order to be comfortable in this way is apathetic, dispassionate, detached, aloof and/or very, very good at denial. The sad truth is: Too many of us are comfortable, or wish we were, or strive to be. God does not join us or help us in our efforts to be comfortable. That's the bad news this Advent morning.

Here's the good news: God does comfort us. And we are comforted. To comfort means to soothe in distress or sorrow; to ease misery or grief; to bring consolation or hope. That is exactly what God did for Israel, speaking through the prophet Isaiah, when Israel was carried off from her beloved and comfortable homeland into exile in Babylon. Isaiah announces that Israel's oppression in a foreign land has come to an end, that God is about to lead his people on a second exodus. That promise, from the God who rules history and moves events to accomplish his purpose, brings comfort to God's people in their distress, sorrow, misery and grief. They are consoled and given hope. They are, in a word, comforted.

But they are not made comfortable: Hard work awaits the returned exiles. Their homeland lay in ruins; their temple destroyed; their economy collapsed. To discomforted people such as these, God can bring comfort. To those who are already comfortable, who are snug and smug in their self-sufficiency and security, the proclamation of God's comfort is meaningless.

So also, in Matthew's Gospel, John is in prison and has his disciples ask Jesus if Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus responds with the great good news that the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them. In a word, the afflicted are comforted. But they are not made comfortable: John is a prophet, no reed shaken by the wind, no palace courtier nattily attired. He speaks words of great challenge as he introduces the coming of God's kingdom.

The old saw, that the preacher's task is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, proclaims a profound theological truth. For when we are afflicted, that is when God comforts us. If we are comfortable, God must first penetrate our false security. Only then can the news of the Messiah's coming strike our ears as a word of comfort.

So what of us this Advent? Would we rather be comforted or comfortable? Would we prefer to be apathetic, dispassionate, detached, and aloof; unsullied by the woes and weariness of the world, and of our own lives; unmoved and untouched by the very things God's promised and the coming Messiah came to remedy?

Or are we spiritually prepared to immerse ourselves in the rugged world to which the Savior came, trusting God's promise to comfort us when the load becomes heavy, the grief intense, the sorrow and misery unbearable? For some of us, that might mean going to ghettoes and barrios, nursing homes, prisons or mental institutions. For others, it means sharing the grief, sorrow or misery of a neighbor, a fellow member of the church, a co-worker. It means being for that person a conduit of God's comfort, an incarnation of God's comforting presence, a messenger who gently and unapologetically shares how the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem and his subsequent life, death and resurrection comforts him or her, and by this sharing offers consolation and hope that are more rugged and durable than soft raiments and reeds shaken by the wind.

Before we can speak that word, we need to hear it. Listen, people of God: people who want to know and love God, people who want to know and love one another, but who are afraid.

Afraid of giving up control, yet burdened by the perceived demand to stay on top of everything.

Afraid of inadequacy, yet wanting to help.

Afraid of giving away too much -- of money or of self -- yet wanting to be good stewards.

Afraid of mediocrity in ministry, yet reluctant to make the commitments of time, talent and treasure that make excellence achievable.

To you -- precisely to you -- in this your affliction, God comes to you. The signs of his coming are hidden, as they were hidden to the people in the time of Isaiah, Jesus and John. But now as well as then God's promise is trustworthy and true! That promise and that presence simply is your hope, rugged and durable. That promise and that presence come to you today, hidden again, under the forms of bread and wine.

The advent of the messiah, the promise and the presence -- means by which God makes us not comfortable, but comforted. And thus comforted, we are truly equipped to "Go in peace and serve the Lord."