High time I got to blogging again! Slightly distracted over the last several weeks, having moved and been inducted into new charge... *big grin*
This morning's sermon to kick off Advent - and possibly my favourite Advent reading.
SERMON ‘O, that you would tear down the
heavens’
Isaiah 64:
1-9
let us pray:
May the words
of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.
Amen.
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear...
It’s the
first Sunday of Advent:
the beginning
of a new church year.
New life
Hope renewed.
From Advent
last year,
through to
Christ the King Sunday last week,
we’ve moved
through the various church seasons - the liturgical calendar -
and, as we’ve
done so, as a community,
age-old,
familiar stories from the bible have been heard.
Our Gospel
readings will have covered the birth, life, ministry,
death and
resurrection of Jesus
Other
readings from the New Testament will have focused upon the community of
followers,
and of making
sense of what it is to follow Jesus.
Over the
course of Old Testament readings through the year,
we’ll have
been reminded
of the
journey of the people of Israel:
from
wandering in the wilderness,
to the
establishment of a nation,
to the
overthrow of that nation
and of exile
and return.
There have
been stories of great leaders chosen by God;
and stories
of God’s prophets -
calling some
of these same leaders
to follow and
trust God more closely...
to lead the
people wisely and well.
Overall, in
both Old and New Testaments,
we, as God’s
people have journeyed with God’s
people - through the ages,
journeying
together as we try to understand who this God is that we follow,
and how to
live - how to be - his people.
Our Old
Testament reading this morning is set in a time
when God’s
people find themselves in dire circumstances:
when all
around them feels dark;
where the
flicker of hope is all but extinguished.
The nation of
Israel has been comprehensively defeated
by the new
superpower in the neighbourhood, the Babylonians.
Those who are
deemed valuable:
the elite of
the nation,
the best and
the brightest,
have been
summarily marched off to the great city of Babylon to live out their years in
exile.
Throughout
this approximately 70 year period, the prophet Isaiah, and his followers, act
as God’s messengers to the defeated, despairing people of God -
as voices of
hope when all seems hopeless.
Voices
holding the people of God.
and God
to account.
This
particular passage is a cry of rage and lament;
the prophet’s
plaintive call to God to act -
‘O that you would tear open the
heavens and come down’
It’s a cry
calling upon God to make himself known
to his people
and their
captors.
The prophet
asserts that
by redeeming
- rescuing Israel -
God’s name,
God’s power
will be made known.
In the midst
of lonely exile in Babylon
feeling
abandoned by God
God’s people
wait,
wait for him
to appear.
But why, even when feeling abandoned,
is there a
hope
an
expectation
that God might appear to them?
That God might
just rescue them?
O come, O come thou Lord of might,
who to thy tribes on Sinai’s height,
in ancient times didst give the law
in cloud and majesty and awe...
As Isaiah
calls upon God
to tear open
the heavens and come down,
he reminds
the exiles of their past -
And, it would
appear, he also reminds God.
There’s some
history here.
There’s a
relationship that needs to be looked at:
there’s a
covenant - an agreement -
binding God
and his people together.
While God’s
people are to honour, serve, worship, love, and be faithful to God...
The Lord of
might - mysterious, majestic, and awesome,
is bound:
bound to
protect and to lead his people.
Isaiah
reminds God:
‘you did awesome things’
‘you did awesome things’
One such
awesome thing is found in the
giving of the
law on Mount Sinai -
the law showing
how to love God
and to love
neighbour -
and through
doing so,
to create an
ordered, harmonious community:
the peaceable
kingdom...
a foretaste
of the kingdom of heaven.
Isaiah
recalls the unexpectedness of God -
the awesome
God who,
when giving
the Law
does indeed
come down from the heavens
breaks
through into finite time and space
and makes
himself more fully known
on the
mountain...
and, as he
does,
causes the
mountains to quake
and to tremble...
Isaiah says
to God:
‘You’ve done this before..
come and do
it again...
act on behalf
of those who wait for you’
To the people
waiting in near-darkness
a spark of
hope is being kindled.
O come, thou Rod of Jesse,
free thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
from depths of hell thy people save,
and give them victory o’er the
grave...
Will God free
them?
He has done
so in the past -
he can do so
now
and in the
future.
From the
depths of hell that is exile in Babylon
there will be a return to the Promised Land...
But there
will also be more waiting -
the people of
God will continue to await the promise of a coming Messiah
and the
fulfilment of all things once they arrive back to Palestine...
Several
hundreds of years later,
far away from
Babylon,
and in a
backwater of the Holy Land itself - Bethlehem -
the cry of
Isaiah echoes through the land -
God tears
down the heavens and comes down:
the promised
Rod of Jesse.
A mighty
deliverer -
gurgling in a
manger.
The expected
appearance:
so thoroughly
unexpected.
The promise
of hope
made flesh and
bone...
to rescue
God’s people from the tyranny and fear of death,
as he
overcomes it
by his own
death, and resurrection:
the resurrection
life that kindles hope
of a new life
for all humanity.
O come, thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heavenly home;
make safe the way that leads on high,
and close the path to misery...
What are we
waiting for?
We wait for Jesus,
the Key of David...
who will come
again
and fling
open the gates to our heart’s home;
for Jesus, who
leads us safely to a place of rejoicing,
a place of
hope.
We need not
fear
for we are
not doomed to destruction and loss:
God loved the
world in this way -
that hope was
born among us -
divine and
yet human -
that whoever
believes in the Son will not perish,
but have life
everlasting.
We need not
fear
for we don’t
have to accept that hunger and poverty and injustice will always win...
We have hope
-
for the one
in whom we trust
and for who
we wait
has come to
give life, life abundantly, justly.
We need not fear
for violence
and hatred will not prevail -
for unto us,
a child is born,
unto us, a
Son is given
and the
government shall be upon his shoulder,
his name
shall be called wonderful councillor, mighty God, the Everlasting, the Prince
of peace.[1]
We need not
fear,
for there is
hope and light and life:
the day, the
hour is coming...
Soon and very
soon
we are
going to see our king -
tearing open
the heavens,
breaking into
human history,
walking among
us
with us:
God, in Jesus;
God who is for us.
This is our
hope,
this is what
we watch and wait for over Advent -
we await the
one who is the ground of our being
the one
closer to us than breathing.
As we wait to
remember,
and celebrate
anew the coming of the Christ child,
have courage
be not afraid,
the light of
hope will never be put out...
O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer
our spirits by thine Advent here;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death’s dark shadows put to
flight...
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel
shall come to thee, O Israel.
Amen.
[1] riffing on
a theme from Daniel Berrigan’s ‘Advent Credo’
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