Isaiah 64:1-10
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence—
2 come down to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,
you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
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.
5 You meet those who gladly do right,
those who remember you in your ways.
But you were angry, and we sinned;
because you hid yourself we transgressed.[b]
6 We have all become like one who is unclean,
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.
7 There is no one who calls on your name,
or attempts to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
and have delivered[c] us into the hand of our iniquity.
8 Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
9 Do not be angry, O Lord,
and do not remember iniquity forever.
Now consider, we are all your people.
Mark 13:21-27, 32-37
21 And if anyone says to you at that time, ‘Look! Here is the Messiah!’[a] or ‘Look! There he is!’—do not believe it. 22 False messiahs[b] and false prophets will appear and produce signs and omens, to lead God’s people astray, if possible. 23 But be alert; I have already told you everything.
24 “There will come suffering in those days, and after that suffering,
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
25 and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
26 Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. 27 He will send out the angels, and gather his people from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
32 “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Be aware, keep alert;[d] for you do not know when the time will come. 34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. 35 Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36 or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”
Listening to the texts from Isaiah and Mark, together, over and over again this past week, I began to hear this dialogue between human beings and God. The prophet Isaiah cries out to God on behalf of the people, languishing in exile, “O that you would tear open the heavens, O God, and come down as you did in the past when you did awesome deeds that we did not expect.” And on behalf of God, as God in the flesh, Jesus says, “Keep awake people, keep awake.”
For weeks and weeks massive wildfires burned out of control in the western U.S.. Forests are consumed. Properties and possessions are in ashes. Lives are lost. The sun went dark. The light of the moon and the stars were shrouded in smoke. And the people cry, “O that you would tear open the heavens, O God, and come down and rescue us with a mighty arm. Surprise us again with your intervention.”
And Jesus says, “Keep awake people. What do you see? What do the wildfires reveal? Why is the earth parched, scorched, cleared of what grows there for your good and the good of other creatures? How did you get here? What do you hope for? What will you do to change the reality?”
For months and months this novel coronavirus has been sweeping through the world—a tiny unseen enemy claiming thousands of lives. Exhausting healthcare workers. Wreaking havoc with the economy and employment. Creating so much loneliness, despair, and grief. And the people pray, “O that you would tear open the heavens, O God, and swiftly deliver us. Make it all go away. Surprise us again with your mighty arm.”
And Jesus says, “Keep awake people. What do you see? What does the virus and your responses to it reveal? What are you learning? How close and how far away are your neighbors? How did you get here? What do you hope for? What can you do to change reality?”
And while the virus has been moving among us, evidence of the deeply rooted sin of racism has erupted with force, shaking life in the heavens and on the earth. And the people plead, “O that you would tear open the heavens, O God, and save us from this brokenness. Surprise us again with your infinite power.”
And Jesus says, “Keep awake people. What do you see? What do these life-depleting racial inequities and your responses reveal about you? What are you learning? Who is your neighbor? How did you get here? What do you hope for? What can you do to change reality?”
We human beings would really love for God to swoop in and clean up our messes, to miraculously fix what we have fractured, to spare us from the consequences of the conscious and unconscious choices we make, or the consequences of systems, policies, and leaders that we tolerate. And the prophet Isaiah reckons that sometimes God simply delivers us into our own hands, into the ache and the suffering of our own collective making. God consents to let us stew in our own collective juices
Even as I say this, I recognize that it sounds pretty awful. Like God has given up on us, given up on the world, in anger. Like God has abandoned God’s own creation. Walked away and left us all alone to figure it out for ourselves. We would like God to swoop in like our great commander and chief to make it all great again, and when that doesn’t happen, it can feel like God has permanently withdrawn from caring, from loving, from laboring to fulfill God’s own dreams for creation and for us.
And this morning the prophet Isaiah invites us to think differently about God and ourselves. Isaiah shifts the imagery. While we might be hoping for a God who comes like a military general on a spectacular rescue mission to extract us from the bloody chaos we are in, Isaiah brings us down to the potter’s shed. And he cracks open the door to show us this God sitting at the potter’s wheel, with gentle hands in the mix of water and clay, patiently forming us to be people who see what is going on all around us; people who are becoming more conscious of the choices we make, and the world we create with our choices; people who are taking responsibility to right the wrongs we see; people who are dreaming God’s dreams and joining God in making these dreams come to be.
And this morning, on the first Sunday of Advent, as Jesus repeats the call for us to “keep awake,” we can hear it as a double call to keep awake, to what is going on all around us, and to keep awake for the arrival of this God who doesn’t conform to our own hopes and expectations of who God is and of how God should act. God comes to us as a potter who forms us; as a shepherd who leads and feeds and protects us; as a parent who makes room for us to grow up. God comes into the world as a vulnerable infant untimely born; as a story-telling rabbi; as a religious and social radical; as a truly righteous man, unjustly executed; as a human being so completely and fully filled with the life and Spirit of God that death cannot hold him.
This God is with us, always. Showing up in ways we don’t always recognize. We are not abandoned. God’s world is not abandoned. God has her hands on us. God is the Spirit of the living Christ within us. God is patiently working the clay that we are—pressing in, breaking down the hardened spots, repairing the broken places, re-forming the deformations, shaping us to be vessels in which God’s dreams are held. God is forming us to be people wide awake to the complex reality of our world and to the presence of God within it, and within each of us.
During these four weeks of Advent, take time to imagine God’s hands on you, feel God’s hands on you, be awake to the press of Holy Spirit within you. Try not to resist. Try to surrender to God’s perpetual labor to form us as people in whom and through whom God’s dreams are coming to be.