by Rev. Dr John Evans
Sermon delivered 30 Nov. 2008
“There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.” (Isaiah 64:7)
The starting tone for the first Sunday of Advent is despair, apprehension, anxiety – but then it turns to hope. Indeed I trust we feel that hope comes through as our dominant feeling on this first Sunday leading up to Christmas; however, we first must be realistic about where our readings are coming from; and where we are coming from at this time. Only then, as Obama says – we can believe in the audacity of hope.
Both the gospel passage and the Isaiah passage are set in very difficult times.
The words from Isaiah 64 were written, we believe, around 520 BCE. They form part of what scholars called the third part of Isaiah. Very broadly speaking, the first part of Isaiah relates to that time prior the fall of Jerusalem and being taken into exile in Babylon; the second during that phase of actually being in exile; and now there is this third phase, about that time after exile.
Cyrus the Great, Emperor of Persia
As it turns out, this post-exilic period was a particularly low and flat time in Jewish history. In 586-7 BCE the Babylonians had come, destroyed Jerusalem, destroyed the temple and had taken the Children of Israel into exile. However, the Persians (modern day Iran) came and conquered the Babylonians (contemporary Baghdad) in 539 BCE and Cyrus – the Persian ruler – freed, or at least allowed the Jewish exiles if they wanted, to return to Jerusalem. This was a time of renewed hope; God was faithful; this is what they had sought; they could return to their homeland. God had answered their prayers; they were free again – they could rebuild their life. And many did. Within a couple of years they began to rebuild the temple – but then everything began to fall apart. Things were not quite the same back in Jerusalem. The locals resented the newcomers; leadership was a problem, the project of building the temple – well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. They lacked the resources and the enthusiasm. Life was hard work – even other religious practices seemed attractive.
After so much promise, the Jewish people back in Jerusalem were in a malaise. The temple lay in ruins – as verse 11 says:
Our holy and beautiful house, where our ancestors praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins.
The passage we have today is thus a part of a lament; a litany of failings and despair, and a call for God to come and act.
Verse 1 - O that you would tear open the heavens and come down . . .
Verse 3 - we remembered you in the past – you acted then
Verse 4 - But now, for ages – nothing has happened.
And then our text:
“There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.”
Is this not the mood of the world at this time? This amazing, stupid, greed-induced recession – will deepen the despair of billions of our brothers and sisters on this already stressed, green planet of ours. One does not have to dwell on it – we know – “O that you O God, would tear open the heavens and come down,” is not an unreasonable prayer.
However, if I am allowed to provide a sombre analogy to the situation of the Children of Israel, and that is the story of our own denomination – the Uniting Church in Australia. There was great hope and promise for our church, now over 30 years ago. Church union was exciting, hope-filled and we would be a vibrant community of Christ’s people serving this land of Australia. And we have achieved much of that – but like the Jews returning to Jerusalem after the exile, it has been hard yards. The initial glow and hope was soon dispelled – I don’t think the temple lies in ruins uncompleted – but there is certainly frustration and at times incomprehension it has come to this . . . congregations dying, churches closing, the nation seemingly reluctant to embrace the message of hope within the gospel. Is 2008 the vision of 1968? I somehow don’t think so.
For you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.
But there was hope still present for the Jews within this lament of Isaiah.
Yet . . . having recounted the reality that God seems to be absent
Yet, O lord you are our Father;
We are the clay, you are our potter
We are all the work of your hand.
Despite all, the hope was that God still was faithful to the covenant. God still could be trusted – trusted even to the extent that they were like clay in the potter’s hands. Amidst the gloom there was a glimmer of hope. Come soon. Come down O God.
Mark 13 is similarly set in a difficult time.
This chapter, which is the last word on the lips of Jesus prior to his passion and death in the Gospel of Mark, in turn begins our journey towards understanding the whole story of Jesus – his coming, his ministry, death and resurrection. It is apocalyptic writing, that is, writing that is fundamentally giving encouragement to the faithful who are suffering the evils of the present age. How this genre of writing is structured, and there is a long history of this sort of writing in Jewish tradition, is by imparting privileged information concerning the divine plan in which God, or God’s agents will soon intervene . . . and relieve the difficult times. So, for example, the moment of judgement will soon arrive, and this will lead to the condemnation of the wicked, and of course the vindication of the faithful, who will then share in the final triumph of God’s rule – or as we have come to understand it in the gospels – the Kingdom of God. Furthermore, as a style of writing, it was often set up as a guide by a leader or a teacher for those who will continue while that leader or teacher departs or dies. The disciples are thus to take the apocalyptic writing as a comfort when they are facing difficult times.
The relevance of this style of writing to the message and hope of Jesus is obvious. It is not styled as a revelation from God, it comes directly from the lips of Jesus himself. And there is no doubt that in the years when we think this gospel was written, the followers of Jesus would have been facing difficult times. Very difficult times. We are talking around the year 70 – and at that time, indeed in that very year – the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. Thus the promise that the Son of Man will come in clouds with great power and glory in which he will gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven, was a significant hope for the early church. Their struggles and tribulations would soon be over – the kingdom of God would be soon fulfilled. Christ, the Messiah would reign – they would be vindicated. Here was their hope.
However, Jesus’ teaching has qualifications, serious qualificaitons. Like we have seen in recent Sundays in our gospel readings from Matthew about wise and foolish virgins, or the parable of the talents, or the separation of the sheep from the goats – there can be problems for the infant church, for the disciples of Jesus, if too much store is put in the quick consummation of all things and the establishment of the reign of Christ, and the vindication of Christ’s followers. Those parables were about being focused on the here and now – being faithful disciples of Jesus in this present time – and again this message comes through here.
The belief in the consummation of all things – the coming of the Son of Man – though presented as being real enough, as being one’s hope in difficult times – was being skewed and ultimately being counter productive. Instead of living lives of discipleship, of loving God and serving one’s neighbour, people were downing tools and calculating the time and the hour of the return of the Son of Man. Natural enough. I can assure you that the promise of thousand dollars over the next two weeks to a certain range of social security recipients is exercising the mind of many of our clients here, rather than getting on with daily life and what can be done now for one’s future. A certain degree of inaction is induced. Indeed it has been one of the scandals of the current US administration that action on critical issues like the state of the environment and peace between Palestine and Israel have been put on the back-burner because certain conservative Christians believe that the end of the age is nigh – so why bother in doing anything?
Read the signs of the times – yes, we all need to do that – and also see hope for a future beyond our current despair, but be beware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come. Jesus says, “What I say to you is keep awake!” To believe we know the mind of God and the time is to presume we are in control in all things. It is idolatrous to think we know the time – neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father knows.
Keep awake.
[Looking at the art exhibition on the walls of the church]
There is a painting over here of a man kneeling in front of an ATM. I think he is a Wall St Banker! Do we expect our human abilities, even more money, to solve our problems and bring about our ultimate hope amidst our despair at this time?
Or is it the unlikely in breaking of God into this world in the form of the Christ child? Who grew to offer his life, his heart for us all, and die on the cross?
Come, O God, come.
