watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo-Y_zN_bV4
November 29, 2020
I don’t need to cite any examples. I can just say, the year 2020 has been weird, unique, forgettable, and one we’ll always remembers. Few people will look back on it fondly.
There’s no way to track this, but if there were, I wonder
if we could measure how often people prayed in 2020, and if, as things got
worse in the world, people’s prayers increased in intensity and frequency. And, I wonder what that measurement would
look like compared to other years.
Every year, life falls apart for some people. Pain – physical, emotional, financial, any
kind of pain – spurs a desire for change.
God, please bring some money. I’m tired of wondering how to pay for
groceries and rent.
God please help my body to respond to physical
therapy. My body hurts. I want to be healthy again.
God please fills this hole in my heart. The divorce has broken me. I feel empty.
I don’t want to feel this way anymore.
When life is going great,
we thank God and hope the good times will continue. Or, caught up in our
happiness, we forget about God. But
those who hurt pray. Pain produces prayers – prayers for change.
If I had to guess, I’d say as we close out 2020, more
people are praying for change than in other years at this same time. We want things to be different, better. We want life to open back up. We want Thanksgiving and Christmas and New
Year’s. We want parties and family. We want change.
Isaiah 64 is a prayer for change. Isaiah chapters 56-66 function as a
unit. Some experts refer to this as “3rd
Isaiah,” set after Israel has returned to the land from exile. Imagine the awkwardness and uncertainty when
that change we’ve prayed – reopening – comes.
Imagine life after the pandemic.
As much as we yearn for it, it will be fraught with economic uncertainty,
questions about vaccines, and whether or not we can hug each other. What will the new normal be?
In Isaiah 56-66, the people had returned to the
land. But Jerusalem with rubble
everywhere, the aftermath of the Babylonian destruction, sat depressed in varying
stages of rebuilding. The sin God’s
people committed that led God to allow defeat and exile to happen lurked at the
edges their consciousness. Would they
again disobey the Lord? Would God punish
as he had before?
Isaiah 64 is a prayer for change. Maybe hearing that we think, Isaiah 64
provides the words we need to lift before the Lord. This can be our prayer. Be careful!
Better than careful, be mindful.
God hears our prayer and takes them seriously. We should lift them up seriously.
Lord, I want to see unity in our land.
Lord, my body is broken.
I want to be healed.
Lord, I fear catching a disease. I want to know I am protected.
Each is truly a legitimate prayer for change. I encourage
these prayers. Talk to God. Take what matters in your life before the
Lord. No one loves you like God
does. God wants to hear from you. God wants you to pay attention to Him. God wants you to worship with energy, sing
your heart out, and throw yourself fully into your worship, your Bible reading,
your prayers, and thoughts. I would go
so far as to say God wants a relationship of intimacy with you.
Make no mistake though. God is still God. Listen to the opening of the prayer in Isaiah
64. “O that you would tear open the
heavens and come down, so that mountains would quake at your presence … so that
nations would quake at your presence.”
How often are the prayers we lift requests for life to go
back to the way it was before COVID hit?
Or, if you life was kind of lousy and really hard before COVID, last
year at this time, maybe you prayed for a good, prosperous, healthy, successful
American life. O Lord, I want the nice house,
the best health insurance, the full kitchen cupboard, and a little extra to go
on a nice vacation. God loves
home-owning, full-bellied affluent people; no question about it!
Yet, think about it. If you’re struggling and praying for your
life to be like the person who appears to be struggling less – that’s not a
prayer for change. That’s a prayer for
you to live on the good side of how things are in the world right now. It is asking God to make it so we enjoy the
best this life has to offer. Isaiah 64
utters words at an entirely different level.
To pray this post-exilic
prophet’s prayer is to seek change in the fabric of society, an absolute
altering of the world as we know it.
Isn’t that what happens when “mountains quake?” Forget COVID, forget Trump v. Biden, forget
all the weirdness of 2020 we actually want to forget but cannot. Isaiah asks for fire from heaven that makes
the waters boil and the rulers tremble.
Do we want to pray that prayer?
What is God doing? I have heard that question asked a lot this
year. What is God up to? Setting aside the myopic narcissism in
supposing that what happens in our little lives is any kind of indication of
God’s intent or activity, it is a natural thing to wonder. God, what’s going on here, and, where have
you been?
Again, God invites us to
ask. If you take anything away from this
sermon, take away the assurance that God welcomes your queries. God wants to hear from you. God wants to hear from all of us. God wants to connect at the most seemingly
insignificant details in our lives. Just
know the Isaiah 64 is also much bigger than what we can see.
Verse 4 – “From ages past
no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who
works for those who wait for Him” We bring all our prayers, concerns, worries,
and hopes. We lift it all to God in
prayer. Then, we wait on God with that
question nibbling away at our faith. God,
what are you doing?
God will answer. How we receive that answer will be colored by
how approach God. Isaiah approached in a
spirit of repentance. “We have all
become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy
cloth” (v.6). Isaiah stated the sinful
condition of the people, and tries desperately to turn from that to the Holy
God who despises sin and will not tolerate it.
Isaiah recognizes that
while it hurts to face in God with our sins dripping all over us like we’ve
fallen into a muddy pond right before entering a formal ball, it is worse to
turn away from God, and even worse than that to think God has turned away from
us.
Do we, as Isaiah did, see
our own condition, our filth next to God’s pristine holiness? I maintain that the problems of 2020 and in
many cases the problems we face regardless of when we face them are magnified
by our own shortsightedness, selfishness, and greed. COVID is the not worst evil we’ve face in
2020; human sin is. When we pray for
change, will repentance be a part of it?
Will we, as Isaiah did,
say to God, “You are our Father; we are the clay, and you the potter”? The potter gets to mold the make the clay as
she pleases. The clay doesn’t make
suggestions. Will we be clay in God’s
hands? Will we acknowledge our
impurities alongside God’s perfection?
Will we say to God, make of me what you will?
Let’s bring together all
that’s been raised as we take the prophet’s words and try in some fashion to
raise them to God as our words.
· We want the world to
change or at least our experience of it to change.
· We agree that Isaiah was
onto something in including repentance as a part of his prayer. So, we also repent. We name our own failures and
shortcomings. Having confessed, we turn
away from sin and turn to God.
· We trust that God wants us
to pray and hears our prayers.
· We believe God can and
will answer.
· We wait.
We are left with the
thought that we still aren’t quite sure of what God is doing in all this. Take comfort.
Not knowing is included in the waiting.
Throughout the Bible God’s people have earnestly hoped God would act,
then failed to recognize when God did act, because God’s response wasn’t what
they expected. Moses, Job, Daniel,
Ezekiel, John the Baptist, Peter; they were surprised when God showed up, and
in most cases, they were watching for him!
“O that you would tear
open the heavens … so that mountains would quake and kings would tremble at
your presence.” O that you end the
pandemic, quiet the political fighting, bring justice to the victims of
injustice; God, come do something! Will
we watch for God’s response? When it
comes, will we see it?
Advent is a time of
waiting. To answer all the questions on
the first Sunday would be to skip to the end of the story. Instead, imagine, if God tore open the
heavens and brought the changes you’ve prayed for, what would that look like
and sound and feel like? To seek God and
ask God to act demands tremendous faith.
How does the birth in the
manger signal that God is at work in the world? Here’s the homework. Spend significant time contemplating how the
coming of Christ changes the world at the end of crazy pandemic 2020. How does the coming of Christ change your
life?
AMEN
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