God is At Work

 

Based on Isaiah 64:1-9

            Have you ever wished God would just rip open the sky, come down and fix things? I have. This has been a year. The pandemic, the social unrest, the fires and hurricanes, the economic turmoil, the ugliness of our politics. And it’s not just this year. Honestly, the past several years has been full of upheaval. And it’s not just in our community, or even in America. The whole world is in an upheaval. There is so much going on in the world that is out of whack. We are living in a time where it would be great if God would just come on down here and clean up this mess.

            Of course, it wasn’t the exact same issues when the prophet wrote these words that were read this morning, beginning with that cry, “Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” The mess Israel found themselves in was what they found when they returned home from exile in Babylon. They were back home, Jerusalem, to rebuild the city and the temple and do the hard work of bringing Israel back to its glory days of old. But when they got back, they discovered that their rebuilding plans were not going to be easy. There were other gods being worshiped in the land. Other peoples were living there, had established villages and towns, and had their own way of doing things. Israel’s God was not a god recognized by the people living in Palestine when the Israelites returned from exile. It was a different world. And so, the prophet spoke the longings of his people for God to show up and let these people who had moved in who the real god of this land was. The prophet wanted God to shake some mountains, to shake things up, to make a big splash, so that the nations would know that the God of Israel was back.

            They knew what God had done in the past. They remembered the ancient stories that had passed down from generation to generation, of how God came down on Mt. Sinai to give Moses the Ten Commandments, and how the mountain shook in God’s presence. They knew the story of how God sent those plagues against the Egyptians, divided the Red Sea in two so that their ancestors could escape from slavery, and led them through the wilderness as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. They remembered how God drove out the peoples that lived in Canaan, the land God chose to provide for Israel, the land that they were seeking to reclaim after their exile. They carried with them the stories of what God was capable of. It was this God that the prophet wanted to see active again.

            This is not our history. But as Christians we believe that God acted 2000 years ago by becoming a human being, working miracles, healing people, teaching the way that leads to life, and then suffering and dying as a common criminal, executed by the state, only to rise on the third day promising to send the Holy Spirit on all people, promising to be with us always, even to the end of the age, promising that we will also experience resurrection and live with God forever.

            We have heard stories of how the Spirit of God has acted in the world. We have heard how the Spirit has changed the hearts of people, transforming individuals, families, communities, even nations. The church of twelve located in Jerusalem is now the church of billions spread across the globe. God did that. This church exists by the action of God. God has acted in your life and in mine, in small and in big ways. In fact, your very existence is something that God had a hand in. All around us we see the activity of our Creator.

            But it doesn’t seem enough. The world is broken. And we long for God to come and fix this broken world. We want to be hopeful, that it isn’t too late for God to act, to make things right, to bring the nations together, to have a world where there is peace, where every person and community can thrive, where nature is rebalanced and healthy. We want to hope that things can be better than they are, and that God can and will make sure this renewal happens.

            But will God actually rip open the sky and come down? Will we get to the point where God says, “That’s it! I can’t take it anymore! I’m taking matters into my own hands!” How bad does it have to get until God gets to the breaking point and comes down and fixes things?

            This leads to another question. We have been waiting for Jesus to come back for 2,000 years. How bad does it have to get for Jesus to come back? I wonder what people were thinking during the Black Plague when between 1346 and 1353 it is estimated that anywhere from 75 million to 200 million people died throughout Europe and Asia. Monty Python spoofed this by having someone pushing a cart through the village crying out, “Bring out your dead!” But it was no laughing matter. Death was everywhere. Christians in those days were convinced they were living in the end times. It could not have gotten any worse than those years of the Plague. Yet, we are still here. Most, if not all of you who are listening to this message have wished at least once that God would come down here and fix things. It is part of our tradition as Christians to look for that time when Jesus will come in final victory and we will feast at that heavenly banquet. And yet, here we are in the mess.

            When the prophet wrote these words, a few hundred years before Jesus was born, he confronted the issue of why God had not shown up. The prophet said that the sins of the people had prompted God to hide God’s face from them. He said all of the people were unclean. Even their good deeds were like filthy rags. The prophet acknowledged that the messy world they were enduring was the consequence of their own actions.

            The same is true for us. As we look at the mess our world is in, it is impossible to assign blame. We are all complicit. We are all entangled in the mess. The chicken nuggets we buy at McDonalds are the remnants of chickens packed tight in sterile facilities. The cheap clothes we buy at Kohl’s are made by people in Malaysia and Bangladesh who barely make a living wage. The cell phones we carry around have precious metals inside that were mined in questionable safety conditions. So much of what we buy and consume, the conveniences we enjoy, are on the backs of people who suffer indignities and inflict damage to the earth in unsustainable ways. We are all entwined in the mess. As the prophet said all those years ago, we are all unclean. We are all like dried up leaves blown around by the wind.

            Where’s your holiday spirit, Pastor Kevin? We are all under a lot of stress these days and I don’t mean to add to it by reminding us of our complicity in the brokenness of the world. All I’m trying to say is that none of us our pure. We are all compromised. We are all complicit. We are all in need of forgiveness. We are all in this together and bear some responsibility for the mess.

            Here’s the good news. We still belong to God. That’s the other thing the prophet said. “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father, we are the clay, and you are our potter…We are your people.” This is our situation: we have all become like one who is unclean and we are the work of God’s hands. What God makes is precious. You and I are precious. But our actions and the consequences of those actions have knocked everything out of kilter. God is still working on us. God is still attempting to reshape us, as a potter works the clay. God is active, not by ripping open the skies and coming down, but in a quieter and mysterious way, within the secret chambers of our hearts.

            This reshaping is helped along when we are honest with ourselves. This season of Advent which we are now entering in to is a good time to take stock of our lives, confess what we need to confess, and turn back to God. We are all so ready to leave 2020 behind. What else do we need to leave behind? As we begin this annual journey of preparation to celebrate the birth of Jesus, we find ourselves longing for God to act in the world, to renew and restore and heal. Let us begin this journey by inviting God to act in our own hearts, to renew and restore and heal us as we move toward the celebration of Christmas.