Today is the first Sunday of Advent, December 1, 2013. Here is a reading and short sermon from my files, from our eleven-year sojourn at First Presbyterian Church, Muscatine, Iowa.
Reading for the First Sunday of Advent: Isaiah 63:7 - 64:9
7 I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord,
10 But they rebelled
and grieved his holy spirit;
therefore he became their enemy;
he himself fought against them.
11 Then they* remembered the days of old,
of Moses his servant.*
Where is the one who brought them up out of the sea
with the shepherds of his flock?
Where is the one who put within them
his holy spirit,
12 who caused his glorious arm
to march at the right hand of Moses,
who divided the waters before them
to make for himself an everlasting name,
13 who led them through the depths?
Like a horse in the desert,
they did not stumble.
14 Like cattle that go down into the valley,
the spirit of the Lord gave them rest.
Thus you led your people,
to make for yourself a glorious name.
15 Look down from heaven and see,
from your holy and glorious habitation.
Where are your zeal and your might?
The yearning of your heart and your compassion?
They are withheld from me.
16 For you are our father,
though Abraham does not know us
and Israel does not acknowledge us;
you, O Lord, are our father;
our Redeemer from of old is your name.
17 Why, O Lord, do you make us stray from your ways
and harden our heart, so that we do not fear you?
Turn back for the sake of your servants,
for the sake of the tribes that are your heritage.
18 Your holy people took possession for a little while;
but now our adversaries have trampled down your sanctuary.
19 We have long been like those whom you do not rule,
like those not called by your name.
ADVENT MEDITATION December 1, 2002 Muscatine, Iowa M. Spangler
Reading for the First Sunday of Advent: Isaiah 63:7 - 64:9
7 I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord,
the praiseworthy acts of the Lord,
because of all that the Lord has done for us,
and the great favour to the house of Israel
that he has shown them according to his mercy,
according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
8 For he said, ‘Surely they are my people,
children who will not deal falsely’;
and he became their saviour
9 in all their distress.
It was no messenger* or angel
but his presence that saved them;*
in his love and in his pity he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
because of all that the Lord has done for us,
and the great favour to the house of Israel
that he has shown them according to his mercy,
according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
8 For he said, ‘Surely they are my people,
children who will not deal falsely’;
and he became their saviour
9 in all their distress.
It was no messenger* or angel
but his presence that saved them;*
in his love and in his pity he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
10 But they rebelled
and grieved his holy spirit;
therefore he became their enemy;
he himself fought against them.
11 Then they* remembered the days of old,
of Moses his servant.*
Where is the one who brought them up out of the sea
with the shepherds of his flock?
Where is the one who put within them
his holy spirit,
12 who caused his glorious arm
to march at the right hand of Moses,
who divided the waters before them
to make for himself an everlasting name,
13 who led them through the depths?
Like a horse in the desert,
they did not stumble.
14 Like cattle that go down into the valley,
the spirit of the Lord gave them rest.
Thus you led your people,
to make for yourself a glorious name.
15 Look down from heaven and see,
from your holy and glorious habitation.
Where are your zeal and your might?
The yearning of your heart and your compassion?
They are withheld from me.
16 For you are our father,
though Abraham does not know us
and Israel does not acknowledge us;
you, O Lord, are our father;
our Redeemer from of old is your name.
17 Why, O Lord, do you make us stray from your ways
and harden our heart, so that we do not fear you?
Turn back for the sake of your servants,
for the sake of the tribes that are your heritage.
18 Your holy people took possession for a little while;
but now our adversaries have trampled down your sanctuary.
19 We have long been like those whom you do not rule,
like those not called by your name.
64O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence—
2* as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil—
to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,
you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
4 From ages past no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who works for those who wait for him.
5 You meet those who gladly do right,
those who remember you in your ways.
But you were angry, and we sinned;
because you hid yourself we transgressed.*
6 We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
7 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 have delivered* us into the hand of our iniquity.
8 Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
9 Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord,
and do not remember iniquity for ever.
Now consider, we are all your people. so that the mountains would quake at your presence—
2
and the fire causes water to boil—
to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,
you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
4 From ages past no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who works for those who wait for him.
5 You meet those who gladly do right,
those who remember you in your ways.
But you were angry, and we sinned;
because you hid yourself we transgressed.*
6 We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
7 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 have delivered* us into the hand of our iniquity.
8 Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
9 Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord,
and do not remember iniquity for ever.
ADVENT MEDITATION December 1, 2002 Muscatine, Iowa M. Spangler
It is a very long prayer, this reading from
the prophet Isaiah, and within this long prayer to God there is a little bit of
everything!
There is a look back at the Exodus – at the way God delivered
God’s people by giving them a leader, Moses, and by God’s own glorious acts of
power – parting the Red Sea, guiding and feeding them in the desert wastelands.
