Isaiah 43:1-21 & II Corinthians 5:11-21
06/28/2020
Entering into this creation and really for as long as we are able to hold on to our childhood, the world can be a wondrous and wonderful place, a place that seemingly first forth with the colors of spring and Autumn, the roar of oceans, the constant buzz of cicadas at sunset. Moreover, in the playfulness of our youthful minds, we can see and perceive angels and sprites moving around us, as the evening breeze would tell us stories. The world could be a vast, unexplored wonderland where each day brings something new to be explored. The stand of pines across the street could become a castle or a fort or a camp as the ancient voices of persons, cultures, tribes, long since past who roamed in these exact locations filled your ears and your imagination. To dwell in God’s good creation could mean simply walking outside and into the dew of an early morning, taking time to observe the sunrise as without fail it greeted you each day, or feeling the droplets of a late spring rainstorm replenishing the earth with the necessary ingredients for new growth until whole cycle began again. And in the midst of your childhood, you had no doubt that all of this, all that was alive and around you, was a gift from God—the Glory of God was as visible as the noonday sun and all around you were little reminders of resurrection and grace. This was, of course, many moons before the reality of adulthood began to swallow time with greater and increasing avarice, before the gift of children of your own, before the mundane predictability of the world, the growing knowledge of the causation that made things occur in the manner in which the way they did, a Faustian bargain that would make you more worldly even while it progressively blinded you to the movement of the spirt in your very midst. Before all of that, we were each children and we had faith like a child. And all of this came as a gift, a gift from God, from Spirit, but also a gift from those who had come before us. Our parents and theirs before them, our elders in the faith and theirs before them. It is the debt that is passed on from generation to generation, that those that have eyes to see and ears to hear, teach those that come after them of the magic and mystery that is carried on the breeze, of the faith that can still move mountains, of the light that shines in the darkness even when it seems like the darkness is going to swallow it whole, to be not afraid because God is always with us, always in us, always propelling us into a more just future, a more peaceful future, a more loving future.
Our faith is the basis in which we encounter the world, in which we encounter God’s creation and it is both life-shaping and life altering. Faith is both transformative and solidifying, comforting and challenging. It is the most important thing that we can share as a people and as humanity. It gives us both hope to stare into the most bleak of circumstances and the vision to believe that we can alter those circumstances in a way that is more just, more peace-fulled, more loving. And faith when we are tempted to cling to certainty or retreat to apathy. Asserts itself when the siren song of security denies the presence of mystery and unknowing. Asserts itself when every broken instinct is to find amity solely in our tiny communities in which everyone agrees with everyone, speaks the same language, sees the world in roughly the same way, believes the same. Asserts itself when we cast our eyes across the expanse of the world and in response to pain we try to retreat to the cold comfort of apathy in which we tell ourselves that we care little for so many of the “least of these” in our midst. In our sinfulness, in our brokenness, too often, we withdraw into our little enclaves of sameness, letting the rest of the world fend for itself. But that’s not at the heart of religion, nor humanity, nor faith. True faith, always, always, always, lifts you up from the muck and the mire and sends you out into the world to do the same for another. It always reassures you with that still small voice reminding you of the presence of God, of the love of God, and then calls on you to do the same for the next one that you meet, and the next, and the next. Faith is always in motion, never settled, never satisfied but rather always bouncing back and forth between comfort and challenge, comfort and challenge. And we know this. Our language, our hymns, which we no doubt miss, our actions in worship testify to the need for a faith that is a comfort. As countless hymns attests, faith allows people to face uncertain times with assurance. “There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.” “Precious Lord take my hand, lead me on, let me stand, I am tired. I am weak. I am worn.” “Blessed Assurance Jesus is mine, oh what a foretaste of glory divine.” Faith speaks to people when they reach the darkest part of the dark night of the soul lifting them up when they cannot lift themselves up and that is powerful. And yet, faith does not allow persons to grow stagnant, does not leave people in the same place for their whole life, does not allow a person to rest in their comfort. And countless hymns speak to this reality as well. “Open my eyes that I may see glimpses of truth thou hast for me. Place in my hand the wonderful key, that will unlock and set me free. Silently now I wait for thee, ready my God thy will to see. Open my eyes illumine me, spirit divine.” “Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee.” Be thou my vision of Lord of my heart, naught be all else to me, save that thou art. Thou my best thought by day or by night, waking or sleeping thy presence my light.” True faith comforts and challenges. And yet, it is never easy. In our tradition we know and believe that it is never easy to be a follower of Jesus. And we are reminded that Jesus spent many times stealing away for prayer and meditation. Stealing away for time to show weakness and struggle before God. Stealing away to pray that things might not be the way they had to be. For even Jesus found challenge in his faith and sought comfort from the God of the cosmos. Knowing this, we, as those who came after Jesus, who still seek to be his hands and feet, too, know of the struggles to be faithful in a world that challenges us everyday. It is not easy to remain hope-filled even when the despair of the world is, at times, palpable and heavy. It is not easy to maintain a vision for the future in which the world will be a more just place, a more peace-filled place, a more holy place, and yet that is what we as believers are called to do. In a world of bombs and bullets it is not easy to maintain a spirit of peace. In a world of haves and have-nots it is not easy to realize and live into the common humanity that we all possess--the common source of life and the common destination that we each share, it is not easy. It is not easy to move out of our comfort zone and into places of uncertainty and newness, to be the vessels for God’s love and movement, to be the enactors of the work of the spirit of God. To be, to use the traditional language, the hands and feet of Jesus in this world. But, that is what our faith calls us to embody. And we are more needed than ever.
