A Sermon for Christmas Eve (24/12/20): Light in Darkness

 

Light in Darkness

Isaiah 9:2b-7

Perhaps our reading should have started a few verses earlier:

They will look to the earth, but will see only distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be thrust into thick darkness.

This is is the experience of the people of whom Isaiah speaks at the beginning of our reading:

The people who walked in darkness. . .

Those who lived in a land of deep darkness. . .

It does seem entirely appropriate to read these words from Isaiah at this time of year. It makes sense to hear words about gloom and darkness on this night which is one of the longest night of the year. Of course what is for Isaiah a metaphor, for people who live at the latitudes we do is an annual lived experience. Each year we go through a living parable that invites us to reflect on Isaiah’s words. The days become shorter. Today, here, there were just nine and a quarter hours between sunrise and sunset, and many of the hours between are twilight. And that was before the weather conspired to add to the gloom Even at noon at this time of year the Sun is never high in the sky, so the shadows which it casts are always deep and long. If nothing else Isaiah’s words fit our outside experience at this time of year. His metaphor is our reality.

Isaiah is actually addressing the people who live in Zebulun and Naphtali. That is the part of the Promised Land which lies to the north-west of the Sea of Galilee. These were the people who had borne the brunt of the Assyrian invasion which had swept down from the north and the east. Their darkness was of a different order from ours. They are the ones who have felt the weight of the Assyrian yoke across their shoulders. They are the ones who have received the sting of the oppressors rod on their backs. Their darkness was one of oppression, sorrow, pain and loss. 

Though perhaps this year Isaiah’s words are doubly appropriate. They are apt for the time of year. But they are also apt for the whole year which we have just lived through. And maybe “gloomy” is a fitting adjective to describe what this year has been like. It hasn’t been quite the devastation of an invading army. But the Corona Virus certainly has “invaded” our awareness and has wreaked havoc with just about every aspect of our lives. For some the devastation has been like that of war, most especially for those who have lost loved ones. But no aspect of our lives, has been untouched. Everything has be disrupted, at the personal level, among our families and friends, for our neighbours and community, for the nation and for the whole world. We don’t seem to have emerged from gloom for so many months. As this has been happening, once again racial and economic injustices have been brought into focus. I don’t think the virus and the social and political discontent and disturbances we have been witness too this year are unconnected. The virus is in some sense a natural occurrence, just one of those misfortunes that happens to have happened. But it has served to increase and to expose some of the injustice that was already there. We have been living this year in a land, in a world of deep darkness.

 

I said, as began preaching from Isaiah at the end of November, that were in need of an “Isaiah Advent.” Perhaps above all we have needed to hear the hope expressed in the words we have heard from Isaiah tonight. The point of those metaphors of gloom and darkness, and especially when they are related to the shortness of days in the middle of winter, the point of those metaphors is that darkness turns to light. We are already past the mid point of winter, even if winter’s coldest days are yet to arrive. The longest night is behind us. In the last few weeks we may just have begun to sense that we might have turned the corner with the virus. There is a vaccine. Even if there is still restrictions and possibly more to come And as yet there is no end in sight to the suffering, loss and sorrow associated with the virus. And perhaps those voices raised against racial and economic injustice have made themselves heard. Even if there is as yet no conclusive will to resolve the issues that they protest against. Even in the darkness of winter there is reason to hope.

Isaiah though promises something more dramatic. The people he was speaking about at the beginning of the reading:

. . . have seen a great light.

. . . on them a light has shined.

It is the habit of prophets to speak of the future as if it were already present. Isaiah is so confident that God will bring relief to his people he can speak as if it has already happened. For his friends in Zebulun and Naphtali he is able to promise that the war which they have been living through is over. The battlefields around them will be cleared of the debris of conflict.

For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned for fuel for the fire.

