Sermon:
December 1, 2002
Sunday Night Alive!  

Scripture:
Isaiah 64:1-9

There is a Marshall Fields commercial out this Christmas showing three fellas singing around a piano and doing a little dancing. It didn’t take long before I was singing the tune in my head—for four days. Then I started to wonder what was it that got me hooked? Ultimately, it was the image of joy: music, laughter, light-heartedness. The message was, “If you come to our store, you can feel like this, too.” 

With all the uncertainty today, with this past year economically, and with what the future holds militarily, I think they’re on to something. Whether we know it or not, they’re tapping into what we’re looking for deep within. Kudos to their ad agency.           

Can you remember a time when you looked forward to something so much that the only thought you had was, “When is it going to get here?” I remember as a boy looking in the back of a comic book and seeing an ad for “Under-Sea Monkeys”—creatures that looked like monkeys and could live in your fishbowl. I was all excited and thought about how cool it would be to be the only one who has this really far-out thing. I filled out the order form, saved up my money ($2.95), sent it in…and waited. And waited, and waited. I waited so long, I wondered if they were really coming. 

For years and years and years, the prophet Isaiah has written about a coming king, a servant who would lead the people and in whose kingdom people would cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan and plead for the widow. He framed a vision of the future where the people of God would remember whose they were and be renewed in the grace they receive. Really good stuff! And they’ve looked forward to its coming for a long time.                       

But it has been a long time. The people of God have borne the brunt of oppression. The hardships have been overwhelming. In the midst of his people’s pain and weariness, the prophet tries to boost the morale and maintain the vision that indeed the day of the Lord is coming. The Day of Judgment will come for the ruthless and the arrogant. And days of joy will be realized. We will gather around the piano. We will dance and sing. That day is coming soon for those who trust and live by faith. In the midst of this, he cries out to God:                         

Oh, that you would rip open the heavens and descend, 
     make the mountains shudder at your presence—
As when a forest catches fire,
      as when fires makes a pot to boil—
To shock your enemies into facing you,
      make the nations shake in their boots!
You did terrible things we never expected,
      descended and made the mountains shudder at your presence.
Since before time began
      no one has ever imagined,
No ear heard, no eye seen, a God like you
      who works for those who wait for him.
You meet those who happily do what is right,
      who keep a good memory of the way you work.
But how angry you’ve been with us!
      We’ve sinned and kept at it so long!
      Is there any hope for us? Can we be saved?
We’re all sin-infected, sin-contaminated.
      Our best efforts are grease-stained rags.
We dry up like autumn leaves—
      sin-dried, we’re blown off by the wind.
No one prays to you
      or makes the effort to reach out to you
Because you’ve turned away from us,
      left us to stew in our sins.

Still, God, you are our Father.
      We’re the clay and you’re our potter.
      All of us are what you made us.
Don’t be too angry with us, O God.
      Don’t keep a permanent account of wrongdoing.
Keep in mind, please, we are your people—all of us.
                           (Isaiah 64:1-9, “The Message”) 

Throughout the Bible, fire is intimately associated with the presence of the Holy God. In Genesis, God set a flaming sword to guard the eastern gate to the garden. In Exodus, God spoke to Moses out of the flaming bush. In Acts, tongues of fire appeared among the disciples who had walked with Jesus. And in Revelation, fire comes down from heaven to consume all that which was opposed to God’s reign.           

Nowhere is that more true than in the words of Isaiah. For from out of the darkness, we hear a voice praying. If only God would come among his people like he used to. If only he would apply his fire to our unclean lips and hardened hearts, like he did before. The brushwood of our lives would burst into flames and the tepid water of our souls would break into a rolling boil. And then God’s adversaries—those who mock him, ignore him, and give him only lip service—would come to know something of his name, his character. O Lord God, Holy Yahweh, make it so!

This week, the ground has been shaking. The tampers for the new Family Life Center have been pounding the earth. Throughout the day the ground has rumbled, but it has failed to frighten me. I know from where it comes. 

When you stop to think about it, there is really little that frightens us or gets our attention anymore. We can explain, control, manipulate and recreate so much. Not much surprises us. But Isaiah is saying, “God, rip open the heavens! Come among us!” Do whatever it takes to make us face you. Show us who you really are. Because we’re tired. We’ve waited so long. 

The prophet wanted God to reveal himself as he had done in days of old, to get our attention. But what will get our attention these days? What are we looking for? 

If you look in the Bible at all the times God reveals himself, then draw them together and ask what they are telling us, we see that God uses his self-revelation for essentially a single purpose: That we might know him, who God truly is. And in knowing him, might know both the peril he represents and the grace he extends. It’s that grace which is our hope. It’s when we entrust our lives to the one who first breathed the breath of life into us, who first lit the fire that burns inside our heart, that we come to understand real hope.  

Yet we are still human. Hard headed, sometimes. Forgetful, often. Prone to go our own way. So God, out of his grace and desire to be known by us, promises to rend the very heavens themselves to come to us. And maybe that’s what we really want. Not just a song and a dance, not just laughter, but the laughter, song and dancing that comes from begin found.  

For we want to be found. Not through our own efforts and plans, but by one whose love goes beyond our own understanding, one who breaks down walls and waits us out. One who we can’t control, or sway, or ever fully explain. One who has the strength to offer hope to a world that in so many ways rejects it.                  

You know, the little monkeys never did come. Soon they were replaced with something else, and something else, and something else. Until one day it was clear, what I was really looking for wasn’t in a comic book or catalog or, forgive me Marshall Fields, display windows at all. It was then that the real search began. 

What are you looking for? May God find us, each and every one, and fill us in this Advent season. Amen.