God is Coming!
Isaiah 64:1-12[1]
After nine months of living with a
pandemic, our day-to-day lives may seem pretty “humdrum.” Most of what we did
before we either can’t or shouldn’t do. Many of us experienced a very different
Thanksgiving this week than the ones we’ve had before. In midst of the
“routine” of staying safe, of avoiding the “three C’s,” and of social
distancing, the days seem to run together. It makes it hard to find any hope
when much of what gives life meaning is “off limits” to us. Where do we turn
when all the doors seem closed?
With the start of Advent, our
thoughts turn to Christmas. Many of us have already started decorating our
homes to help us out of the pandemic “funk.” While that may help, I wonder
whether we may have some much more serious work to do. That’s what hard times are
for. They present us with an opportunity to re-examine our lives and make any “course
corrections.” I think one place we all may need some work is in our faith. When
life is good, it’s easy to believe that we are doing everything God wants us
to. We go through the motions of our lives assuming that God is pleased with
us. While I would not call God’s unfailing love into question, I think times of
distress present us with the opportunity to take a hard look at ourselves and
our faith.
The people whom the prophet Isaiah
addressed were in that kind of a situation. After losing everything at the
hands of the Babylonians, they had kept up at least a trace of faith during
their exile in the promise that God would again “let his face shine” (Ps. 80:3)
upon them and restore them to their homes and their lives and their land. But
when they got back to Judea after their long years of exile, the reality of
their “new life” fell far short of what they had hoped. The temple lay in
ruins. Even the city of Jerusalem had no walls to protect them. Instead of
returning to a “land flowing with milk and honey,” they returned to a land that
had been devastated by war and left a wasteland. Their lives were harder than
ever, and it seemed that the God of their deliverance was nowhere to be found.
In that situation, the prophet
speaks aloud the questions that must have been on the minds of the people.
After all they had suffered, he asked “where are your zeal and your might?”
(Isa. 63:15) and “will you keep silent?” (64:12). Their circumstances and God’s
seeming silence and absence contradicted what they had been told for
generations, that God “will never forsake you” (Deut. 31:6, 8; Ps. 37:28; 94:14).
They simply could not comprehend being abandoned by the God who revealed
himself time and again as “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding
in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6). And yet there they were
crying out to God, asking why God had forsaken them.
The prophet could have given them
a lot of different answers. Like other prophets in that day, he could have
assured them that God would shortly make all their hopes come true. But that is
not what this prophet does. This prophet moves from lamenting God’s silence and
absence to the confession of sin. In the name of the people, he confesses “We
have all become like one who is unclean” (Isa. 64:6). The prophet omits no one
from his heart-wrenching confession: “we all” echoes throughout the passage
like a bell tolling: we all, we all, we all. The hard truth is that the people
had forsaken their God, time after time for centuries. No one could protest, “I
never did anything wrong.”
And yet, though the confession of
sin might seem only to make matters worse, it is precisely the way to recover
hope. After pouring out his heart in confession, the prophet returns to the
faith that they who had stumbled badly remained God’s people. He recalls that
“you are our Father,” and he calls on God to act accordingly (64:8). Just as
“we all” had turned away from God, the prophet reminds the people that “we all”
were still God’s people (64:9). The prophet points out to God that their lives
and their lands remained in ruins, and asks, “After all this, will you restrain
yourself, O Lord? Will you keep silent, and punish us so severely?”
(64:12).
When it feels like God is absent
and all hope is lost, one path to restoring our hope takes us through
confession and repentance. At this time, I’m not sure we want to hear about
confession and repentance. We’d rather just forget about our troubles and go
about shopping and cooking and celebrating. The last thing on our minds is
confession and repentance. And yet that is precisely what the season of Advent
is: a time to “prepare the way for the Lord” by examining our own hearts and
lives. If we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that, like the people
of Judah, “we all” have fallen short.
Times like these test our faith.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. A test like this can help us to identify
where we need to grow stronger. When times are “good,” we all have a tendency
to “make God in our own image.” Hard times provide the chance for us to deepen
and strengthen our faith in God as God truly is, not as we would have him to
be.[2] When we use the time of “waiting” at Advent to examine our faith, we can
discover that God is always the coming one: the one who is always approaching
us, loving us, and drawing us into the joy of that love. Wherever we go,
whatever our situation may be, God is always “coming” to us!
[1] © 2020
Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 11/29/2020 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Cf. Christopher
Seitz, “The Book of Isaiah 40-66,” New Interpreters Bible VI: 531.
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