The Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, The Love of God, and The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you All. Amen.

Isaiah 64:1 “Oh, that You would tear open the heavens and come down, That the mountains would quake at Your presence— 2 As fire kindles brushwood, as fire causes water to boil—To make Your name known to Your adversaries, That the nations may tremble at Your presence! 3 When You did awesome things which we did not expect, You came down, the mountains quaked at Your presence. 4 For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, Nor has the eye seen a God besides You, Who acts in behalf of one who waits for Him. 5 You meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness, Who remembers You in Your ways. Behold, You were angry, for we sinned, We continued in our sins for a long time; Yet shall we be saved? 6 For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us wither like a leaf, And our wrongdoings, like the wind, take us away. 7 There is no one who calls on Your name, Who stirs himself to take hold of You; For You have hidden Your face from us And have surrendered us to the power of our wrongdoings. 8 But now, Lord, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter, And all of us are the work of Your hand. 9 Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord, Nor remember wrongdoing forever. Behold, please look, all of us are Your people.” (NASB)

In Japan, there’s a centuries-old ceramic art called kintsugi (kin-SUE-gee). It’s the art of mending and remaking broken pottery. The technique is to take a lacquer or epoxy and mix it with the dust of a precious metal, usually gold, silver, or platinum. The mixture is then applied with extravagant care along the edges of the broken shards to glue the object back together. The resulting artwork ends up veined in elaborate webs of precious shine.

The idea behind the technique is to work with and transform the brokenness of an object, rather than to try to hide its scars. The genius of the art is that it often makes the artwork more beautiful—and more valuable— than the object was originally.

Isaiah 64, the Old Testament lesson for this First Sunday in Advent teaches us that there is in the Christian Faith a kind of theological kintsugi. The present thing must be broken into pieces, so that the new and greater thing can come about.

The Old Testament reading opens with an appeal, a petition from Isaiah to God to bring down the terrible, to break further that which is already broken. “Oh, that You would tear open the heavens and come down, That the mountains would quake at Your presence …To make Your name known to Your adversaries, That the nations may tremble at Your presence!”

So much for “Silent Night.” So much for the “Prince of Peace,” as people understand the title “Prince of Peace.” So much for joy, love, hope, and any other advent theme you might find on banners this time of year. On this the First Sunday in Advent, Isaiah 64 hardly sounds like a Christmas greeting you’d want to put on a Christmas card. “The Lord God is coming and He’s bring the terrible with Him! Merry Christmas.”

There is a great myth about God. It’s a myth that has taken root and grown in the modern era of Christianity. It’s the myth is that God is never the cause of anything terrible. Rather God is the One who rescues us from the terrible. We just celebrated that kind of thing on Thanksgiving.

The idea that God can be both the One Who causes disasters and tumult and is also the One Who stands between disaster and tumult doesn’t make sense to most people, the modern confused Christian especially.

In times of hardship and threat we know what we want. We want safety for our loved ones and ourselves. It’s easy to pray in the midst of a storm. The tornado sirens goes off and as the storm bears down people head to the basement and pray.

But what if God is the One bringing the storm, tearing open the heavens, and making the mountains quake in fear? What if God is the storm? Then what do we do? For what do we pray?

The Old Testament lesson for this morning (Isaiah 64:1-9) is a plea for God to bring down the terrible and not just to the terrible on people we deem to be terrible themselves, but to bring down the terrible on all people everywhere.

Verse one begins with a kind of cosmic and terrifying invocation, then proceeds to give the reason for the call to “tear open the heavens” and cause the mountains to tremble. “Oh, that You would tear open the heavens and come down, That the mountains would quake at Your presence . . . (Why? Because) 3 “When You did awesome things which we did not expect . . . 4 For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear…” The people weren’t (and I’d add aren’t listening to the words of God. They think they know better. They think they know what love is. They think they know what God is like. They think they’re good people.

The first part of Isaiah’s prayer puts one in mind of the argument between Job and God. “Why have all these terrible things come to pass against me,” Job wants to know. God thunders back, “Who is this who darkens the divine plan By words without knowledge?… Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding, Who set its measurements?…On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone.” (Job 38:2-6)

Isaiah calls upon the Lord God to bring the down the terrible for cause. The unfaithful many have ignored and forsaken the God who made the heavens and the earth. So Isaiah prays that the Lord God would act and deliver justice on behalf of the faithful few. 5 “You meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness, Who remembers You in Your ways.”

