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This passage portrays a very powerful image of God deciding it’s time to come to shepherd his people and nothing can stop God from doing it. So, God tells his prophet to cry out with words of comfort, beckoning all of creation to prepare the way. These words were first written to give hope to a community of Jewish exiles living in Babylon. They were a small remnant who had not made Babylon their home and rather longed for their own homeland in Palestine. The prophet was told to cry out and speak tenderly to the heart of God’s people with a message of good news. But the prophet is a bit reluctant. To paraphrase his answer, it would sound more like, “God, what can I say to these 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.” A very powerful image, 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, it wasn’t my doings. 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 led 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 their independence, their homes, their ability to care for themselves, many of their life-long friends, and their spouses. Many had even outlived their children. Mostly, they were in a safe place waiting their turn to die. Death was all they had to look forward to.
For me this was my first real regular preaching work. I was inexperienced and at a loss as to what I could 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 Easter was my answer. Preach on the hope of our faith. Our God is the God who raises the dead. Death is not the final word in God’s very good Creation. So, for us now living resurrection hope in Christ in the face of death is our way.
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, “Jesus” hope. Our hope is founded on his living presence with and in us. We have the friendship and companionship of the Holy Spirit who renews and reinvigorates our lives daily and even moment-to-moment if we devote ourselves to being mindful of him. It is from his renewing presence that our lives flow forth to be those who give of hope in this world.
They took the message seriously. Actually, I got the fodder for 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. Give a hug and let them be grouchy. These exiles knew how to live in a community-centered way that cried out, “We have hope. We still live.” Jesus’ 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 God 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 but they still couldn’t drown out Mr. Helsabeck.
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 provide extra staff on Sunday nights to help wheel the wheelchair bound folks to chapel, which the Admin did. In fact, the administration was so impressed with how important the chapel had become in the community that they remodeled the chapel by putting in a new sound system and making space for wheelchairs.
This little congregation even had a vision. They didn’t have 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.
This all just happened. I couldn’t believe it. They couldn’t believe. Here was a growing and vibrant church in a nursing home where the average age was 83. It was no longer just some chapel 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 God 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 Jesus 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. Jesus was with his people giving them the hope that he would continue to increase in their personal lives and the chapel was visible proof of that.
Well, it’s Advent and as the preacher here today I guess it’s my responsibility to proclaim that God has come, is coming, and will be coming into our lives in very wonderful ways 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. Sitting at Jesus’ 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 to be real, present, and good. Amen.
