An Isaiah Advent
Isaiah
64:1-9
The
other day I was watching a webinar by my favourite contemporary
theologians: Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon.They
were discussing how preachers should approach Advent. In
particular, in view of everything that has been happening in this
last year, how preachers should approach this Advent. They
said that in Advent we are presented with a choice: Either
we can have the sharpness of John the Baptist, or
we can have the comfort of the prophet Isaiah. The
choice, they suggested, is between John’s bitingly clear call to
repentance, and Isaiah’s promise of God’s rescue. In
view of where we are now, and what has been happening, they
concluded, what we need this year is an Isaiah Advent.
Isaiah
lived through critical, even catastrophic times in the history of
Israel. He
saw the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile in Babylon. He
experience the end of the independence of the people of Israel, and
went through the times in which there was a real risk in which they
would lose their identity as God’s people. By
the time he spoke the words which we have just heard, he was at least
back in Jerusalem. The
people were struggling to re-establish national life, begin again
their witness as God’s people. But
even here things didn’t seem to be going right. Isaiah
cries out:
O
that you would tear open the heavens.
Is
this despair, or is it hope? Isaiah
reaches a point where all he can do is cry out: “Oh
God!”
In
the past year, every time we have put on the television news we have
perhaps found reason to gasp, “Oh God!” As
if being threatened with environmental collapse were not enough, or
that divided and ill tempered politics weren’t sufficient, we are
living through a global pandemic. Which
not only has destroyed lives but is also destroying livelihoods which
sustain lives. And
in the midst of all that, once more racial injustice has also been
brought back into sharper focus. “Oh
God! Is this not enough?”
Perhaps
it is desperation. Isaiah
calls out to God when there is no one else left to turn to. Isaiah
is hardly unusual in this respect. I
suspect that more or less everyone, even those who claim not to
believe, pray in this way. Even
when it looks and sounds like a profanity, I wonder also if it is not
a completely sincere prayer. There
are some situations which are so desperate, some crises that are so
threatening, that God is indeed the only place to turn.
But
in Isaiah’s case I think it is more than despair. It
is hope. He
trusts that God will act. God
will break down the barrier that exists between human beings and God. God
will intervene to rescue his people, who place their trust in him.
Perhaps
one of the most difficult things for modern people to accept and to
believe is the idea that God acts. We
find it hard sometimes to believe that God would or even could
intervene. Our
understanding of the world leads us to believe that we live in a
closed system of cause and effect. There
are the laws of nature and they cannot be broken. Yet
looking back over our lives many of us, in hindsight, could identify
moments of grace. There
have been times when all we could do was trust in the goodness of
God, and our trust was not disappointed.
Isaiah
looked back over his own life and the history of his people and
arrived at a similar conclusion:
From
ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any
God besides you who works wonders for those who wait for him.
Looking
into the past, and previous experiences of God’s grace and God’s
goodness to him and his people, Isaiah is able to conclude that God
does indeed act, even within the laws of nature and the closed
systems of cause and effect.
Isaiah
is the New Testament’s book of the Hebrew Bible. Christians
have a particular way of reading Isaiah and the other prophets. We
see what Isaiah and the other spoke about God fulfilled in the life
of Jesus. The
hope which Isaiah expresses become an especially clear reality in
Jesus. And
especially in the image of the heavens being torn open.
Today
is the first Sunday of a new lectionary year which we means that we
begin reading a different Gospel today, this year the Gospel is Mark. It
is no accident that the ministry of Jesus described in Mark’s
Gospel begins and ends with the tearing open of the boundary between
humans and God. At
his baptism Jesus does see the heavens torn open. And the Holy Spirit
descends upon him, marking his ministry as God intervening and active
in our world. As
Jesus dies on the cross, the curtain in the temple is torn in two,
from top to bottom, marking the end of that boundary that separates
humans from God. Isaiah
looks back and gains confidence for the future when he sees God has
done in the past. Christians
likewise have hope, even in an Advent like this one, because they can
look back to the ministry of Jesus and see what God has already done.
But
it is not that Isaiah is
all comfort, without any of the sharpness of John the Baptist! Isaiah
recognises that he and his people have responsibility in the
circumstances they find themselves in. Perhaps
the same could be said of us now. Sometimes
it can be very difficult to disentangle the degrees of responsibility
we as a the human race and as individuals must bear for the
circumstances we find ourselves in. How
much of what we have seen in the last year just the accidents of
history, have they just happen to have happened? And
how much is down to us? And
how much of that blame rests on the human race as a whole? How
much on certain individuals within our race? And
how much do we have to blame ourselves as individuals?
The
ruin of the earth’s environment does look like it’s “our”
fault? The
human race as a whole is to blame. But
how much impact individuals are actually having is difficult to say. It’s
too easy to shift the blame onto everyone, when no one has been given
much choice about how they are able to live. On
the other hand most of the damage to the environment is being done by
a relatively small number of corporations. These
organisations are run by
individuals who make the decisions, and as the environmental movement
points out, these individuals have names and they have addresses.
Covid
perhaps does look like one of those things that happen to have
happened. Except
that the destruction of the environment has a role in the
transmission of diseases found among animals into human populations. Covid
follows on from swine flu and bird flu. And
Covid’s spread has been slowed or accelerated by the choices which
societies, governments have made.
Our
fractious politics and racial justice look like they are beyond our
control. Yet
whether we like it or not we are part of those systems that we have
benefited from or been victim of. We
are so tangled up in the mess that the world is in that we cannot be
sure that even our best effort to do what is right and what Is good
are not some how corrupted. The
Danish philosopher SΓΈren
Kierkegaard observed of the burden of guilt that it is being held
responsible for things we couldn’t have taken responsibility for.
Isaiah
feels the same conflicted sense of reproach and guilt. He
knows that he and his people have failed. Individually
and collectively they are to blame. But
at the same time he also recognises that there is much in their
situation that was out of their control. Typical
of a Psalm – since
that is what Isaiah has given us here – typical of a Psalm,
Isaiah’s words are not afraid to reproach God. Isaiah
voice his sorrow and anger and frustration and directs them towards
God:
But
you were angry and we sinned, because you hid yourself we
transgressed.
No
more than we can, Isaiah cannot disentangle the different layers of
responsibility for the crisis he was living through. But
he does acknowledge that he and his neighbours do have to carry some
of the blame themselves. The
sharpness of John cannot be altogether avoided in Advent, with his
call to confession and repentance. Isaiah
offers God his confession:
We
have all become like one who is unclean and all our righteous deeds
are like a filthy cloth.
Advent
is a time of looking forward. We
take it as a time to look forward to the celebration of Christmas. But
in reality it is more profound season of looking forward. It
is about looking beyond our current circumstances towards a future
which God is promising. We
long for the current crises to be brought to end. We
want an answer to the crisis in the environment to be found. We
long for a vaccine and a reliable cure to Covid be developed, so that
our normal live can be restored. And
as Christians we must seek reconciliation and demand justice. All
of this weighs heavy on us now so that we might cry out:
O
that you would tear open the heavens.
Isaiah
knows that is a prayer that will be answered. He
is confident in God. But
he also knows that anyone who prays to God like that must be prepared
to wait. Because
he knows that God can be relied upon to act when least expected. His
confidence grows out not just from what he has already seen God do,
but from who those actions show God to be:
Yet
O Lord you are our Father.
As
followers of Jesus we have greater grounds for confidence than Isaiah
that that is true. God
is our Father, he has made us all and hates nothing that he has made. God
works only good for those who trust him and wait for him. That
is the kind of Advent we need this year.
Amen.
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