Sermon Precis 07.02.21
FOR MONDAY - Going Home
Isaiah 40:21-31
21 Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood since the earth was founded?
22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
23 He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
24 No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown, no sooner do they take root in the ground, than he blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.
25 ‘To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?’ says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.
27 Why do you complain, Jacob? Why do you say, Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God’? 28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. 29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
GOING HOME
‘You can never go back’, ‘The past is another country,’ Leave the past in the past.
These are familiar sayings that are often used to avoid confronting ourselves, our communities, our cultures and origins. Avoidance, however, is a highly successful way of stunting our character development our emotional growth and our intellectual capacity; in short, our maturity. Avoidance prevents a growing understanding of ourselves and others and of circumstances past and present.
The bible reading for today is part of a march lager story. An epic story of relationship in crisis, of separation and alienation. A story of loss and being lost. A story of hopelessness and despair. It’s also a story of return, restoration and reconciliation.
Israel is in captivity in Babylon. But lets no be to too quick to stereo type these captives. They are not all in the same situations. The social classes of Israel have been divided off and each live in differing circumstances to the others.
Israel’s nobility live in the palace of the Kings of Babylon with an annual stipend befitting their status in the class system. The artisans are treated reasonably well because of their marketable skills but the poor farm workers are impoverished and live under harsh conditions.
Now, in Chapter forty of Isaiah’s story of Israel, the prophet speaks out God’s promise to bring his people home. God promises to smooth the way home. Isaiah delivers the message in poetic form, ‘lowering the mountains’, ‘raising the valleys’. It’s a message designed to establish hope, but hope is not the first response. Why? Because going home is often hard, going home to God can be even harder.
Nehemiah records that all the Jews participated in a lottery to decide who would go home first. But this was not a lottery that most wanted to win. Jerusalem had no temple and no walls. The place was a wreck with out protection from marauding bandits and the enemies of Israel and it had nothing to offer them economically or for their faith because the temple was in ruins.
Staying in Babylon seemed the easiest thing to do, despite the lack of freedom and citizenship, despite the horrendous circumstances of life for the extremely poor. Staying just seemed so much easier. It was familiar territory and that offered some predictability. Better predictable misery that unquantifiable misery in an unknown land. And the land of Israel was mostly unknown to the Babylonian Jews. They had been away for three generations. Many only spoke Babylonian only knew the traditions and culture of the local residents. Their knowledge of God and the customs of the temple and of what it meant to be a Jew in Israel was a fading collective memory. A memory that was far removed for younger Jews, generations removed from the homeland.
To stay in Babylon, no one needed to be confronted by issues of safety or by the past. No one needed to address issues of personal and cultural identity. You could stay in the misery of Babylon and avoid all the issues of going home. Avoid rebuilding friendships, a city, a nation. The devil you know, after all, is safer than the devil you don’t, or so it goes.
This, however, is no ordinary road trip home. This is no sentimental journey. It’s not a nostalgic trip down memory lane. This is a journey home to the most essential relationship of all. The journey home to God.
The people are worried of what the trip may entail and the dangers along the way. They have forgotten that God is Creator, that God is Saviour, that by trusting him they will be safe.
The opening lines of chapter fourty begin with, ‘Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, and that her sin has been paid for’. God’s call to come home is always offered with tenderness and with the desire to comfort us but we don’t always understand or perceive God’s tender heart.
We see the problems, the obstacles. It can feel very demanding as the nearness of God’s love challenges our own self-concept. Questions can run through our heads: ‘Am I lovable?’ ‘Do I have value and something to offer?’ ‘Will I fit in?’ Will I have the courage to change my thinking and my ways for the better? Will I have the courage to face God and all that, that may change?
God is tender and he does offer comfort and he is always calling us home to live in the company of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit: to live in the safe precincts of that triune relationship. There is nothing more comforting than to know that Jesus is in me through his Holy Spirit, and I am in him as he is in the Father. Intimacy so deep, so tender so comforting that, ‘though devils all the world should fill, they cannot overpower us.’ (Martin Luther, ‘A Mighty Fortress is our God’)
THE REWARDS OF A LIFE AT HOME WITH GOD
The rewards of knowing God are too many to list but a few pertinent ones are:
- To know the power of forgiveness for us and to learn to exercise that glorious and gracious power to forgive others. Forgiveness is healing – of individuals, of friendships and of nations.
- To know the eternal safety and genuine comfort of God not the fake safety and comfort of mere money and gluttony. The false promises of this world.
- To know our own great worth and the value of our contribution to others as our acts of worship, as the temple of our hearts are rebuilt. Jesus said that his food was to do the things his father appointed him to do. We are spiritually, emotionally and physically sustained through loving service. Through consistent and persistent loving service, communities are built, and its members are sustained.
There is so much to the wonders of God that listing them will take your entire lifetime.
The Babylonian Jews eventually returned to Israel. They rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, the city of the Great God, and re-established the temple for corporate worship and to re-establish the economy that revolved around it. Community was rebuilt and its members sustained.
So, what about us. For many people COVID has been an exile from friends and family. Perhaps it has accentuated the rift between them and God. Some of us live in dispute with our friends, family and co-workers and feel as if we are in captivity to the pain of broken relationships with its accompanying guilt and shame. We feel far from God, but he is trustworthy and he always near and always calling us home.
What about our church communities? Have we drifted culturally toward Babylon, toward worldliness? Maybe the culture has been worldly for generations and we haven’t even noticed. Because we haven’t noticed we haven’t examined. The longer we are away from the heart of God the less capacity we have to clearly examine ourselves and our communities.
So, God is calling to me and to you. He’s calling to my congregation, Living Faith and to congregations everywhere, to return to his tenderness and comfort, to his heart. When we are close to his heart people become close to ours.
Finally, Corrie ten Boom, who helped her father and sisters hide many Jews for the Nazis during WWII said, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”
Go Home and know God.
FOR MONDAY
- What are your obstacles to going Home – however you define that?