In the passage from the Hebrew scriptures for this morning we encounter the prophet Isaiah returning with a portion of the Hebrew nation back from the exile in Babylonia. And it’s not difficult to envision this scene if we try. The Hebrews are returning to their homes after generation of being in captivity in a strange land where they spoke a strange language and worshipped strange god and had strange customs and practices and foods. And because they were in exile, they really had no idea when or if they would ever return back to the comfort of their own lands and houses and farms and things. And of course when they did return the whole of the nation must have felt like it had been ransacked and their crops, which had been fallow for longer than anyone could know, barely resembled land that could be used to grow anything but weeds. Their holy spaces desecrated. Their marketplaces robbed of whatever had any value. The whole of the country looked decimated and defeated as the bedraggled bunch of Hebrews came back to reclaim whatever had been left of what was there before. And to the untrained eye, you would be forgiven if you thought there was nothing to left there to give you any sense of hope, or comfort side of faith. And so it is here that the author of this portion of Isaiah offers a new vision for the faithful of Israel. Thus says the Holy One, “I have redeemed you! I have called you by name, you are mine! If you walk through fire I will be there, if you go through the rivers you will not be overwhelmed, I will be there. You are precious in my sight, I love you.” These are the words of God through the prophet and I can’t help but wonder, if, meandering his way around the streets of Jerusalem, if standing on street corners proclaiming the goodness, the faithfulness of God, if hanging around the temple for times of prayer and contemplation, study and sacrifice, I can’t help but wonder if in the midst of all that, Isaiah sounded like a complete and utter fool as he was offering these words to people who are surveying a land that has been sacked by invading forces but just barely. I can’t help but wonder if the whole scene was a bit absurd, preaching about God’s love while people are returning from exile to their homes to find them in ruin, to find all that they had of value had been ransacked and stolen. I wonder what people thought when they heard about God’s protection when they had just been through the worst that an invading army could offer. Yet, here is Isaiah, moving through the heart of the city and saying, “Behold. God is still God, and God is about to do a new thing. God is still God and God is about to turn the page of history once again, God is still God and God’s protection still stretches over God’s chosen people, even when they cannot perceive it, even when they do know to ask for it, even when they turn away from it. God’s love remains a protection. And so don’t remember the former things, that is don’t remember your time in exile, your time of estrangement from your family and friends, your pain and frustration, but be in the now, and in the now, God is doing a new thing. And it is a new thing that is springing up around you, if you only have but ears to hear and eyes to see, if you only have but a faith to perceive.” Faith is comfort in the midst of times of travail.
In our second scripture passage for the morning, we read from a letter from Paul to the church in Corinth and you have to know that Paul feels some amount of frustration with the people there. There is talk about abhorrent behavior and a diminishing faith both in the message of Paul and the revelation of Jesus and so Paul writes seeking both to chide those in the community of believers but also to remind them what their ultimate mission is in the world. To evidence to the people of Corinth that they are called to be co-creators with God in the future of the world. To evidence the call of the faithful to reach out to the other in their midst, to reconcile with the other in their midst, and to ultimately take part in that which is ongoing across the expanse of time -- the reconciliation of the world and of all creation back to God. And his first charge to them is to lose the eyes of separation that plague so many of us today. “We regard no one from a human point of view, even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” Imagine how alive the world would feel, how lovely the world would appear, how holy it all is if we were to see each person as a new creation, to see each person as Christ-like, to see each person as Christ. To see the world not as the broken mess that it often appears with chaos and confusion, hunger and strife, but as beautiful, created good, sufficient for the living of this day and the next, and every inhabitant: woman, man, Greek, Jew, Black, white, slave, free, Muslim, Jew, rich, poor, healthy, disabled, whole, addicted, tax collector, tax payer, Pharisee, Roman, Samaritan, American, Mexican as Jesus in our midst. A tiny explosion of God’s grace imparted to creation as a gift to creation, your brother and your sister.