The crisis which they have been living through will come to an end. And when it is over they will be able to look back and see God’s hand in their relief. So too will the crises which we are experiencing pass, and with the eyes of faith we too will see that it is God who has brought us through. The source of Isaiah’s confidence and hope solidifies around a single image: the birth of a child. The arrival of children in the world is always reason for hope. But Isaiah has a particular child in mind. Earlier, when he was offering hope to people far to the south of Zebulun and Naphtali, he spoke of a child. When he was reassurance to King Ahaz in Jerusalem that this same crisis would pass he had said:

The young woman is with child and will bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.

Isaiah’s hope has become more confident and more immediate, he now says:

For a child has been born for us, a son given to us.

The hope of God’s people crystallises around this child. This is the Messiah. The one in whom all of God’s promises are fulfilled. The one who will establish God’s reign on earth for God’s people He is a king in the line of David. He is one whose rule will be focused justice and righteousness. He is the one who will bring about everlasting peace for all people of goodwill. No wonder we want to hear these words now. In the darkest days of the year we want to hear the brightest hope of all. Of course we read these words on this night of all nights, because it is the conviction of Christians that these hopes find their fulfilment in the child born in Bethlehem, Jesus. Jesus whose own ministry and mission begin in that same land of Zebulun and Naphtali, is the one who bears those exulted title and brings the hope of God’s people to reality. Jesus is:

Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Because he is we too can speak of the future we hope for, a future without pandemic, a future without the kinds of restrictions we have experienced in these recent months. We can speak of a future in which there will be both racial and economic justice. There will be liberty and equality for all We can speak of this future as if it were already present, because God has already acted. The Kingdom of God is already here in Jesus Christ. These things will be so, because, as Isaiah puts it:

The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will do this.

Perhaps Christmas this year won’t be quite the celebration we have had in the past, and would like to share now. Few of us will be able to gather in Church, and even those of us he do will not be able to do quite what we would most like to do. Still we will not be able to hold our loved ones a close as we’d like and share our our joy with them as much as we long to. Around us still there is to much sorrow and loss, sickness and anxiety. And still there are victims of economic and racial injustice. But God promises that these thing will end. And then there will be a great celebration. Like children tearing off the wrapping paper on Christmas morning

as joy at the harvest,

as people exult when dividing plunder.

Because this celebration is certain in the future, Our hope is so real that we can speak of it as if it had already come about, Even in the face of what we have gone through and still must go through, We can celebrate now! Happy Christmas!

Amen.

Light in Darkness by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 

A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (20/12/20): And Will Call His Name Immanuel

 And Will Call His Name Immanuel 

Isaiah 7:10-17

As so often happens, Judah is in the midst of a crisis. The place where God’s people live is not only a land which has been promised to them, it is also a cross roads. Trade routes to the north and south, to east and west meet here. So the land which has been promised to God’s people is also a strategic objective for all the great powers around them. God deliberately chose the smallest and the least or all the nations to be his people. And God gave them this land. And as such, living where they lived, they were vulnerable. 

Their king, Ahaz is standing at the end of the aqueduct that carries vital water into the otherwise dry city of Jerusalem. He is in the most strategically important location close to the city. From there Ahaz is contemplating the current situation, when Isaiah approaches him and announces: 

Look the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel. . . before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted. 

Isaiah is doing what people would normally expect a prophet to do. He is foretelling the future. He is acting as a kind of soothsayer for the king of Judah in Jerusalem. We have quite rightly grown to understand that what prophets do is far more than predict the future. The words of prophets we known are far more “forth-telling” than they are “foretelling”. They speak the truth about God, and as such their words always have an everlasting quality about them. But on this occasion Isaiah has a quite specific message for King Ahaz, that is applicable to the immediate situation which he and God’s people living in Judah find themselves in. Isaiah brings to Ahaz a word from God, a promise, that current crisis will pass. 

