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November 27, 2005
Not How It's Supposed to Be
Isaiah 64:1-9, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas…
In case some of you have somehow failed to notice, Christmas is upon us. Christmas items have been up in stores since October (if not earlier); two radio stations have been playing all Christmas music all the time for several weeks; holiday decorations are up downtown and all around town. Trees and decorations are even in place at church.
Christmas is in full swing, but in worship we read not a prophecy from Isaiah but a lament, and we sing not "Joy to the World" but "O God of Every Nation".
I know it drives some of you crazy that we don't sing carols in the weeks leading up to Christmas. I understand, I truly do. And part of me wishes we could sing those carols for weeks on end—I got out my holiday CDs on Thursday, as I was preparing Thanksgiving dinner. But Advent is a season in its own right, and not observing Advent as the prelude to Christmas would be to me the same as skipping Good Friday and heading straight to Easter morning. We cannot have the hope of Christmas or Easter if we do not acknowledge the despair beforehand. Our joy is brighter when we have looked unflinchingly at the darkness.
The First Sunday of Advent is particularly dark this year. Isaiah's lament speaks of a people at the end of their rope. Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonian army, and the wealthy, educated and skilled artisans of the population were shackled and led to live as exiles in Babylon. They are in despair. Cut off from God, they sinned, and turned from God even further. Once they were God's people, but without the God who gave them a name and a land and an identity, they no longer know who they are. The words of the lament express alienation and distance.
"Why don't you tear apart the heavens and come down?" cries Isaiah. Or, to put it in more modern parlance, "God, would you get down here and do something about this mess?"
Who among us has not at one time or another expressed Isaiah's cry to God? I know that I have. Even a cursory glance at the events of the world reveal trouble and despair.
Natural disasters have left us reeling—from the tsunami in Asia last December to earthquakes in Pakistan and drought and locusts and famine in Africa. Hurricane Katrina brought destruction to this country that we had no longer considered possible. The war in Iraq continues, with American soldiers and Iraqi civilians the daily targets of attacks by insurgents. The threat of terrorism is on every continent. Millions live in squalor. AIDS rages in Africa. We are warned of the very real possibility of a bird flu pandemic that could kill thousands, if not millions.
In our own country, we watch as the current administration is under fire for abuse of power. We fret over the economy. General Motors will cut 30,000 jobs in the coming weeks, and close numerous plants, affecting countless families and communities. We wonder what corporation will be next.
The list goes on and on and on. And that is to say nothing of tremors and wrong turns that happen in our own lives.
We share with Isaiah the conviction that this is not how things are supposed to be. We may even share a sense of distance and alienation from God. We sit in our despair, recognizing that the world has gone horribly wrong. We can attempt to cover up this reality with tinsel and garland and merry and bright, but the truth of it remains. We are in a world of hurt.
It is into this reality that Advent comes and speaks the truth:
The world is not right. We are not right. And only God can save us.
This is where Advent begins, making us painfully aware of our human limitations and our need for divine intervention. This realization is especially difficult for citizens of the most powerful nation in the world. As individuals and as a nation, we use knowledge, wealth and power to both control and help the world in which we live. But even we with all our power and influence are not exempt from limitation. As in Isaiah, even our righteous deeds can go horribly wrong and become sin, in spite of our intention-"We have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth." We are part of the brokenness that only God can make whole again. This is the darkness we must look at unflinchingly in this season of Advent.
Of course, God has already broken into our world. We look back two thousand years to the moment when God—responding to the yearning of his people for a savior—came down to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. In Christ's life and death we saw both how God so loved the world, and how we might love God. Christ announced that the kingdom of God was at hand and gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit that we might serve and work for that kingdom.
And that is precisely what we, as Christians, do. We follow in the ways of Jesus Christ and work for the fulfillment of God's kingdom as best we can, but ultimately, our efforts are not enough.
There is something about this realization that is freeing. To let go of the illusion that the fate of the world rests on our shoulders. To no longer act is if we must do everything ourselves. To recognize our limitations, and turn our problems over to God, so that God can do what was always God's to do.
So with vision cleared of the illusion of our own self-importance, we look with hope to Christ's promise to come again to restore creation, to make it the world God intended, to establish a reign of justice and peace for all.
At Advent, we are in between, looking back at what has happened and looking forward to what is to come. We watch, we wait, we hope—and we remember.
Remembering is the key to this time of waiting, and it is the key to the word of hope in Isaiah's lament.
After petitioning God to tear apart the heavens and come down, Isaiah called to attention God's awesome deeds in the past, deeds unlike any of the gods called upon by other nations. He remembered how God came down once before, alluding to God's acting decisively on behalf of his people in freeing them from slavery in Egypt.
Next there is a section of confession, and an acknowledgment that the predicament they found themselves in was of the nation's own doing.
Then into the midst of this admission of guilt comes a note of hope:
Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand. (v. 8)
With the word yet, it is as if all the peoples' failures and transgressions fall away. It is almost as if the dust from all their despair has settled, and finally they are able to see the truth. Instead of a God who is distant in the heavens, Isaiah addresses God as Father, a God close enough to touch. And the people who were so unclean, so untouchable, are clay in the potter's hands. They are not a finished product, but clay that is still being formed and molded by its creator. They remember again who they are, and to whom they belong. In that memory, the seeds of hope take root, and despair is driven out. There is a future; they are in God's hands.
The passage from 1 Corinthians sounds a similar note of hope for us.
The apostle Paul assures his audience that by the grace of God given them in Christ Jesus, they have everything they need—knowledge, speech, and spiritual gifts. He assures them that Christ will sustain them until the day that he comes again, and that "God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord." (1 Cor 1:9)
My friends, on this First Sunday of Advent, we look at the truth:
We are not self-sufficient; we cannot save the world; we need God.
But the good news is this: God is faithful, God has given us grace in Christ Jesus, and Christ will sustain us until he comes. This is the promise, the hope of Advent, even in the midst of a world that is not as it should be.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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First Presbyterian
Church of Cedar Rapids
310 Fifth Street SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org
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