Sermon text: Isaiah 66:10–14
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is well known for three simple words: “God is dead.” He first wrote those words in 1882, convinced that Christianity was no longer a plausible religion and the church soon to be an obsolete institution. He had no room for Christian faith or Christian morals, and the church, he held, was all destined to collapse. The atheist thought he saw the handwriting on the wall. As people of faith, we can recognize the irony.
Isaiah was given to foresee a day, 100 years in the future, when Jerusalem would be dead: overrun, conquered, and left in ruins. Yet he could also look further down the road and cry out loud and call the people to rejoice with her in joy — all you who mourn over her. Her is Jerusalem.
A great many Christians, especially in times of trouble, labor under a misunderstanding. You see, the Christian religion did not spring forth from the womb. It sprang forth from the cross and the resurrection on Easter morning. God was dead, crucified, and buried on Good Friday. But the crucifixion did not win victory over the Lord of life. The third day arrived. The stone rolled away. The Conqueror of death emerged victorious, living, and life-giving to those who believe. The Christian faith arises out of suffering and death, not grand displays of power, parades, shows, concerts, and the like.
All around the globe, people gather Sunday after Sunday in the presence of the living Lord, who feeds them His body and blood, convicts them of sin, comforts them with His word of grace, and leads us and them to everlasting life. Nietzsche said, “God is dead,” but the church declares, “He is risen indeed!”
It’s a strange thing that Isaiah says in the first verse of the Old Testament lesson. He calls upon the people to “rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her.” Now in 586 — this, by the way: Isaiah is about 100 years dead by the time Babylon invades and annihilates, or destroys, Jerusalem and the temple. So in 586, when the job is done, both the Babylonians and the Hebrews look upon a city that is left in ruins: a land filled with rubble, broken rocks, and the like. The prophetic words of the prophets had come to pass. The Lord God had destroyed the temple and the holy city of Jerusalem as punishment for His children’s idolatry and unfaithfulness.
But when Isaiah is given a prophetic vision those decades earlier, he looked with eyes of faith, and he saw Jerusalem as God’s people — not as a place of bricks and stones and mortar — but rather the true Jerusalem was the children of the heavenly Father. He understood that where Jesus the Messiah was, there was life and comfort and reason to rejoice, regardless of what the human eye sees and the human body experiences. Where there is Jesus, there’s comfort. Thus, he issues forth the call: “Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her.”
You see, mourning is indeed an appropriate reply and response for death, for troubles, for pains and sorrows, for illness and the like. Mourning suggests death. And indeed, a faithless observer would quickly conclude that God had abandoned Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and had abandoned the people of Israel long before. Hope had died. So, a call to rejoice with Jerusalem seems a bit out of place to the Hebrews who first heard and read the prophet Isaiah. It’s like a call from your pastor to urge you to rejoice in the worst circumstances that have befallen you. It just doesn’t seem right. Rather, words of mourning should be applied, not words of joy and celebration. But faith calls on the Christian to see past what is clearly visible and obvious and trust in that which God says is true.
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” — Hebrews 11:1 teaches us. In our text this morning, Isaiah calls for joy over the rubble that is Jerusalem. He calls for joy four different times in one verse, employing three different Hebrew terms which mean joy, rejoice, and be glad. A joy that replaces mourning suggests that there’s something no less miraculous than a resurrection occurring before their very eyes. And indeed, the fulfillment of this prophecy will be built on the resurrection of the one and only true Israelite: Jesus.
Now, if you visit Israel today, you will see that in certain parts of the country, there are the ruins of war. And if you know where to look, you can find Jerusalem in total ruins. Now, there is of course the modern functioning city of a large population, but the Jerusalem that lay in ruins is beneath that city, and in some cases it’s been carefully excavated so that tourists and archaeologists will have access to layer after layer of Jerusalem’s ruins. You can walk on a 2,000-year-old step at which Jesus sat and taught His disciples. The tunnel that King Hezekiah cut beneath the city to reroute water 700 years prior is still there and still accessible. You might be able to touch the magnificent stones, the size of school buses, that formed the great platform for God’s temple.
Noticeably absent, however, is any trace of the temple itself. That building which God once called His heaven, His earthly dwelling place, is entirely gone, completely destroyed. As Jesus said, “Not one stone will be left upon another.” You see, that temple was built originally by King Solomon. God inhabited it, claimed it as His own, with a thick cloud — so thick and dense and real that no priest could even enter. Isaiah had Solomon’s temple in mind when he wrote: God was present with His people. God was there. But the temple did not last. Once destroyed, the ruins aren’t even there to see.
And even though the temple was the center of Isaiah’s world, he knew its days were numbered. Already in chapter 64 of Isaiah, he predicted a day when Israel would be desolated and the temple would cease to exist. 64:10–11: “Your holy cities have become a wilderness; Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and beautiful house, where our fathers praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins.”
Isaiah knows that those who love Jerusalem will one day mourn the loss of their grand city and their holy temple. But as he looked over the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it — as Jesus said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Behold, your house is forsaken” — Jerusalem in the day of Jesus still had a temple, but rejected the God to whom the house belonged. And so it wouldn’t be long before the temple itself was destroyed, with such thoroughness in 70 A.D. that not even ruins remain, and God dwelt in that temple no more.
