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Last updated on
Dec. 6, 2002
Longing Expectation
First Sunday of Advent
Delivered December 1, 2002
by Pastor Werner De Jong
Text: Isaiah 64:1-12
Main Idea: On this first Sunday of Advent, we long for Jesus our Lord to come down and bring peace to our shattered world, even as he promised. We wait with hope because we remember God's past faithfulness. God is our Father, and we are his people, and in grace God will keep his promises.
Purpose: To encourage the listeners that our God of grace will bring healing and peace to our world and to our lives through Jesus Christ. To challenge the listeners to wait for the ultimate fulfilment of that promise in a prayerful attitude, with patience and trust.
Introduction: Today is not only the first Sunday of Advent, it is also World Aids Day, a day to draw attention to that terrible disease which is ravaging so many lives across the face of the earth. The numbers are staggering: 40 million people today are infected with AIDS; 20 million have already died from it; and 14 million children have been orphaned by the disease. In the developing world half of the people infected are women. AIDS can therefore no longer be considered a homosexual plague. Promiscuous husbands bring it home to their wives, or prostitutes become pregnant and have babies. Thousands of children, especially in Africa, are born with AIDS every year. They soon shrivel up and die, all but forgotten by the world. Did you know that there are regions in Africa where the entire age group of young children are missing? There are entire villages that are no longer on the map because all the residents have died from AIDS. It is now estimated that AIDS will kill more people this decade than all the wars and disasters of the past half century. Global attention is focussed on the potential war against Iraq, while the actual killer epidemic of AIDS goes largely unnoticed.
Advent Theme: I don't know if it was deliberate or not, but it seems strangely appropriate that World Aids Day falls on the first Sunday of Advent. For Advent is a season of longing, a season of remembering Jesus' promise to return and bring fullness of peace and healing to our broken world. Our Advent theme this year is short and simple: "With arms outstretched." It is a symbol of the heart's cry to God to intervene and put a final and decisive end to suffering and pain. It is a reaching out to the one who has given us a clear vision of a healed alternative for the world.
Our Advent theme is derived from Isaiah's heart cry to God in 64:1, when he surveyed the dismal situation of Israel and pleaded: "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down." Like the hardship many suffer today, Isaiah's text reflects a time of great hardship for Israel, probably soon after their return from exile in Babylon. Their hopes for national glory had been smashed by the captivity, and the joy of their return quickly evaporated. For when they arrived home, they faced the heartbreaking task of rebuilding their shattered nation from the scraps of it that were left. As our text records, the temple was burned to the ground, and all the pleasant places they had cherished so long in their memories were ruined. They had hoped that their return would mean a great revival for Israel, but after a few years it was obvious that the nation remained devastatingly poor. What was wrong? Where was God? In this time of great disillusionment, it is not difficult to imagine devout Jewish persons stretching out their arms to God and begging, "Please do something. Please come down and visit us with your mighty power that is capable of shaking mountains and nations alike." Many godly people today still echo those words: "O Jesus, won't you please come down, and come quickly." Our world is so full of pain and suffering. (It is symbolized by the broken pottery in our display).
What pains of the world do you long for God to heal? The poverty that leads people in Cairo's city of the dead to forage for food in garbage dumps? The daily kidnappings and assassinations that make Colombia the most violent nation on earth? The international terrorism responsible for recent bombings in Bali and Kenya? The AIDS virus which begins killing babies even before they are born? It may be difficult for us to enter into the great suffering of our world, when we live in a nation that is geographically isolated, and rather insulated, from the raw wounds of so many other people groups and nations. But as kingdom citizens our Lord calls us to have a heart for the world. We are the salt of the earth, the light of the world. Waiting for Jesus is not only about longing for my own place in heaven; it is much more than that. It is hoping and longing for healing and peace for all who suffer. Although we have it relatively well here in Canada, we can empathize when we remember that even in Canada life is difficult for many. Insecure husbands abuse their wives. Bullied children sometimes commit suicide. Drug and alcohol abuse destroy relationships. None of us are immune from life shattering medical diagnoses, or broken relationships, or economic difficulties, or tragic accidents. And recent terror attacks remind us that none of us are safe from sudden devastation. Even sleepy Canada is now on Osama bin Laden's hit list.
Longing: Prayerfully waiting: In the face of it all, when we encounter seemingly insurmountable problems accompanied by desperate grief, pain, or any circumstance that seems out of control, it can make us feel very small and inadequate. Consider, for example, the fact that more people live with AIDS than live in Canada. We can't possibly comfort them all, not even a small fraction. We can't cuddle all the babies dying with AIDS in our arms. It is easier not to think about the problem, just to ignore it. For those with sensitive hearts, thinking about it may simply feel too painful. When we add to the problem of AIDS every other type of global suffering, it is tempting just to throw up our arms in despair. It is certainly much easier not to hope at all, it is much easier not to long expectantly, it is much easier simply to turn inwards and to focus on the business of living our own lives.
