December 3, 2023, First Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 64:1-9
Introduction
It’s fun, I think, to start Advent with scripture from the Old Testament. Ok, maybe fun isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s ironic, and I love irony, and therefore it seems fun to me. Or maybe it’s paradoxical, and I really love paradox—where things can be both one thing and another. Both work, and both are fun for me when starting “the most wonderful time of the year.” Especially with the plea, “Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever.”
So yeah, I think it’s fun, ironic, and paradoxical to start Advent in the Old Testament. I also believe it’s faithful because the stories of the Old Testament all guide us to, and prepare us for, this most wonderful time of the year to actually be wonderful. And it is wonderful because of what it reminds us of, and it’s wonderful because of what it invites us to do.
Move 1
The Message version of our texts has Isaiah say in verse one and two, “Oh, that you would rip open the heavens and descend, make the mountains shudder at your presence–as when a forest catches fire, as when a fire makes a pot boil…” which is voiced against the backdrop of yet another period of exile and captivity for the Israelites, this time to the Babylonian empire.
Now, for the Israelites who escaped enslavement and exile in Egypt, the experience at Mt. Sinai was formative because it framed their past, their present, and their future. The day God came down to Moses and Aaron was seared in the collective memory of the people and their offspring.
Exodus tells us, “Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke in a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently” (Exodus 19:18). God spoke to the people, “I am the Lord God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me…” (Exodus 20:1-2) With these two juxtaposed statements of God’s deliverance, and God’s demand for allegiance, we discover the tension of painful longing in Isaiah when he taps into the shared memory and history of the people of Israel, who now once again, find themselves displaced and abandoned.
Isaiah cries out with wistful desire and longing that God would descend anew with fire and smoke, to shake the foundations of the mountains and intervene on behalf of God’s people as God did at Sinai. However, the prophet’s longing is wincingly painful. While it appeals to the character of the God who delivers, it recognizes too the rejection of God by God’s people, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” (Isaiah 64:6).
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Ok, with that we can start connecting this to Advent. The correlation of Isaiah 64 with Advent is a longing for the presence of God—a longing that can be painful and arduous. And all of this is framed in the terms of faithful waiting, “No eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him. You meet those who actively do right, those who remember you in your ways…” (Isaiah 64:4b-5a). It is an active waiting on God.
Scholar John Oswalt, in the New International Commentary on Isaiah, says, “To wait for the Lord is to live the covenant life, to commit the future into God’s hands by means of living a daily life that shows we know God’s ways of integrity, honesty, faithfulness, simplicity, mercy, generosity, and self-denial. The person who does not wait for these things may be waiting for something, but he or she is not waiting for God.”
Isaiah and the Israelites times of exile connect us to Advent because like the Israelites, we are waiting, we are longing for God to act, to do something on our behalf. Like the Israelites in captivity and exile, Advent is a time where we are reminded, we too are in types of captivity and exile ourselves; longing for the presence of God to come and lead us out. But what we must ask ourselves is… In this time of waiting, how are we waiting? Are we waiting while living in covenant with God, committed to God’s future? Are we waiting for God? Or are we waiting for something else?
Move 2
Our text for today is not referenced by the Gospel writers, yet it’s message of active waiting in times of painful longing parallels the exile of the people of first century Judea. Their exile was not one of physical displacement from their homeland, but rather an occupation and captivity within their own geography. Nonetheless, being ruled by foreigners was still oppressive, demoralizing, and degrading.
The Roman rule they were under put them in this time of painful and arduous waiting. There was a cry for liberation throughout the land in which Jesus was birthed. Hopes for a messiah, a representative of God, an anointed king in the line of David, were present in the collective hearts of Jerusalem and its surrounding regions. All of this meant that in this time of waiting, the people were eager and desperate for the prophetic spirit of Isaiah—that God would once again, as God had at Mt. Sinai, “rip open the heavens and descend.”
Just as Isaiah believed God would relent from God’s anger, the Judean Israelites also believed God would, “Look down from heaven and see,” that God would come down in power and might again, “that the nations might tremble at [his] presence”. Their faith is in the character of a God who is potter to the clay, and they are all pleading with God to act on their behalf again because they are both the work of God’s hands and are called God’s people. And it was in this time of waiting that they once again remembered this truth.
