Second Advent
Isaiah 64:1-9, Mark 13:24-37
We have just completed Thanksgiving weekend and are headed into
the Christmas holidays. Undoubtedly many of you saw family this weekend or are
intending to see family in the coming weeks. Psychologists tell us that one
of the greatest stressors of the holiday season is the interaction with family.
Most of us live in a complicated web of relationships that can easily be navigated
from a distance but become considerably more problematic with proximity. On
the other hand, if there is no proximity then there is no relationship. We all
participate in a complicated dance of absence and presence, of past and present
and future in our relationships. Relationships engender feelings that are not
rational. We love, we resent, we are jealous we are gentle for reasons we find
hard to explain or to understand. Relationships are messy. One minute we can
tolerate and even laugh at the idiosyncrasies of another. The next minute we
find them the most annoying thing we’ve ever dealt with. Relationships
are like that.
The prophet Isaiah, speaking from the depth of his being and
on behalf of the people of Israel, is struggling with his relationship with
God. It seems odd, on this first Sunday of Advent, the prelude to our Lord’s
joyful incarnation, to be directing our attention to this passionate, heart-rending
cry of lament.
Isaiah cries to the Lord, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come
down.” He might just as well have been saying, “Where are you Lord?
Where are you when we need you.” A lament is a cry of anguish, uncertainty,
disappointment and fear. Lament can be heard in a hospital waiting room, in
the halls of a courthouse, on a battlefield, on a lonely night of waiting. More
often that not, it is wrenched out when all the logical, reasonable things that
can be done have been done, when our own power and fortitude have come to the
end and there is nothing left but to turn to the power of God.
This lament, from Isaiah, is the product of a painful past
and a questionable future. It traces itself to the end of the sixth century
B.C. The horrors of the Babylonian exile are ending. Yet the bitter memories
of this desecration are a thin scab over a deep wound. In 587 B.C. the Babylonians
sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and carried a sizable number of the
Judean elite into captivity in Babylon. This mournful event would live long
in the psyche of biblical Israel, and surely the writer carries this past in
his heart. Moreover the future was replete with enormous challenges. When the
Persian Empire under King Cyrus took over Babylon many of the exiles were permitted
to return to their homeland in Judah. Overjoyed to go home they were soon sent
back to the depths of despair when on returning they were faced with economic
hardships and the pressing need to create a new Israel. Those who had never
left complicated the relationships of the returning exiles.
This passage is a passionate out pouring from the heart of
the prophet’s struggle with God. This kind of outpouring, a Lament, may
be hard for us with our modern psyches to wrap our minds around. For some of
us God is a concept, a proposition, a theory certainly not party to the kind
of messy give and take that our earthly relationships are mired in. To consider
God anthropomorphically enough to be part of the give and take of relationship
may seem childish, illogical or irrational.
Or maybe this idea of lament may be difficult for us because
some of us were raised believing in an all-good God who wanted to hear only
all-good things from us. We were raised to believe that we do not have the right
to complain or lament to our God, as if our words could offend God or destroy
our relationship with God. God is like an arrogant boss who can’t stand
to be questioned. And that makes us just toadying slaves, with no mind or heart
of our own. So perhaps we have been taught that God only wants to hear happy
thoughts. We engage in a giant subterfuge to cover up what we really think because
perhaps we believe that God would be angry at being questioned.
Much can be said, however, for lament as a form of prayer,
a form of prayer, which can move an individual or a church community closer
toward God, rather than away from God. To lament is not simply to complain.
Lamenting is based on very firm theological and psychological convictions and
understandings. When we use lament as a form of prayer, we build upon our already-existing
relationship with God. In other words, lamenting does not form the beginning
of one's relationship with God, but is a natural extension of that foundational
relationship. Theologically, it is based on a belief that God will hear and
must hear because it is the business of God to hear; psychologically, it is
based on a belief that suffering people will not get help if they keep quiet.
In the passage from Isaiah, a continuing relationship with God is assumed. Isaiah
recalls that God has done awesome deeds that we did not expect. Isaiah acknowledges
that no one has heard, no ear has perceived no eye has seen any God besides
you. Only when this deep and abiding relationship is acknowledged is God challenged.
How can anyone sense the absence of God unless they first have
the expectation that God will be present? Probably the most agonizing lament
in all of scripture is Jesus' cry from the cross—"My God, why hast
thou forsaken me?"—This lament is wrenching and dismaying precisely
because God was supposed to be present for and to the one sent as Messiah.
Lament stresses the importance of the relationship of God with God's people,
a relationship that is continuing, long-lasting, loving, and parental; it also
stresses the importance of open, honest communication on both parts in that
relationship. For us, this communication involves speaking what is on our minds
and in our hearts, speaking what we think and feel, both positive and negative.
To be able to do this involves a profound trust and faith, courage and love.
When I was a little girl of about five or six I was dancing around in our family
room and I stepped on a sewing needle that was stuck in the carpet. That needle
went right up into my foot, well below the skin line. So I was taken to the
emergency room and the doctor was called. As I lay on my stomach on the cot
the doctor gently probed beneath the skin trying to get a hold of that needle
to pull it out. Every once in a while he would ask, “Does that hurt?’
Of course I was a very brave little girl who was tremendously embarrassed by
all the fuss and bother. I would never admit that it hurt. “No it didn’t
hurt.” After about an hour of probing he said, "You know we may have
to quit for now and cut open the foot tomorrow because I can’t seem to
get it. Just when I think I’ve got that needle and I start to extricate
it, well it should hurt then but she keeps saying it doesn’t hurt so I
guess I haven’t really gotten a hold of that needle.” I was so brave,
so stoic that the doctor couldn’t help me because I wasn’t willing
to admit my pain.
Could it be that we are like that with God sometimes? Perhaps
we too try to be so grown up and brave that God can’t find a way to help
us. Perhaps our sinful selves get in the way of accepting God’s help and
relying on God’s care.
Isaiah says, “yet, O Lord you are our Father; we are the clay, and you
are our potter.”
There’s a moving gospel song, The Potter's House by Tramaine
Hawkins' The songwriter, V. Micheal McKay, draws from the imagery of Isaiah
64. The lilting Gospel song declares:
In case your situation has turned upside down, And all that you've
Accomplished is now on the ground, You don't have to stay in the shape
that you're in; The Potter wants to put you back together again. You who are
broken STOP BY, The Potter's House. You who need mending STOP BY, The Potter's
House. Give Him the fragments of your broken life. The Potter wants to put you
back together again.
The potter wants to put you back together again. Give him the
fragments of your broken life.
This relationship with God is a tough thing. Just when we think we’ve got
it under control, we’re surprised again. Like all relationships it is ever
evolving. Sometimes it is close and sometimes distant. Advent is the season
in our church year when we acknowledge the challenge of this relationship.
Amen.