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ADVENT HOPE
A PRAYER TO GOD
SAVE US FROM OUR DESTRUCTIVENESS
~Isaiah 64:1-9~
In-person service at
Second Baptist Church
2412 Griffith Ave.
Los Angeles
William S. Epps, Senior Pastor
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1Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence, 2As when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil, to make thy name known to thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at thy presence! 3When thou didst terrible things which we looked not for, thou camest down, the mountains flowed down at thy presence. 4For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him. 5Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, those that remember thee in thy ways: behold, thou art wroth; for we have sinned: in those is continuance, and we shall be saved. 6But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. 7And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities. 8But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand. 9Be not wroth very sore, O Lord, neither remember iniquity for ever: behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people." Isaiah 64:1-9 (KJV)
Introduction
This is the first Sunday of Advent. We light this first candle as a sign of our hope. Hope that you can meet us, even in the mess of our world. Hope that you still see us. though we feel lost in the quagmire of gridlock in a world that seems topsy-turvy. Let this light be the guide that brings us to Emmanuel once more. O Come, O Come Emmanuel and save us from the destruction we save ourselves.
Advent begins on a note of desperation. Humanity has reached its limits and all of our schemes for self-improvement and hope to extricate ourselves from the traps we have set for ourselves have come to nothing. We now realize we cannot save ourselves and apart from the intervention of God, we are irretrievably lost and doomed to continue on destroying ourselves. Advent reminds us that in spite of the very best intentions of the people of God, the world has yet to be redeemed. The hope at Advent is a prayer that God would intervene and come and do for us what we can’t seem to do for ourselves.
Advent is the season that captures the spirit of hope in the midst of hopelessness, a spirit of yearning for that which would be too good to be true; some new and unique expression of God’s intention to save a world gone wrong. Advent is about God’s fresh beginning. Advent is the longing of a faithful people for God to break into their alienation and isolation and shatter the gridlock that has them stuck in their sinfulness.
Consider what it means to hope for the intervention of the Lord
prayerfully to save us from our destructiveness.
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After the people of Israel returned from the Babylonian exile they had great expectations about their future. Since their return from exile eighteen years later their dreams have become a distant and disappointing memory. However, those dreams and expectations seemed to remain distant and unachievable. (Imagine life swinging back and forth from bad to worse, from worse to better, from stagnation to retrogression, from retrogression to progression).
They have been through the valley of exile, and their homecoming has not elevated them. The mountain before them seems insurmountable. There are times when the mountain we must climb, the road we must travel, the path we must take seems impossible.
The people want the glory of the past and expect to obtain it using the tools and the tactics of the past. Their plea holds hope and disappointment and despair at the same time. Will God be the God they have heard about? Isaiah reminds the people of what God has done as an indication of what God can do. Lamenting encourages transparency and frankness. Lamenting holds nothing back from God and does not yield to polite discourse. Lamenting turns to remembering. Lamenting moves from complaint to praise to promise to declaration of hope. Lamenting does this because lamenting engages in dialogue with the Holy One rather than abandoning God, even when it seems that the Holy One has retreated from them.
Consider what it means to want the Lord to do what you remember
the Lord had done before that made a difference in your life.
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Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | |
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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity (doubt and disbelief), …” (Para. 1, Line, 1) is the way the novel “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens opens. This phrase has been taken from the famous opening paragraph of Charles Dickens’ novel. This passage suggests an age of radical opposites taking place across the English Channel, in France and the United Kingdom respectively.
It tells a story of contrasts and comparisons between London and Paris during the French revolution. Dickens goes on to describe the contrasts and comparisons as, "the age of wisdom, and the age of foolishness, it was an epoch of belief and the epoch of doubt, it was a season of light and a season of darkness, it was the spring of hope and the winter of despair, we had everything before us and we had nothing before us."