But Isaiah presents us with another option: rather than throwing up our arms in despair we can stretch them out longingly to God, and confess our pain and inadequacy, and wait and pray for God's promised salvation. We don't have to pretend we have it all together; God knows we don't. Isaiah didn't have all the answers, so he stretched out his hands and begged for God's intervention. Such a posture is a recognition of personal inadequacy, but at the same time a statement of faith and trust in God's adequacy. The entire text we read this morning is part of a longer prayer, beginning in ch. 63, offered up by the prophet on behalf of his people. He too saw a problem much bigger than he was. And so he prayed. It was a prayer that God's promises, already given, might come to pass. In light of his people's pain Isaiah longs expectantly for the promised vindication and salvation, as we hear in those pathos filled words: "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down."
Like Isaiah, we too wait for promises to be fulfilled. We wait for the heavens to part and for Jesus to return. We wait for the full and final establishment of his Kingdom. We wait for the great and glorious day when God will make his home in our very midst, in full splendour and love and glory, when God will wipe away every tear, when death will be no more, when mourning and crying and pain will pass away. We wait for God's promise to make all things new. As we've already said, it is not easy to endure in faithful, expectant waiting. Perhaps the hardest part of maintaining the expectant attitude that God wants to see in us lies in the question we scarcely dare give words to: "How do we know God's promises will come to pass? How do we know our hope is secure? It is painful to hope, for it reminds us of our own inadequacy, and it hurts to remember the suffering of others. It also means that we can't keep living selfishly without pangs of conscience, remembering the suffering of others calls us to die to self. That is a most difficult journey. How do we know God will honour our hoping by keeping his promise and healing the deep wounds and hurts of our world, not to mention the ones in our own lives? Isn't it better not to get out hopes up, rather than risk having them dashed? How can we wait with hope?"
These are not just theoretical questions, for our ability to hope has a profound practical impact on our daily living. Our hope in God's promised future is what gives us strength and motivation today to help the suffering and bring good news to the lost. If there is no good news for the future, why bother working for it, and why bother proclaiming it? But if there is good news, if God will truly, in the words of Mary, "bring down the powerful and lift up the lowly, and fill the hungry with good things", and if we can believe the words of the angel, "Mary shall bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins", then we are energized to care for the poor as God cares for the poor, and to bring good news to sinners as Jesus brought good news to sinners. If we know that God's future will come to pass, we can dare to hope vibrantly, and to serve enthusiastically. We can dare to suffer with those who suffer, for we know that all suffering will one day be transformed by joy. It is our vision of the future which will guide our living in the present.
Remembering: The bridge to building trust: Ultimately the question of the soundness of our hope boils down to a question of trust. The question "How can we wait with hope?" is equivalent to the question, "How do we know we can trust God?"
Now for Isaiah the answer to that question was not difficult: he trusted God because God had been faithful to his promises in the past. In his prayer for the renewal of Israel, Isaiah alludes several times to God's deliverance of Israel from Egypt. For example, in ch. 63 he describes God as the one who "divided the waters before Moses to make for himself an everlasting name, who led his people through the depths" (12-13). Based on the faithfulness of God in the past, Isaiah could cry out to him to lead Israel through the depths again, to a better future.
Isn't that how we all learn to trust anyone? We base our trust on our remembrance of their past actions. None of us has a record of the future, we have no guarantees how anyone will act in the future, but we do have a record of the past. Based on our past relationship with others, we can feel quite secure in our knowledge that someone is trustworthy or not. My children, I believe, trust me. If I make them a promise that we will go to Cliff's ice cream after supper, they dare to get their hopes up, because I have kept such promises in the past. They feel free to get excited. They start to talk about what ice cream flavour they are going to choose. For they don't have to worry, "What if this is just another empty promise?" I'm not a perfect father, there have been times when I have disappointed my children, but by and large my children have grown to trust me.
God wants us to have the same childlike trust and excitement in his promises; he is the perfect Father. He will bring full peace and healing to our broken world. For he has promised it. God has been faithful to his people, to his children, over and over again. When the people of Israel were in slavery in Egypt, God kept his promise to Abraham and led them to a land they could call their own. When Israel was exiled to Babylon because of her continual rebellion against God, God sent prophets to offer comfort that they would one day return home. And indeed they did. And of course during Advent we remember God's most wonderful promise to send the Messiah, who would bring forgiveness from God and peace and healing for the nations. This promise too God kept, which led even the angels in the field to celebrate: "Do not be afraid," the angel of the Lord said to the shepherds, "for behold, I bring you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord." God's past faithfulness is the sure source of our future hope. If we want to strengthen our hope, we need simply to reflect on God's faithfulness to us in the past.