After calling on God to tear the place apart, Isaiah gives short summary (vv. 4-5) of the history of Yahweh’s covenant and humanity’s failure to keep it. “4 From days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, Nor has the eye seen a God besides You, Who acts in behalf of one who waits for Him. . . Behold, You were angry, for we sinned, We continued in our sins for a long time.”

The prophet Isaiah began this text by praying to God that He would act on behalf of the righteous, that God would manifest His anger toward those terrible unfaithful people, but then suddenly there’s a shift, actually it is a double shift second part of the reading.

In the first half of the prayer Isaiah is praying, singular. Isaiah prayed for God to act on behalf of the righteous, but suddenly we go from one prayer (singular) to the pray-ers (plural) who declare themselves to be unrighteous.

So the righteous one who prays that God would tear open the heavens and shake the mountains becomes the unrighteous ones who deserve God’s judgment too. From singular to plural and from the righteous to unrighteous.

When Isaiah prayed, “O God, that you would tear open the heavens and come down,” he’s praying that the storm of God would come down upon the whole sorry lot of us; foe and friend alike. The whole scene pits nation against nation, neighbor against neighbor, family against family. It is chaos and a chaos brought about by God Himself.

One English translation of verse 5 translates the Hebrew this way; “Because you hid yourself we transgressed.” The verse recognizes a truth about human nature. When God is hidden or absent we become worse. There is a Latin phrase scholars like to use when speaking of the hiddeness of God. “Deus Absconditus,” God is hidden and when God hides Himself it seems to us that He is ignoring us. As it turns out, the moment God takes Himself out of the picture, we all almost literally go to hell in a handbasket. Thus Isaiah’s question at the end of verse 5. “Shall we be saved?”

When God hides Himself our situation becomes more hopeless. Verse 6 “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us wither like a leaf, And our wrongdoings, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on Your name, Who stirs himself to take hold of You; For You have hidden Your face from us And have surrendered us to the power of our wrongdoings. ” (Is 64:6-7)

Isaiah and his fellow petitioners are offering here what every person, Christians especially ought to offer up God when we enter into His presence, namely a confession of own sins, weaknesses, and hopelessness. The tearing open of the heavens is not only a cosmic event for everyone and because of everyone, it is also for and on account of me. “We all fade like a leaf” and we all have “surrendered to the power of our wrongdoings.”

Advent is all about the coming of the Lord God. It’s about all of the ways in which He has come to us, continues to come to us, and will come to us on the Last Day, Judgment Day. This will be the day when He will tear open the heavens and the mountains will fall into the sea and the great and terrible day of the Lord will come.

What we have before us this morning in the Old Testament lesson is Isaiah’s version of what Joel was given to see and write in Joel 2:1-2, “Blow a trumpet in Zion, And sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, For the day of the Lord is coming; Indeed, it is near, 2 A day of darkness and gloom, A day of clouds and thick darkness.”

Strange as it might be for the First Sunday in Advent, we just prayed a more polite version of the Isaiah 64 prayer in the collect assigned for this morning. Think about what we just prayed. (Take a look at the collect on the back of your readings.) “Stir up, we implore You, Your power and come that by Your protection we may be rescued from the threatening perils of our sins, and be saved by Your mighty deliverance.” Why are we praying for God’s mighty deliverance? We are praying for God’s mighty deliverance because of God’s mighty judgment.

The pottery that is broken will be transformed into something greater and more beautiful. 8 “But now, Lord, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter, And all of us are the work of Your hand. 9 Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord, Nor remember wrongdoing forever. Behold, please look, all of us are Your people.”

Isaiah teaches that God has not simply created us, but God’s ongoing creative activity in the world involves both redemption and sanctification too through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is what God the Father did to God the Son in His life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Jesus was beaten, broken, bloodied, murdered, and forsaken by God the Father so that God the Father could perform a theological kintsugi on Easter morning. On the third day, Jesus emerged from the tomb with a glorious body. 1 Corinthians 15:42-43; “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.”

But the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit shapes us and makes into His vessels, His pottery who bear the image of God the Son. The triune God mends our brokenness and failures—the scars of sin done both by us and to us—into an ever-greater whole that is always more than the sum of parts.

He is the potter. We the clay. Isaiah uses a simple and a beautiful image to illustrate the Lord God’s work in us. The very hand of God molding and shaping our lives. God is molding and shaping us into vessels that will pour out His very grace and blessing into the lives of others.

For the Christian the great and terrible day holds no fear for us. For as Isaiah reminds the Lord God in the last verse of this morning’s lesson. “All of us are Your people.”

AMEN

May the Peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Advent 1, 2020 – God Brings the Terrible

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