 

Judah is under pressure. It is being squeezed by a much more powerful kingdom that is some distance away, and being squeezed by its immediate neighbours’ reaction to that kingdom. To the east Assyria is on the rise. It is becoming a great empire. It is swallowing up the smaller kingdoms around it. Now Assyria is looking for unrestricted access to the Mediterranean, to Egypt to the south-west and Asia Minor to the north-west and to the profitable trade routes that run through those places. Judah’s location once again is making it vulnerable to the ambitions of its larger and more powerful neighbours. Assyria has become an immediate threat to the kingdoms of Aram-Damascus, Ephraim (which is what Isaiah calls the other half of God’s people, Israel) and to Judah itself. To answer this threat the kings of Damascus and Israel have formed an alliance against Assyria which they want Judah to join. Ahaz does not want Judah to join in an alliance with its long-time rivals Damascus and Israel. As a result of Judah’s refusal, King Rezin of Damascus and King Pekah of Israel are preparing to attack Judah. As they are preparing to that, the Philistines see their opportunity and Edom breaks free from Judah’s rule So Judah is about to be attacked from three sides: by Israel from the north, Damascus from the east and Edom from the south This story is not perhaps one we know in particular. But its outline is familiar enough. This is history and politics, playing out in exactly the way they always have and always seem to do.

Isaiah speaks into the specifics of this geopolitical situation. His message here feels strange to us. He is doing what we have learned to avoid thinking prophets do. He is foretelling the immediate future. He as acting as a royal advisor. He is being the king’s soothsayer. He is making Ahaz a hopeful offer from God which is intended to guide the king’s policy in the current moment.

At the heart of this prophecy, and as we shall see later, the reason why our attention falls on it now, is the sign which God offers as guarantee of what is being promised. Isaiah offers the king a specific sign from God: 

Look the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel.  

There is a you woman, who is evidently known to both Isaiah and the king. She is possibly the wife or perhaps the daughter of either of them. Whoever this young woman is, she is already pregnant. She will have a son. And she will give him the name: Immanuel. 

The names that are given to children in the Bible often carry great significance. This name means literally: “God with us”:“Im” with, so “immanu” with us; “El” God. Isaiah reminds the king that God is with “us”, that is with Judah and Jerusalem. The sign and especially the child’s name are intended as a reminder of God’s special care for his own chosen people. And he offers God’s promise. By the time this child is eating solid food the current threat against the kingdom will be lifted. In a very precise time-frame the threat against Judah’s independence from Israel, Damascus and Edom will have ceased. The young woman is already expecting, so that must be less than nine months. Add the time it takes a baby to be weaned, so another six to nine months. What Isaiah is saying is that in less than 18 months the challenge which is currently facing Judah and its king will be gone. This is prophecy at its most specific and most particular At which point we might be asking ourselves what does this mean to us. What interest should we have in 2,500 year old geopolitical manoeuvring. Why would we read this. And why would we read this on the last Sunday before Christmas

Of course prophecy, even when it is this specific, retains a permanent relevance. The prophet speaks the truth. And in particular the prophet speaks the truth about God. When the king is first offered a sign from God by Isaiah he declines the offer. He says:

I will not ask and I will not put the Lord to the test. 

This at first sight seems like the appropriate response. The king knows Deuteronomy and he knows it says there: 

Do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah. (Dt. 6:16)   

But it is not piety which leads the king to reject the sign which Isaiah. He rejects what God is offering because he thinks he has his own solution. He is intending to answer the threat from Israel and Damascus and Edom be seeking an alliance with the rising power in the region: Assyria. Ahaz is choosing to fight fire with fire. The king is aiming to play along with Assyria’s ambitions and hopes to gain something over his immediate neighbours whilst avoiding the full force of the threat which Assyria itself presents. This is very much politics as usual. And it doesn’t need us to be geniuses at political strategy to see that this is a risky path to to take. Fighting fire in the end almost always produces a bigger fire. What is stop Assyria having accepted Judah’s help against Israel and Damascus, simply swallowing Judah up as well. But this is the path which the king is determined to take. And so he refuses the sign from God. But he is given the sign anyway:

Then he [Isaiah] retorted: "Listen, house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of mortals? Will you also try the patience of my God? therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. 