Now, Isaiah’s message is much more than buildings. He speaks about much more than streets and stones and mortar. Jerusalem, for Isaiah as he looks upon it, is first and foremost you: God’s children, the baptized children of God, in Old and New Testament. The greatest sorrow for Jerusalem is not what happened to its buildings, but what happened to its people. The temple was the place of God’s presence. And if the presence of God left His people, then what else was there to do, they thought, than to mourn? Yet Isaiah calls us in the midst of desolation to joy. God gives him the ability to see with his eyes of faith, to see beyond the walls that were torn down and the stones that were broken and the rubble that was scattered abroad. Isaiah does not see a city of ruins. He sees the city of God’s people. Most importantly, he sees God dwelling among and within His people. He sees the church, and he rejoices in you.
When Isaiah speaks of Jerusalem, he’s not describing a city made of buildings or bound to a particular geographical location. Isaiah is describing the city where God dwells and the people in whom God dwells and lives. With eyes of faith, Isaiah sees God pouring out His Spirit on all the nations, sweeping up Gentiles into the flooding stream of His grace and bringing them into His holy Christian church. Isaiah looks at a new Jerusalem, a Jerusalem whose inhabitants are spread all around the globe and do not have a temple — for they are the temple of God. Isaiah sees God dwelling once again with and within His people, and that’s reason for rejoicing.
What do you see when you see God’s church? When people mention the word, it’s tempting to picture just buildings. Every city in this country has a skyline pierced by steeples that are busy keeping vigil over empty pews now, or buildings repurposed for coffee shops and event venues. But the church is not the buildings. It’s not the programs and the ministries, as we use those terms to describe the work of the church. The church is the people. It’s God’s people gathered around His word and sacraments, hearing the word and receiving the sacraments for the remission of their sins. If we look with a natural eye, the view is not particularly grand. For the pews are populated with people like you: sinners. And sin is not just a theological concept. It’s a brutal fact of life with deadly consequences. It’s a tongue that does damage. A temper that flares. Eyes that wander. Hands and feet that pursue selfish gain, leaving hurt and harm in their wake.
When we turn our eyes into the pulpit, we find that the place is occupied by a sinner: weak and heavy laden. The image of God is obscured by the flesh of man. The natural eye sees little more than the ruins of God’s temple. But Isaiah sees through the lens of faith, and he says, “Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her.”
Isaiah goes on to speak of Jerusalem as a nursing mother, and then invites God’s children to nurse and be satisfied: verse 11 and 12, “That you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast; that you may drink deeply with delight from her glorious abundance.” “For thus says the LORD: ‘Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her hip, and bounced upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.’” In verse 13, by the way, Isaiah describes us with a Hebrew word that is not a word for child or infant. It’s a word used to delineate a man. “As one whom his mother comforts” — this comfort we need, and we do not outgrow it.
Isaiah looks over the rubble of life and sees reason for rejoicing. He looks at both sinners and saints, children of God who have the forgiveness of sins and the person and the work of the promised Messiah to come, Jesus the Christ. So the questions are rather simple for you: when you look at communion, do you see the wafer of bread or the body of Christ? Do you see a liturgical routine drawn from an old dusty book? Or do you see a vibrant conversation with God playing out in ageless words and rituals? When you look to your right or your left, do you see just another sinner, or do you see one for whom Christ has died and who is truly, in God’s eyes, a saint? Do you see a pastor reciting prayers of a community of believers? Or do you see a conversation between God and man, where we speak and He listens? Do you see a place, a building, or do you see people when you hear the word “church,” like Isaiah did? Do you see fussy grandchildren — not to point out anybody in particular — or grandchildren causing trouble in a service? Or do you see a saint in training? Do you see your obligation to perform for God one hour a week in church? Or do you see God Himself present in your midst, pouring out the gifts of the means of grace for the forgiveness of sins?
You see, Jesus is here. He is not dead. For He said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” Jesus is here in the water and the word that set you apart as a beloved child of the heavenly Father. Jesus is here speaking to you in Scripture and the readings and the liturgy and the sermons. Jesus is here listening to your prayers. He is here: His body and blood forgiving your sins and granting you life everlasting. Jesus is here, and where Jesus is, there is life.
It’s no wonder that when Isaiah looked with eyes of faith upon the rubble of Jerusalem, what he saw was the glorious band of all the apostles and the prophets and all of the saints made in the church. Isaiah sees a mother nursing life into her children as he looks at the church. And God’s children are sustained year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation, century after century, through the means of grace and His written and spoken word. Jesus invites us to drink deeply with delight from her glorious abundance. “Her” here is the church.
The greatest joys in life are found not at parties and parades or Sunday morning rock concerts, but in the wonder of grace in the midst of the rubble of life: tears of joy that sin has been forgiven. Jerusalem is no city of ruins. Jerusalem, the church of Jesus Christ, is alive and well and bringing life into the world. God is not dead. God is there in the world. And God is here in this church, extending His grace to you in the midst of the ruins of your life. And the greatest of all the gifts is the forgiveness of your sin. For where there is the forgiveness of sins, there is by necessity life eternal. Your sins are forgiven. Rejoice in your ruins. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.