Move 3
Advent requires waiting but that waiting shows the providence of God, and it provides an opportunity to discover again some incredibly important truths that once discovered will produce a hopefulness of finding relief from the exile we are in.
Now what those truths are, I can’t tell you—that’s for you to do the work to discover. But maybe, in this time of waiting some truths to discover could be…
We carry heavy burdens that we have not yet laid down—burdens we could have laid down years or even decades ago if only we first laid down our pride.
Perhaps there is a truth to discover about a relationship we have neglected, or we have judged, or we have held a grudge over.
Perhaps there is a truth to discover about how we treat ourselves—that self-loathing is a cruelty we don’t deserve; or lack of selfcare is not a badge of honor to be worn proudly.
Perhaps there is a truth to discover about how we see an “other”—seeing others as illegal, or sinful, or worthless, or a threat to our way of life; instead of seeing the other who may be different, or has different beliefs, but still, like us, are a holy and beloved child of God.
Perhaps there is a truth to discover about how we close our minds and hearts and spirits to God.
We all have truths to discover—truths that have put us into places of exile. Isaiah does not accuse God of turning away from God’s children, rather Isaiah recognizes the people themselves have turned away from God, and that has led to the exile they are in.
Conclusion
The Messiah does not come with pomp and circumstance. He does not come immediately annihilating the dark spiritual world or pummeling the Roman oppressors. He is not born in a spectacular or renowned city. Everything about the kingdom and the king’s arrival is muted and inconspicuous. A young woman and man trying to make sense of conversations with angels, a virgin birth, and how after a ninety-mile walk there was no place to lay their head and deliver the Son of God.
So in this time of waiting, what else are we needing to discover? Because Advent is all about discovering God’s providence but also discovering God’s power. While we are waiting—often creating places of self-exile— God repeatedly demonstrates that if we would just wait, God’s power is perfect because we are weak. That in a feeding trough lays the son of God, inviting us to repent; to change our minds about how any story has to unfold.
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes for us what could be for us in the season of Advent if we would just wait, saying, “…And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives.” Bonhoeffer is reminding us God is at work, always…and always God’s work is for good.
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In this time of waiting, let us remember we can wait with hope, even though we might be surrounded by all the elements of exile, because we know the story ends with hope being revealed. The story ends our time of waiting with the promise of new life born to the world.
So in this time of waiting… in whatever element of exile we are stuck in… may we wait with hope… may we wait with an openness to discovering truths…while knowing, that once again, our wait will end with the heavens will be torn open. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer, December 3, 2023, Advent 1
Gracious God, as we step into this season of Advent, we pray you would “look down from heaven and see.”
See the places of exile we have put your children. See the places of exile we have put ourselves in. See these places, then rip open the heavens again, come down in power and might again, “that the nations might tremble at your presence” and know the way out of exile, the way to a bright and wonderful future, is by following you, by following your son, who gives us a hope filled vision of what can be when we wait for your power and your grace to guide and bless us.
Holy God, as we step off into this season of Advent, we acknowledge that we wonder aloud why you are so far from us when we call. But it is in the waiting where we discover it is we who have wandered from the nearness of your love. We, alone, have rebelled against you. We, alone, have turned our backs to your face. We, alone, have closed our ears to your words of correction and comfort.
We confess we are both a people of unclean lips and unclean hearts, and we pray you would, yet again, restore us this day and in this season. Make it that the hope of our salvation is discovered again when we peer into the manger.
God of new life, you know what is better and you are stronger than our worst conclusions. So when we are feeble in our own trouble and presumptive in others’ trouble, remind us who is the Lord of the better, hope filled story. Then teach us to wait well and to be rooted in hope by speaking to us words of hope, while tearing open the heavens and entering into our lives anew.
We ask that you would listen now to the prayer we have to lift to you, from our hearts to yours, in this time of Holy Silence.
All this we pray in the name of the hope we wait faithfully to come again, Jesus the Christ, who taught us to pray saying, “Our…”