In the prayer there is a confession of sin – almost saying
that yes, Lord, we want you to help us, but, Lord, to be honest, we don’t
deserve it.
Along with the confession of sin there are a couple verses
that seem to say that “yes, we have sinned, but we only sinned because you made
us do it!” – in other words if you are an all-powerful God we could not sin
unless you permitted it! The prayer talks about God hardening their hearts,
just as God hardened pharaoh’s heart – for Hebrew theology could not imagine
that anyone could disobey or resist God unless God allowed it or made it
happen. (So if you snitch some fresh chocolate cookies and are caught in the
act you can say quite honestly that God made you do it! Nothing you do is of
your own will or is your own responsibility!)
I would say that our Presbyterian theology doesn’t go in exactly that
direction – we would say that God DOES
give you the power and responsibility to make a good choice in regard to
cookies and all desserts, and in regard to all your life decisions.
So there is a lot going on in this prayer of Israel!
Overall,
the prayer is very much like the prayers we find in the book of Psalms. There
is a basic trust in God – that the covenant is intact, that God’s promise to
God’s people is still valid, that God will overcome every obstacle in order to
save God’s people.
It is a perfect reading, a perfect
prayer for the beginning of the season of advent – for its theme is “Come, Lord
– come and save your people.”
Advent is Latin for “come” or “coming”
or “come here!”
The question we ask is the one very
much like the question asked in Isaiah’s prayer: “Will God come to us again?
Will God come with the kind of power God came with before?” At the beginning of
chapter 64 the prayer gets a lot louder! “O that you would tear open the
heavens and come down, so that the mountains. . . and the nations. . . would
quake at your presence!” The feeling in the prayer is that it’s as if God is up
there in heaven, in God’s own little world, far away from our troubles. It’s as
if the transparent fabric of heaven is thick and tough, that God will have to
work hard at tearing through the fabric if God really wants to come down and
help – and maybe God will feel that it’s too much work, too much trouble! That,
after all, we’re not worth it.
And, yes, Isaiah admits it: we’re not
at all worth it! We have sinned, we have forgotten God, we have treated God and
neighbor with contempt.
So why will God bother? Picturing God
in an armchair by the fireplace reading a good book – why will God let himself
be disturbed by us? Why will God answer the phone?
The pray-er of the prayer can only say
this: “O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, you are the potter; we are
all the work of your hand. . . we are all your people.”
What more can we say? Finally we have
no where else to turn and nothing else we can do – but trust that God loves us
as a Father loves his children.
In the parable of the persistent widow
and the unfair judge Jesus gave us a picture of a man who couldn’t care less –
and yet! – he found himself yielding to the persistence of the woman who just
wouldn’t take no for an answer – and if this cruel man will finally give in,
Jesus is saying, will not God, who loves us!, surely hear our prayers and grant
our requests!
This prayer of Israel, this prayer of
Isaiah on Israel’s behalf, as I said before, takes us back to the exodus – and
there is a beautiful picture of God’s faithfulness – how God led them in the
wilderness. Isaiah says: “Like a horse in the desert, the Hebrew children did
not stumble. Like cattle that go down into the valley. . .” It reminds me of
tending cattle – Guernsey dairy cattle – on my grandfather’s farm. As a boy I
would run up the road a ways and open a gate on each side of the road so the
cattle could cross from the upper pasture to the lower pasture and the track
toward the barn. Once the cattle were all across and the gate shut again I
would run back down the road and through the farm yard to the barn – and wait.
And in a few minutes there they would be – one of them with a bell around her
neck – there they would be in the barnyard waiting to come in and be fed and
milked. – They didn’t need a little boy chasing them or a dog nipping at their
heels for them to find the way. They knew the way home.
And Isaiah says that is was once like
that – “like cattle that go down into the valley” at sunset – so the people knew
God’s guidance and they didn’t get lost.
But now, O Lord, how lost we are.
We’ve lost the track. Come and show us the way.
To Thomas’ puzzled question Jesus answered: Thomas, “I am the
way and the truth and the life.”
It is a way, a path, that began in a stable and ended at an
empty tomb. It was God’s answer to Isaiah’s question: “Will you forget us, will
you keep silent?”
God came. God spoke a word, a living word, giving us a
messiah, a savior. And God reminds us of the way, the cattle track, even today
– with a table spread for us – and a word for us: “come – come to this table –
here is life, here is home.”
We started out crying for God to come to us.
God came. And calls us, now, to come.
Prayer: Father, you are the potter and we are the clay.
We are your people. We are glad we are your people, and that to us you have
come and you have spoken and you have saved. In the name of that living word we
pray. Amen.