But Paul doesn’t leave it there and neither lets his original readers or those of us some 2,000 years later off the hook that easily. He tells the folks in Corinth, he tells us today, that in the same manner in which the Holy One was at work reconciling the world to holiness, that work that was begun at the beginning of time, that was made manifest in the life, death, new life, and resurrection of Jesus, that work that God began and continues each moment of everyday, that is our job as well. We are ambassadors of Christ, with God working through us. And that work of reconciliation that was begun at the beginning, that continues to this day, making us the beloved, the children of God.
And so, we see in these scriptural passages for the day, the way in which faith is both a comfort to those being challenged, and a challenge to those who have grown too comfortable. Faith says that in the newness of Christ offered to every person is a calling to spread the light of life in every dark corner of the world. To reach out to those lost in a haze of misery and despair and offer a reassuring cup of coffee, or kind word, or love, or grace. Grace heaped upon grace upon grace.
I am fairly certain that when each of us turned the calendar from 2019 to 2020 that we didn’t realize that before the year really even got up to speed that the collective wheels of the nation and the world would come completely off our collective car. I’m fairly certain that none of us thought we would walk the final few steps of the Lenten journey from the security of our own home. I’m certain that no one thought that Easter would come and go with much fanfare or celebration or extended family or food. I’m certain that no one thought that the very air that we breathe was going to feel like a threat to our safety and security. Moreover, I’m sure that no one thought that all the systems upon which we ground our lives were going to collapse one-by-one under their own weight, until few people know what’s going to happen over the course of a long weekend and no one can possibly predict the next week with any certainty. I’m sure that no one thought that the racial system of the nation would have the sort of reckoning that it has had over the past month. I’m sure that when we turned the calendar from 2019 to 2020 folks thought that they, that we, were going to be able to live the lives that they had planned for themselves. And yet, here we are. Here we are and there is much rebuilding to be done. Our systems of industry, our systems of education, our systems of healthcare, systems of food supply, of transportation, sports, and entertainment, and worship. All must be rebuilt, largely from the ground up. And there are no organizations of which I am aware that are better equipped to cut through the all the brokenness, all the separation, all the nonsense and bring the message of the gospel to a world in desperate need of being redeemed again and anew. And that should excite us. That should propel us out of bed in the morning to ask, each new day, what’s next. That should infuse our faith and our faith tradition with a passion to be the hands and feet of the savior in whatever room, place, world that we find ourselves. That we speak with our words and show with our actions a faith that can still move mountains, that can still make the crooked straight, that can still repair the breach, that can still make a way out of no way, because the spirit is still blowing where she will, still passing over us like she did over the waters of chaos at the beginning of time, still moving all God’s children to slowly, incrementally, inexorably come back home to the God of our grounding.
And we can do it, we can do it because it is woven into the fabric of our tradition, just as it is in imbued in the DNA of our religion. Ours is a story of protest, of Martin Luther nailing 95 complaints on the door of the church in Wittenberg, of a faith that forged all our religious traditions with a message of comfort in the face of the struggle and challenge in the midst of complacency, a story that emerged both from the one who comforted an entire people with the words, “I have a dream” as much as the one who challenges all of us this day with cries of, “¡No mas! No more!” Never forget that the God that was in Jesus remains deep in all of us on this day, laughing with us when we laugh, mourning with us when we cry, and always challenging us to shatter the hold that sin has on all of us turning brokenness into holiness, demanding that we choose peace and love over hatred and violence, and always calling us to better live out our faith in God. Now and always. There is much work to be done, let's get to it. Glory be to God in the highest and on earth peace amongst all God’s peoples, alleluia, amen.
Image taken from: https://www.claudiocarvalhaes.com/sermons/life-lived-in-lights-shadows-and-darkness%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B-sermon-preached-at-duke-chapel/