I guess we can say the same about America today. The contrast and comparisons are quite stark with opposites colliding with contentious conversation that demeans while presenting the differences of the opposites struggling to maintain their point of view. We are divided as a nation over the direction of our country. There are those who believe that we are heading in the wrong direction as we fulfill the principles of the preamble of the constitution. “We the people of the United States in Order to form a more perfect union, establish, justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish the Constitution for the United States of America. There are those who interpret the constitution as a threat to the way of life of those who oppose their view of what it means to have “one nation under God with liberty and justice for all.”
This phrase points out a major conflict between family and love, hatred and oppression, good and evil, light and darkness, and wisdom and folly. Dickens tells about a class war between the rich and the poor. He also tells of a time of despair and suffering on one hand, and joy and hope on the other.
It is the best of times in that we have the opportunity with the challenging circumstances and conditions we confront, to determine who we will be as a people, collectively and individually. (We are aware that the sum is the total of all its parts).
It is the worst of times as it reveals the worst in people, individually and collectively. Look at the extent to which some are led to have it their way, threatening my way or no way. Imagine creating chaos to destroy community, falsehood with non-factual support to deny truth, and doubling down on doing what is unconscionable rather than having a conscious that seeks civility, morality and mutual respect for one another.
Maybe it is always the best of times and the worst of times. The poet James Russell Lowell wrote an anthem against slavery and, by extension, other racially-induced crimes reminding us in his immortal words, “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, in the strife with Truth and Falsehood for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever twixt that darkness and that light.”
This is an apt phrase to be used in the context of today’s world when, on the one hand, the rich are enjoying luxurious lives; while on the other hand, the poor are struggling under the yoke of economic decline. However, its best context is only in literary writings where one country or situation is compared with another, in order to predict some revolution or sudden transformation. That is why in the context of the transformation in times, wealth, inequality, and accumulation of wealth - with which the author opens his novel - have become modern themes..
Consider what it means that the best of times and the worst of times comingle together all of the time, providing opportunities and obstacles simultaneously.
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Wednesday, December 6, 2023 | |
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These verses in Isaiah 64 are a prayer to God by a people that are powerless and under oppression. The prayer exhibits the two main features of genuine Advent hope: on the one hand, a deep sense of desperation about a situation out of control is sounded. On the other hand, a bold and confident trust in God is voiced, addressed to a God who can intervene (if God will) to make life peaceable and joyous. Life without God is unbearable. That is the present tense. Life with God can be completely transformed. That is the urgent hope of the prayer.
How fitting is the first Sunday in Advent a time to situate our current crisis in its context and receive a word for sacred writ about our hope and our help.
In this chapter Isaiah begins with a prayer of petition (Isaiah 64:1-4), asking God to "come down" visibly with splendor and terror (verse 1). The imagery suggests that God is remote in the heavens and cut off from the earth. To intervene in the earth, God must, with raw power break, open the "skin" of the firmament to be released into the earth.
Firstly, we need an intervention beyond ourselves in order to ameliorate the injuries that have occurred.
The intention of the coming of God is to assert a name and a sovereignty that will override and curb the destructiveness of the nations. The yearning of Israel is that Yahweh should show the nations who is in charge, for the nations have assumed that they themselves (or their gods) are in charge and can do what they want.
In verse 3, the prayer relates the hoped-for intrusion to the remembered intrusions of the past. While the reference is not explicit, the verb "come down" echoes the exodus (Exodus 8:3), and the quaking mountain of Sinai (Exodus 19:16-18). Thus the model for this petition is God's coming (advent) in the focal memory of Exodus-Sinai, when Israel was decisively liberated and covenant was made. Advent is a hope that the fundamental events of Israel's memory will be reenacted. so that life may begin again unfettered, as it began in the days of Moses. Life can begin again only if there are "awesome deeds," acts so terrible and wondrous that they defy all explanatory categories. Verse 4 adds the doxological note, perhaps to motivate God, that the earth has, since the beginning, not known any other god who saves.
Oh come, Oh come Immanuel and save us from the destruction we cause ourselves.
