Isaiah 64:1-9
First Sunday of Advent
December 1, 2002
Come down, O Lord!
By Elizabeth Kennard
I can’t imagine the stark emptiness to which the Israelites returned in this morning’s passage from Isaiah. Just Thursday, I was buried in scrumptious food, my son was visiting, and the phone was ringing all day with friends and family offering good wishes. Saying grace at the dinner table was easy - we have so much to be thankful for. We are so very rich in so many ways - we have freedom and our health and a tremendous amount and selection of food and abundant shelter and clothing and lots of toys and miraculous medicine. The only hard part about our Thanksgiving grace was keeping it short - we could give thanks for hours.
And from within the envelope of our opulence, this morning we must imagine the Israelites returning home and being stunned as they looked around and saw the devastation of the Promised Land. Some promise.
* * *
I remember a newscast on television last month following the string of tornadoes that tore from Alabama and Mississippi, north through Tennessee and Kentucky and finally giving up the ghost in Indiana and Kentucky. The camera panned over the wreckage that extended from one horizon to the other. There were a few people who had returned to where their homes had been. They were standing around here and there, but EVERYTHING had been blown away and there were not even a few soggy mementoes to pick out of the ruins. The houses were gone. The cars were gone. The furniture was gone. The pets were gone. The family photos were gone. Their wallets and clothing and checkbooks were gone. Their pianos and baseballs and golf clubs and computers and address books - everything. Everything was gone. I remember saying to Bill, Where do you start putting your life back together? HOW do you start? You can’t even pick up the phone and call a friend because there aren’t any telephones, and God only knows where your friends are or even if they are still alive. You can’t drive to Mickey D’s for a cup of coffee or to the grocery store for some food because the car is gone, Mickey D’s is gone–coffee, Big Macs, and fries, and the grocery store is gone. You can’t change into some dry clothes because, suddenly, the clothes on your back are the only clothes you have. Surely this must be similar to how the Israelites felt. No wonder they pray, “Come down, O Lord!”
* * *
Early in November, Anna Quindlen wrote a column in Newsweek[1] entitled, “Young in a Year of Fear.” Listen to her perspective of what happened to our children this past year:
...what if normal was terrible all the time, one savage rip of history, one unimaginable string of indelible violent events after another? What if, in one generation, a nation moved from a notion of childhood largely grounded in peaceful prosperity to one in which children lived and learned in a constant atmosphere of evil and upheaval?
That is what happened to children in the United States in the last year.
First there was the day they came home from school to discover that planes had destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon, taking thousands of lives in the process. Next they heard on the news that some mysterious evildoer was sending letters filled with poison powder through the mail, killing his correspondents, shutting down TV-network mailrooms and politician’s offices. Summer came round and every other day seemed to bring a story of a missing, sometimes murdered, child. School started again with rumblings of war. Those were stilled by gunshots, the presence in the suburbs of some all-too-real bogeyman who used his gun to pick off ordinary people in ordinary places, at the gas pumps, in the mall parking lot....
“Your children are not safe anywhere at any time,” he said in a letter to the police....Those words might have been the true motto for our new age.
The prayer from Isaiah is particularly apt for us on this first Sunday in Advent.
“O that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at thy presence...” – wait a minute. That sounds familiar. Didn’t God rend the heavens once before - remember in Exodus when Moses took the people out of the camp to meet God at the foot of Mount Sinai (Ex. 19:16-18), there was thunder and lightening and God CAME DOWN and gave Moses the Ten Commandments!
As I studied this passage, I realized the Israelites are letting God know that they know their God is a god who comes down, because they remember that God has come down before they remember that God came down and gave Moses the Ten Commandments... They remember that God came down and took clay and made humans; they remember that God came down and provided manna for the Israelites when they were in the wilderness after that exile in Egypt; they remember that God came down and parted the waters so they could escape from the Pharaoh’s army; they remember that God came down and kept the young shepherd boy David safe from the wolves that hunted his sheep, and kept him safe from the Philistines, and opened the way for him to kill the 10 foot tall Goliath. They remember that God came down and saved Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednigo from the fiery furnace. They remember that God came down and saved Daniel from the lion’s den. They remember that God came down and gave Hagar water when her child was dying of thirst. They remember that the God to whom they pray is a God who comes down and acts in creation.
This morning, as we begin the advent season, we, too, worship as a people who remember that God comes down. We remember that God came down as a human, an infant, so that we could hear God’s word with our ears, so that we could see God’s work with out eyes, so that we could feel God’s touch with our hearts. We remember that God in Christ came down and continues to come down to heal our bodies, our hearts, our souls, our fear. We remember that God came and comes down to nourish us, forgive us, strengthen our faith, and fill us with hope and joy with bread and juice, with the body and the blood.
The prayer of the Israelites is our prayer. As we come to his table this morning, let us come remembering all the times God has come down to us, for us, with us, that the God of the Israelites–the God who comes down to ACT in striking astounding new and unexpected ways–this God is our God. No matter what the tempest in our world or our lives, we have faith that God will come down because we remember that God has come down so many times before.
Come to the table that has been prepared for us, and at the table, let us remember God’s love for each and every one of us. AMEN