And it is here that we arrive at a truth about God which gives Isaiah’s prophecy lasting significance. It is not the actions of the king which will determine the destiny of God’s people. As Fred Pratt Green’s hymn still puts it: “It is God who holds the nations in the hollow of his hand.” (Singing the Faith 705) Isaiah articulates to Ahaz a faith which we still hold. That the ultimate destiny of history is determined by God. Human freedom, which Ahaz exercises here by choosing his own policy for Judah, human freedom is exercised within the setting of the work of God. The hope which Isaiah expresses to Ahaz, is the same hope which Christians continue to hold, both for themselves and also for the world as a whole. It is the same hope which Paul expresses when he says: 

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God. (Romans 8:28)

So that whilst this is a very specific message, addressed to the particulars of a moment in Judah’s history, it is prophecy. And as prophecy it speaks the truth about God, and says something about the everlasting character of God.

                      

And yet, none of this is why we would read these words on this Sunday. And I suspect few if any of us were aware of the political machinations that lie behind Isaiah’s words when we first read them. When we read of the sign which Isaiah promise we hear something quite different. 

Isaiah is the New Testament’s favourite book from the Hebrew scriptures. As the first Christians explored and tried to understand what they were experiencing with Jesus, the place they turned most often was to Isaiah. And the first Christians had a distinctive way of reading the Bible and prophecy that marked them out as different from everyone else who was reading the Bible at the time. They used what has been called a “fulfilment reading”. When they thought about Jesus, they looked for the places where who Jesus is and what Jesus does has already been spoken of as characteristic of God in the Hebrew Bible, especially in the prophets and the psalms.  In a way they were taking what Isaiah and the others said to be a prediction that finds its truest fulfilment in Jesus. When the first Christians thought about Jesus they remembered these words from Isaiah: 

A young woman is with child and shall bear a son. 

It is said: Anyone who thinks history repeats itself isn’t paying attention to the details History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme. The promise which was made to Ahaz in the specifics of the time he was living through re-emerges in the birth of Jesus. Above all the first Christians recognise, and we still acknowledge that Jesus lives into the name which God promised Ahaz: Immanuel. Jesus is God with us. Which of course is why we might choose to read Isaiah’s prediction of ancient global politics on the last Sunday before Christmas. But just as the specifics of the prediction made to Ahaz say something generally true about the nature of God. So taking that prediction and applying to the larger action which God is taking in Jesus tells us something about the particulars of how God acts. In contrast to the young woman who was evidently known Ahaz and Isaiah, but whose name we do not know, we do know who this  prophecy speaks of when we are thinking about Jesus. These words apply to Mary. She is the one who has conceived and who bears a son. As it happens he is given a different name, though still one which is profoundly meaningful: Jesus. Literally: “He saves!” Yet the older title, Immanuel, is equally applicable to Mary’s son. Looking into Isaiah’s words what the first Christians saw, and we still see, is God taking the initiative and God acting at the immediate and most personal level. God moves towards the human race. It is God who acts to save us. But God does so in the intimately human setting of the birth of a child. An occasion that in almost all circumstances brings hope, even when those circumstances are as desperate as displacement and squalor like the birth of a child in a stable far from home.

I have already had reason to quote Martin Luther King Jr. once this Advent, when he said: “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” God is working his purpose out, on the grandest scale. God works on the scale of history and nations and global politics. But God is not remote, like the rulers and politicians who appear to be in control of those things. All our destinies are ultimately in God’s hands.  But God is not an abstract principal. God is not a general trend. God’s activity, his being with us, is particular and it is immediate And God’s action is at the most human and personal scale. God is present in the birth of a child and the care his mother gives him. And God is is present in a million small and particular instances like that. Each of them in the own small way bending the arc of history towards justice. The two parts of God’s being with us in, both the global and the personal, occur together in one instance: Jesus who was born, Immanuel, to a young woman. Jesus who is Saviour of all the world. God is with us!