Our theme "with arms outstretched" not only reminds us of our own arms stretched longingly out to God, but even more so it reminds us of God's arms, arms which have already reached out to a stubborn, rebellious world again and again (the figure behind me is symbolic of God or of Jesus reaching out his arms to the world). Above all these arms reached out to us on the cross, when Jesus' arms were literally spread out in love for the world, his death and resurrection being the source of our healing. The Lord's Supper is Jesus' provision to help us always remember that sacrifice. Now God's arms continue to stretch out to the world, longing for us to embrace Jesus as the source of our justice and the maker of our peace. Why would God abort his plan now, after Jesus has already suffered so much? It is preposterous to even think it. He who began a good work in the church will bring it to completion. God will heal our world finally and fully on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
When we remember God's faithfulness, we are blessed to have even more to look back on than the great biblical stories. We also have the stories of our own lives. Remembering God's faithfulness in our personal lives can be a tremendous source of encouragement. What God do you remember? How has God been faithful to you? In his prayer Isaiah used words like "steadfast love," "mercy," "power," and "compassion." It has been the testimony of God's people throughout the ages that through thick and thin they could count on the reliable presence of their loving Lord to provide them comfort, encouragement and strength. Remembering such times is the bridge which leads to the strengthening of our faith and the building of our trust.
Confessing: Keeping the door of hope open: The only potential problem in remembering God's faithfulness is that it may remind us of our own unfaithfulness. When we spend time in God's presence reflecting on the goodness of God, our own failures stand out in sharp relief. God has been so faithful and good to me, and God has such wonderful plans for the world, but I myself haven't been faithful in caring for others and in praying for God's world. God is so passionate about this world, but I am so indifferent. The potential problem isn't in realizing our shortcomings, that in itself is a step towards growth. The potential problem is if we fail to confess our sins. Notice how confession plays a key role in Isaiah's prayer. First he longs for God's promised future: "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down"; next, to strengthen his hope he remembers God's faithful actions in the past. But remembrance of God's pure goodness led to thoughts of human impurity: "We have all become like one who is unclean, he lamented, "and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away."
We might think that realizing the depth of our own selfishness and acknowledging it might be the end of hope, but actually it gives birth to it. For it is hard to hope fervently in God when we know that we have wronged him. If we try to stuff our guilt feelings or sweep them aside it harms our relationship with God, and rather than come to the light of his presence, we prefer to lurk in the shadows. Such a strategy will surely suffocate our hope, for hope dies a slow death in the darkness, hope needs trust in God to survive. If we confess our sin to God, and are truthful before him, then there is forgiveness and reconciliation, for we serve the God of grace. When we experience forgiveness, then we can know even more intimately that there is hope for the world. And then we can serve with gusto! For as Jesus said, "Those who have been forgiven much, love much."
God's grace: Confession pins all of our hopes on the grace of God. Our appeals are not based on our righteous deeds, which Isaiah says are no better than used rags, and Paul would echo him in the NT, but rather our hope rests firmly on God's mercy and grace. Isaiah recognized this, for after confessing the people's sin he confesses the bedrock foundation of his hope: "We have sinned...yet you O Lord are our Father, you have formed us, we are your people." Despite all that Israel had done, Isaiah could fall back on this founding truth: God was their Father. They were God's children. God loved them. Yes, God disciplined their disobedience, but God still loved them. God could be counted on to come to the rescue of his people.
Just as Isaiah called on the God the people remembered and trusted, so too we call on the living Christ to strengthen us in our waiting to the end. Based on his faithfulness to the point of death we say to him, "You are our Lord, you died for us, with your blood you purchased us, we are your people, and we are committed to your reign." By the grace of God we will be able to wait for God's work to be fully revealed in Christ. By the grace of God we can maintain faith in his future, and by the grace of God this firm hope of peace and healing for the world will give rise to faithful servants, servants who are dedicated and committed to work with God in healing our suffering world.
Conclusion: In conclusion then, let us never forget the promises of God for our world, promises that mean diseases like AIDS will one day be no more, and famine and war and terrorism will cease. Let us wait expectantly for the fullness of God's kingdom, praying for the world as we wait. For we know from God's past faithfulness that our hope is not in vain. God has always kept his promises, and God will always continue to do so. There is a world of healing and peace breaking in just over the horizon. It will come to pass as surely as the sun rises each day. May this divine vision strengthen our service and obedience. And may it always lead to the worship and praise of our great and mighty God. Amen.