This passage from Isaiah portrays the
very powerful moment of God declaring he would restore his people living in
exile in Babylon. God had decided that
they had suffered enough for the real life consequences of their not acting
like the people of their steadfastly loving and ever-faithful God. It was now time for God himsefl to come and
shepherd his people and nothing was going tp stop God from doing it. So, God tells Isaiah to cry out with words of
comfort and to beckon all of creation to prepare the way for this small remnant
who had not made Babylon their home and whose hearts rather longed for their
own homeland in Palestine.
God told Isaiah to cry out and speak
tenderly to the heart of God’s people with a message of good news, but it seems
Isaiah was a bit reluctant. To
paraphrase Isaiah’s answer, it would sound more like, “God, what could I
possibly say to this people that would comfort them? You have leveled them to the extent that they
more readily believe that bad things come from you than good. They are grass and you have withered them
with the scorching heat of your judgment.”
And to paraphrase God’s response,
“Just as sure as my Word was to destroy them so now is my Word that I am coming
to them tenderly to gather them up and to be their shepherd. The whole world will see it and know that I
am God. I am coming to them and there is
nothing they can do but watch in awe.” That’s
a very powerful image there, God’s just going to do it.
Well, this passage is special to me
because I saw something very much like it happen. It was during my last two years of
seminary. I was serving as the volunteer
chaplain at the Masonic Home of Virginia, which is a retirement community. About all I did there was conduct worship at
their Sunday evening chapel service and occasionally visit. So, what happened there wasn’t my doings. It was God.
He took a chapel of very elderly exiles and turned it into a vibrant
church.
When I first started, the chapel
service, and I hate to say it, was a depressing sight. There were about 35 mostly drowsy people
because of the heat in there and a very screechy choir of 5 or 6 fronted by Mr.
Helsabeck who was stone deaf, loud, and monotone. More somberly, and I say this with great
respect, they were exiles of life much like the Jews in Babylon. Old age had taken from them their
independence, their homes, their ability to care for themselves, their
life-long friends, and their spouses.
Many had even outlived their children.
Mostly, they were there to be in a safe place while waiting their turn
to die. Death was all they had to look
forward to. There wasn’t much hope
there.
For me this was my first real regular
preaching work. I was inexperienced and
at a loss as to what I could possibly preach that would be of any kind of
comfort to them at all. Well, I prayed
on the matter and fortunately the first Sunday I preached there was Easter
Sunday and that was my answer. Preach on
the hope of our faith. For the two years
I was there it seemed that nearly every time I sat down to write the sermon
what came out was in someway about hope and continuing to live as those who
have hope in the face of death.
You’d think they would have grown
tired of hearing that same central message week after week, but hope was what
they needed, Christian hope. Our hope is
founded on Christ’s living presence with and in us through the Holy Spirit. We have the friendship and companionship of
the Holy Spirit who renews and reinvigorates our lives daily and even
moment-to-moment. He’s a constant companion
and it is his renewing presence that will flow forth through us making us
to be harbingers of hope.
Those beloved children of God took the
message seriously. I actually got many of my sermons from just watching how
they lived and commending them for it.
From what I saw of their life together in that very close-knit community
they definitively lived as those who had hope.
They visited each other in illness and supported each other when yet
more bad news came. They helped one
another in small daily tasks like meals.
They prayed for each other.
Played games together. They had a
way of understanding when so and so was a little grouchy today. These exiles knew how to live in a
community-centered way that cried out, “We have hope. We are still alive.” Christ’s life was living in them and they
were living according to it.
Well, something began to happen there
at the Masonic Home and the only way I can explain it is that Christ Jesus showed
up in a powerfully obvious way. It
seemed every month attendance grew at the chapel service. In the two years that I was there it went
from 35 to nearly 90. The choir
blossomed to over 20 members.
If you will allow me to coin the
terminology of the study of how churches grow, Christ gifted and equipped this
little fellowship for his ministry.
There were folks there who were just natural pastors who did a lot of
visiting and seeing that needs were being met throughout the community. They had evangelists and teachers. New residents and old did not go without an
invitation to come to the chapel service and the Wednesday night Bible study,
which they taught themselves and the people were excited to participate in it
and learn. They had justice advocates
who requested the administration to provide extra staff on Sunday nights to
help wheel the wheelchair bound folks to chapel and they did. In fact, the administration was so impressed
with how important the chapel had become in the community that they remodeled
the chapel, put in a new sound system, and made space for wheelchairs. The chapel folk even had a vision. They didn’t go through months of
congregational studies to find it. It
was more like, “Oh my God we’ve got a church here.” And they got excited and just did what they
knew they were supposed to do. They
loved to do it because ministry had become their purpose to live. They found and lived hope.
This transformation just
happened. I couldn’t believe it. They couldn’t believe it. It was wonderful to see. Here was a growing and vibrant church in a retirement
home where the average age was 83. No
longer was it just some religious adjunct to the programming. The only way we could explain it was with
this image that Isaiah portrays here.
God just decided it was time to come and shepherd his people and he did
it in such a way that the residents, staff, administration, and family members
could only say, “Here is God.”
Well, I’ve abstained from giving
examples from the personal lives of my friends there at the Masonic Home and
how they knew Christ was there personally comforting them through their hardest
days. I will just say that God who was
there in a big way building up the chapel was also there in even greater
proportion for these people whom he loved.
Christ was with his people giving them hope that he would continue to
increase in their lives and what happened with the chapel was visible proof of it.
Well, it’s Advent and as the preacher
here today I guess it’s my responsibility to proclaim that God is coming into
our lives in a very wonderful way and there’s nothing we can do about it except
prepare for it. And how do we prepare
for it? How do we latch on to hope and
then begin to live as those who have hope especially in a world were people are
prone either to hope in the wrong things and even worse have no hope at
all? Well, the secret I believe lies in
just letting God be God, letting God prove himself to the world through what he
does in us. Well, it begins with tending
to God’s presence with us now in worship, prayer, studying the Scriptures, and
just being still inside to feel God’s presence, letting go of this life to find
his. Sitting at Christ's feet is where
we find hope. As we do this I can say
with certainty because I’ve seen it happen that God will give us a clear sense
of what he put us here to do and through each of us individually and this
congregation God will prove himself.