Amen.

And Will Call His Name Immanuel by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 

A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent (13/12/20): Rejoice!

 

Rejoice!

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

I will rejoice greatly in the LORD

says the prophet. In some traditions of the church the third Sunday in Advent (today) is referred to as “Gaudete Sunday ,”that is “Rejoice Sunday.” Which, I guess is why this passage from Isaiah is set for today. That is why in some advent rings one of the four candles is pink rather than red. This Sunday is a kind of mid-season break. It is set apart from the other Sundays in Advent that often call repentance and renewal of life as an appropriate preparation for the coming of Jesus. Advent is meant to be penitential season, a time for self examination and reflection. Its mood in many ways should be sombre.

There is much to regret about the state of the world and the state of our own lives. This year, perhaps more than any year, the build up to Christmas is a sombre one. We are living through a more or less unprecedented crisis. Covid has swept around the world and effected nearly every nation to a greater or lesser extent. Around the world it has infected an estimated 72 million people and been implicated in 1.6 million deaths. In our own country, as write, those numbers are 1.81 million and 63,500. That toll has marked this year with an experience of sorrow and loss in almost every place in a way that almost know previous crisis has. Just for a moment the whole world has been united in a shared experience, it it has not been a good one. And that is only the most acute and distressing aspect of this crisis. Not only has the disease been the direct cause of much suffering and death, attempts to control it have led to a transformation of our lives. Many of us have been virtual captives in our own homes for much of the year. We have been isolated from our loved ones and our networks of support. Even when we haven't been infected by the disease itself our health has suffered. Forced to remain at home, many of our limbs and joints have stiffened. Not being able to go out easily and breath fresh air has affected the health of our lungs. But it has affected not only the personal and the social aspects of our lives, it has also taken a political and economic toll. Politicians have struggled to cope, and their struggles have done noting to improve public trust in them. And the restrictions that have been set in place has damaged the livelihood of many people as businesses have struggled and failed. Yet as this has been happening, for others the experience has been an increased workload, as extra demands have been placed on “essential” workers, who often the least well paid. They often have borne the burden of maintaining as much “normality” as possible for the rest of us. 

And this has not been the only thing to burden us this year. None of the world’s other problems has gone away. The climate has continued its apparently inexorable slide from crisis into catastrophe. Ever more gloomy predictions about the speed and effects of climate change are still being made. And those effects, it is increasingly clear, will weigh most heavily on those who are already the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the world. And as all this has been happening, because of events in the United States, we have once again been reminded of racial injustices and the legacy of slavery and colonialism, both there and much nearer to home. And this list could go on, we have had barely time to notice the ongoing conflicts in Yemen, Iraq and Syria that have also added to this year’s toll of misery.

Isaiah rejoices. We might be tempted to reply “that’s easy for you!” No pink candle for us this year!

But this is precisely why we need an “Isaiah Advent” this year. Isaiah invites us to reflect deeply on the meaning of joy and rejoicing. And perhaps what is striking, but easy to overlook, is that Isaiah was able to rejoice in the midst of struggle and disappointment. It was not “easy” for him by any means. The exile of the children of Israel had ended. They had returned to Jerusalem from Babylon. But they had returned to ruins. They have struggled and failed to rebuild the temple. A failure which seems to reflect a larger failure to re-establish national life, and to become once more God’s chosen witnesses in the world. The landscape over which Isaiah looked was one of misery and frustration. Yet Isaiah rejoices!

He points us to the reality that real joy is not about personal pleasure or superficial happiness. It is not determined by the immediate circumstances that we find ourselves in. Isaiah found it possible to rejoice in the midst of hardship and disappointment. His joy, all true joy, is not determined by the immediate circumstances of our lives, be they bad or good. Isaiah’s joy comes from a deeply held assurance that the struggles and disappointments of the present moment will one day be overcome. Isaiah has an absolute faith that God will act to save his people. He is so certain that he speaks of the future as if it were already present.

