A SOLID REASON FOR HOPE

(Preached on Sunday, December 7, 2008)

True, the grass withers and the wildflowers fade, but our God=s Word stands firm and forever.                                                                          -Isaiah 40:8

 

It is hard to believe that anyone could listen to this passage and not be moved.  This poem ranks with the finest literature ever composed.  Handel thought this passage so beautiful and so important to Advent that he opens his great Oratorio, Messiah, with a tenor singing the opening words, AComfort, comfort my people.@

 

And yet...

And yet, beautiful as these words are, do they speak to us?

As Wall Street continues its roller coaster ride.  As students have to place on hold plans for college as student loan money dries up.  As employers slash 500,000 jobs from their payrolls in one month.  As the world continues to feel unsafe and increasingly violent: with children continuing to be shot by classmates in our schools, six-year-old first graders being mugged for their lunch money by seven-year-old second graders wielding table knives, and tourists and missionary aid workers increasingly targeted by terrorists and pirates.  In a world that grows more and more calloused and cold where shoppers stampede a Walmart, trampling several people and killing a part-time security guard in their rush to secure Black Friday bargain merchandise, and expressing dismay and outrage when the police try to shut down the store before they finished their shopping.  In such a world can we hear these words and find comfort, peace and hope this Advent?

 

Perhaps...

These words were spoken by the prophet to the people of Israel who were living in exile in a distant land.  They are people who had been conquered, humiliated, subjected to war crimes.  They were people driven away from their homeland to live in exile in a far away, distant land.  At the time of these words it has been 40-50 years since the rape and pillage of Jerusalem, the total destruction of their homes, their city, their nation, their lives.  An entire generation had been born and raised in exile, and yet, undoubtedly there are those among them who still remember; those who lived through the devastation of Jerusalem; who saw their city sacked, burned, destroyed, including the temple; those who felt that God had turned away from them.

 

As distressing and filled with anxiety as our lives are today, many of us do not know that sort of despair.  Some among us do, who have had to flee homes and immigrate to this country to escape oppression or persecution.  There are still among us survivors of attempts to exterminate: Jews from Europe, survivors from Rwanda or Sudan, refugees from Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua.  There are those among us whose heritage is that of being torn from your homeland and forcibly transported to a distant land as a slave and the resultant sense of rootlessness, being cut-off from one=s family past. 

 

Put yourself in their shoes and you will get closer to the situation of the prophet Isaiah.  It makes his words all the more amazing.  In exile, when most Jews felt nothing but despair, and passed hopelessness around like a bitter cup, Isaiah offered them a golden chalice of hope.  When others stopped playing music, and hung their unused harps on branches of the willow trees by the canals of Babylon and while they moaned AHow can we sing the Lord=s song in an alien land,@ this remarkable Isaiah was given a glorious song of faith and hope.

 

But this vision did not come easily to Isaiah.  He is given this glorious vision of the court of heaven where he hears God commanding the angels to speak words of comfort to God=s people, Israel.  They are to encourage God=s people by proclaiming that their time of exile is about to end.  The prophet then hears the angels calling out for the preparations to be made, Aevery valley raised up, every mountain brought low... In the wilderness prepare the way for God!@  In other words, God is on the move.  God is not just going to sit in heaven on a throne and pass out beautiful words of comfort, while observing earth=s difficulties.  No, God is coming to the people in person C into their exile, in their misery, their hopelessness and despair, to bring comfort directly into their hearts and lives.

 

Even with this beautiful vision, the prophet struggles with his own despair.  He, himself, is commanded to Ashout@ but he responds, AWhat shall I shout? These people are nothing but grass, their love fragile as wildflowers.  Grass withers and wildflowers fade.@  The weight of centuries of faithless living by the people of Israel; the weight of two generations of exile, all weigh heavily on the prophet.  There can be no comfort; there can be no celebration given the desperate and seemingly hopeless state of the human condition.  As much as we strive for permanence, we are extremely transient creatures.  As much as we strive to change, to grow, to transform our behavior, our lives, we continue to be extremely undependable.  Treaties and alliances are made only to be broken; promises made only to be forgotten; vows spoken and then cast aside; contracts signed only to be contested in court.  Nothing with us is certain, nothing is sure, all people are grass.

 

But this is where the vision grabs the prophet and leads him to compose these beautiful words: in the midst of all the transient nature of life in this world, one thing is permanent.  One thing never fades or passes away.  GOD=S WORD STANDS FIRM AND FOREVER!  God keeps promises.  God never takes back what God has vowed.  God speaks and reality is made.  That is the basis for hope.  Our hope is grounded in the faithfulness of God.  While some look for temporary respite and comfort in the pleasures of the world, Isaiah offers the ultimate comfort that comes when we place our full trust in God.

 

For the people in Isaiah=s day they had their history to recall.  Just as God led their ancestor Abraham to a new land; just as God led their ancestor Jacob and his sons into Egypt at a time of famine, preparing the way for them by sending Joseph ahead to preserve the family; just as God led Moses to free the people from slavery in Egypt and then, through 40 years in the wilderness, until they reached the promised land; just as God led Joshua and the Israelites into the land  to establish a home there C over and over again they saw God=s faithfulness to be their God, to make a way when there appeared to be no way, to care for them as a shepherd cares for the sheep.

 

It is really not so different today.  In a culture captured by deep fears and anxiety, God breaks the silence and speaks of faith and grace.  In a culture captured by power and possession, God breaks the silence and speaks of generosity, of public good.  In a culture captured by war and exclusion, God breaks the silence and speaks of reconciliation and peace.  Indeed, its not so different at all.  New possibilities still abound with God=s transforming actions among us.  God still penetrates exile with amazing, comforting Good News!

 

When Helmut Thielicke, a German pastor and scholar was asked during World War II why he celebrated Christmas, he replied, AGod is not merely the mute and voiceless ground of the universe; he comes to us down in the depths, down into the world of pain, into the world of homeless and refugees, a  world where there are lepers, lost sons, poor ladies, in which people die and are filled.@