Psychology has what it called behavioral intervention to correct that which is destructive. We do need an intervention to invert the insidious way we handle differences and diversity.
Consider what it means for the Lord to intervene to change
your life as the Lord had done it before.
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Thursday, December 7, 2023 | |
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Secondly, there is the acknowledgement of our complicity in the chaotic conditions that have emerged.
In verse 5, the prayer abruptly changes tone. Now the prayer lowers its voice and utters a confession of guilt. The main point of these verses is that Israel has sinned and transgressed (v. 5), is unclean and filthy (v.6). The term "unclean" means ritually unacceptable, so that Israel is not a community in which God's presence is willing to touch down (cf. Isa. 6:4). Isaiah 64:6 offers two poignant images: a filthy cloth, so impure and contaminated no one would dare touch it, and a faded leaf, so light and vulnerable that it will be blown away into oblivion.
Whereas in vs.1-4, Israel expects and insists on God's coming, in vs.5-7, Israel gives ample reason why God cannot and will not come into such uncleanness. Israel's failure precludes the very intervention for which it prays so passionately. Life is truly a mixture of yearning and failure yet, faith still believes. We are mixtures of expectation and defeat, of urgency and self-awareness, of insistence and the very honesty that blocks our best hope.
Consider what it means to acknowledge your complicity
in the current condition you experience, either
through compliance, complacency or cowardice.
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Thirdly, we appeal to the nature of the Lord as our Father and our
Potter to whom we belong.
In v. 8 there is a jarring rhetorical leap. The verse begins with a disjunctive "yet."
In Hebrew, it is we'attah, "and now," which moves decisively from all that is past (vs. 1-7) to this new present-tense moment. Moreover, this shift names Yahweh (Lord) for the first time in the poem. It is as though this forceful, intimate address to Yahweh puts behind and nullifies all that has just been said and focuses on a more powerful claim that overrides all that has been said.
In its prayer, Israel now speaks its ultimate truth to Yahweh in three staggering images:
You are our Father; you are our potter; we are all the work of your hands.
In these two images of father and potter, Israel affirms, "You made us, you own us, you are responsible for us, we belong to you." We are your responsibility, your burden, your problem, your treasured possession. You have begotten us (see Numbers 11:12), you formed us (see Isaiah 45:10-11). This pair of images (also paired in 45:9-13) asserts that Israel has a claim upon God and needs not make its own future. It also asserts God's obligation to Israel and resists any notion that God is, "off the hook" with Israel. Israel's deep trust in Yahweh is matched by Yahweh's deep obligation to Israel.
Consider what it means that the Lord is your father and your potter
who is shaping you continually to become more of what God wants you to be.
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Saturday, December 9, 2023 | |
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The images of 64:8, which appeal to the whole of Israel's faith tradition, provide the basis for the passionate petition of v. 9, which is now more intense and poignant than the petition of v. 1. There are three imperatives: Do not be terribly angry (see v. 5) do not hold it against us forever (remember, notice (consider) - we are your people, we belong to you and you cannot disown us.
We have no other source of help. The prayer for God's coming, which began in pomposity and pretentiousness, ends on a note of needful, pathos-filled intimacy. In the end, Advent focuses not on God's massive power, but on God's family sense of solidarity, the same sort of solidarity that causes parents to do irrational caring deeds for wayward, beloved children.
O Come, O Come Immanuel and save us from the destruction we cause ourselves.
Advent is about God coming in Christ to show us the way, the truth and the life God intends for each of us.
God thought we were worth it,
so God came Christ and changes our lives.
God thought we were worth keeping so
God cleaned us up inside. God thought we were to die for,
so God sacrificed his life, so we could be free,
we could be whole and tell everyone we know,
God thought we were worth it.
Consider what it means that God thought you were worth the world
to the Lord. that the Lord would not abandon or write you off
but would come in Christ and redeem, restore and reconcile you to the Lord.
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