My whole being shall exult in my God for he has clothed me in garments of salvation.

Of course this passage is perhaps familiar to us already. When Jesus begins his preaching ministry, he goes to synagogue in Nazareth. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah is unrolled to the this passage, and Jesus reads:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me. . . 

The incident and the words which Jesus reads are sometimes referred to as the Nazareth Manifesto. Isaiah announces, and Jesus reads, and we continue to believe, that this is a succinct portrayal of the mission of God. This is what God intends to do. And is perhaps right to call it a manifesto since it has a distinctly political tone. God promises a great reversal. Those who are oppressed and broken hearted will receive good news. Whatever it is that is holding people down or holding people back, and very often this the words which are spoken to them, or the find they speak about themselves, whatever that is, it will be replaced by good news. God will speak a word that lifts the spirits of the downtrodden and the down hearted. With that word comes also the announcement of release for those held captive and those imprisoned. Above all God is a God of freedom. God promises liberty from captivities both literal and metaphoric. God promises a world where flourishing is possible for all human beings. Frustration and disappointment will be swept away God will speak a word of comfort to those who mourn. That will be word spoken to both those who mourn a personal loss, but also those who regret the state of the world. God will comfort those who are anguished by the injustice and apparent futility of our existence. All that sorrow will be turned around to joy. God will speak and act:

to give them a garland instead of ashes

the oil of gladness instead of mourning

the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit

All this talk already has a background among God’s people as Isaiah was speaking. This is a language of Jubilee. Every 50 years in the life of Israel the were supposed to press the reset button. Debts were cancelled and the land redistributed evenly among all the people. God’s intention is that no one among his people become rich at the cost of poverty of others, no one should be powerful by oppressing others. Jubilee was a mechanism established to prevent the concentration of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. Jubilee was this promised great reversal put into action Whatever the current circumstances people find themselves in, God’s promise is that all the negatives will be restored.

In Isaiah’s case, in the immediate setting in which these words were spoken, he is able to promise that the ruined cities of Judah will be rebuild. That despite their failures and setbacks national life will be re-established.

Our perspective is a little different. Not long after Isaiah had spoken these words also became associated with the idea of someone who God would send, the one on whom the Spirit of God rests who speaks at the beginning of the passage. This passage very quickly becomes associated with the Messiah. That is why when Jesus reads these words in Nazareth, his sermon is a single sentence:

Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing (Luke 4:21)

And as Christians we trust in the accuracy and truthfulness of that assessment of Jesus of himself. We believe and trust that Jesus in and by and through whom these things will be brought about. Through Jesus, God’s promised reversal, God’s great and permanent Jubilee, made by Isaiah is what we continue to look towards.

At the heart of these words and this idea of Jubilee and the great reversal in fortunes lies the character of God. These things will happen because of who God is, and what God is like. In the middle of this passage God speaks directly and speaks about himself:

For I the LORD love justice. I hate robbery and wrongdoing.

Martin Luther King, during one the earlier outbreaks of resistance against racial and economic injustice said:

“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. There is much in history and in the present moment which is to be regretted. There is much in our own lives that is source of sorrow and disappointment. But like Martin Luther King we should recognise that that our perspective is small. Even this year as dreadful as it has been is just one small scene in a very long drama. Our faith, our confidence, is that the underlying plot is a positive one. Behind the world that we see, which at times seems cold and heartless, lies the God of love and justice. Because of that all the negatives that we see and experience will be turned to positives. Sorrow will become joy. Captivity will become freedom. Even death will become life. Because God is the God who speaks through Isaiah, and who sends Jesus.

We read Isaiah’s words at almost the darkest moment in the year. In a little more than a week we will reach the shortest day. Perhaps this year this is metaphorical as well as actual. The days and the weather are gloomy. And to some extent they may reflect our mood. But I heard someone say the other day: “In the dark it is easiest to see the light” I began Advent by saying “This too shall pass.” That is certain. Isaiah rejoices in the midst of his struggles and frustrations and disappointment because has an absolute confidence in God. What God has promised God will do. The current darkness will be made light. Perhaps with the arrival a vaccine we can begin to see an end to this crisis. Perhaps this time the voices raised to demand racial and economic justice will be heard and acted upon. But even if they are not, God is good and because of that the arc of history bends toward justice. That jubilee, that great reversal will take place. As we reach the shortest day of the year there is a turn around. Slowly at first and then more quickly the days lengthen. Light and life return to the world. That is the kind of certainty and confidence Isaiah has in God:

for as the earth brings forth its shoots and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

That is why, even now, we can rejoice.

Amen.

Rejoice! by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A Sermon fo the Second Sunday in Advent (06/12/20): Your God Is Here!

Your God is Here!

Isaiah 40:1-11

Isaiah is given access to the heavenly council. He is allowed to overhear a conversation between the heavenly beings. He doesn’t hear God speak directly, but what he does hear comes with the authority of God. After they have spoken one of the Heavenly beings turns to him and commands:

“Cry out!”

Isaiah is told by one of those who exist in the presence of God to preach. Isaiah’s response is one that is probably recognised and even uttered by every preacher faced with making an announcement to God’s people, as they must:

“What shall I cry out?”

Very few people have had the privileged access to the heavenly places that Isaiah receives. Even those of us who are required on a regular basis to speak about and for God can’t know God and God’s intention to the degree that Isaiah does. At some point all of us, the whole people of God, will have to speak of what we know of God, share our experience of the divine. For every believer there will come a point where we must say: “What shall I cry out?” It is a matter always of having some experience of what God is like, what God has done, is doing or will do, and speaking of that. Whether we are preaching, interpreting the scriptures from a pulpit Sunday by Sunday, or sharing something of our testimony intimately with trusted loved ones, the challenge is the same, what must we say about and for God?

Fortunately Isaiah records the answer he receives to that question, and it is answer which might apply as the underlying foundation for all our conversation about God:

“All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. . . but the word of our God will stand forever.”

Perhaps one thing that is most consistent of our experience is that of constant change. What it has been like for us to live through the modern era has been an experience of constant and accelerating change. Nothing stays the same. We for the most part experience this negatively. Nothing can be relied upon, often people least of all. There is, as the heavenly being points out to Isaiah, something transitory, passing about human existence. One minute we are here, flourishing and glorious like a beautiful flower, and the next we are gone. But, there is more to this than just angst and our fear of loss.

There is a Persian adage: “this too shall pass” The legend that goes with the saying suggests that there once was a Sultan who asked his wise men to come up with a saying which would be true and appropriate at all times and every situation. His wise men came up with: “And this too shall pass away.” The Sultan had the words inscribed on a ring so that he could always look at it, and in moments of triumph and pride be returned to humility and reality. But the words also apply in times of loss and sorrow, for these too will pass. The wise men arrived at essentially the same insight as the one given to Isaiah by the heavenly being. The changeableness of our existence is not entirely negative. Even the bad things will pass away too.

Advent is a time in which we look forward, and look forward to change, something new that is about to happen. In an Advent which comes at then end of year in which we have had so much difficult, and we have been trapped in a seemingly endlessly locked-down state of existence, it is important for us to hear, that this too will pass. God is about to do something new!

But this is because behind the transience, the impermanence of the human condition lies the constancy of God. Isaiah is given more than the Sultan’s wise men discovered:

“The word of our God will stand forever.”

The situation in which we as human beings have to express our faith is constantly changing. But one thing never changes, the constancy of God. So whilst Isaiah is given an insight into the changeableness of what it is to be human, he is also given an insight into what it is to preach or to share our faith. That is to set against the changeableness of the human condition the constancy of God. How the news of God sounds depends on where we find ourselves in those cycles of change. I said last week that some years in Advent we have to hear the sharpness of John the Baptists demand to repent and turn back to God. In other years we need to hear the comforting words of Isaiah, and this is one of those years.

The conversation which Isaiah has overheard in the heavenly court gives precisely that message: 

“Comfort, O comfort my people says your God."

One of the heavenly beings is telling others that God has announced that it is time for them to comfort his people. Another moment of change has arrived. The situation of God’s people is about to pass into a new phase. For decades the people of Israel have been stuck in exile in Babylon. They were taken there after Jerusalem was conquered and Israel’s independence came to an end. During those decades they had grasped that this was a consequence of their failure to remain faithful to God. They were victims of their inconstancy, their inability to remain true and consistently committed to the covenant they had with God. But the announcement in the heavenly council makes it clear, that time of exile has come to its end. For all their unfaithfulness God still says of them “my people”. In the past they may have broken with God, but God has never broken with them. And now their time of suffering is ending. The consequences of their actions have fully played out. Indeed the pendulum has already swung too far the other way. But this too shall pass.

A second voice in the heavenly council speaks. It tells the others we needs to be done now: 

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

The traditional focus of the second Sunday in Advent is John the Baptist. And this reading from Isaiah is particularly associated with him. It is because, in a creative partial misquote of these words, the first Christians recognised that John obeys this commandment made in the heavenly council. Mark beginning his gospel declares that John is:

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness. . .” (Mark 1:3)

Everybody knows that John’s voice spoke, out in the wilderness, beside the river Jordan. He seems to fit Isaiah’s prophecy perfectly. And with the addition of an ingeniously implied comma between “wilderness” and “prepare” he does. Mark is not wrong to do this. Since John does clearly prepare the way for the coming of Jesus. Which is why of course he comes to our minds in the run up to Christmas. But at the moment these words word spoken something else was in mind as well.

The usual route from Babylon back to Jerusalem was around not through the wilderness. It involved a journey that started out travelling north-west which gradually turned left, bending first west and eventually south. God has something else in mind for his people. He will come and retrieve them by the most direct route possible. Not just straight there, but every obstacle in the path will be levelled out too. The change which God promises his people is dramatic. Their circumstances will be utterly transformed, and in the most astonishing fashion. What God does for his people makes everyone else sit up and pay attention. God makes himself known in the transformations he brings about in the lives of those who trust him.

“The word of our God will stand forever.”

And this is the moment at which Isaiah the prophet begins the second phase of his ministry. He gives comfort to the exiles who are about to find out that their suffering is ending. Having overheard the conversation in the heavenly court Isaiah goes to his people and announces:

“Here is your God!”

Perhaps what is striking is that despite the uniqueness of the moment the message which is spoken remains the same. Whatever circumstances God’s people find themselves in, good or bad, in faithful suffering or forgetful complacency, the same word is spoken. What the heavenly being declare is true:

“The word of our God will stand forever.”

Not only is this the announcement which Isaiah makes, it is also essentially the same announcement which John the Baptist makes:

“Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 3:2)

Which in the context of John’s speaking sounds like a sharp rebuke. In the context of complacency and unfaithfulness the idea the God is near does sound quite threatening. But it is also essentially  the same message which Jesus himself announces:

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.” (Mark 1:15)

Perhaps we hear his words more as a comfort. But there is a constant and it is God’s word about himself. God is very near to us. Which is especially the point as we are beginning to think about the way God comes to us in Christmas. The message of Christmas is “God is with us”, too! And the assurance that God’s presence is there to deliver us from the difficulties that surround us, even now, and to take care of us and protect us.

Perhaps if the wise men in the story about the Sultan had been a little more wise, or if they had had the access to heaven which Isaiah had, they would have come up with a different saying which would be true and appropriate at all times and every situation. Something that is sharp challenge in times of satisfaction and complacency, and a comfort in times of sorrow and suffering. That saying is what we hear and what we still proclaim. When we ask hat we can and must say about God the answer is always essentially the same:

“Your God is here!”

Amen.

You God Is Here! by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0