The Hope We Sing

Isaiah 64:1-9

                Healing begins in pain.  Joy begins in sorrow.  Hope begins in Lament.

                It is Advent and soon we will be enjoying Christmas parties, Christmas carols, the lights, sounds, and smells of the ‘happiest time of the year.’ There will be mistletoe strung up for young (and not so young) lovers to kiss under.  There will be fires and egg nog and Christmas trees and sappy movies on TV.  People of all races, denominations, economic status and orientation will join their voices in singing Silent Night.

                But not today.  All of that will happen later.  Not today.

                Today as I sit the only singing I hear is the protesters in Ferguson, MO demanding to be heard.  The only fires I see are those burning up buildings in a once proud St Louis Suburb and the only decorations I see are the garish displays in department stores eagerly anticipating people to come and worship at their altars. What should be a beautiful and hopeful time of the year has turned into a parody of itself.

                And maybe that is why this reading from Isaiah is so appropriate for today.  Wheras the Old Testament readings for Advent are normally prophetic songs of coming happiness and joy, today’s text is a painful exploration of God’s absence and a lament over what has happened to the people of God.

                Isaiah lives in a time of deep turmoil where nothing is certain except disappointment, despair and destruction.  His nation has been attacked at every side and what was once a great and mighty kingdom is now destroyed and burned to the ground.  The Assyrians have come and attacked the people of Israel.  They have taken most of the kingdom off to captivity or dispersed it to the seven winds.  All that was left was the tiny city of Jerusalem, and even that is surrounded and almost brought to the place of destruction. 

                Jerusalem! The Holy City! Was burning and was under the threat of being completely and utterly destroyed.  How could such a thing happen? After all, Jerusalem was the Holy City! It was the city that YHWH lived in and from where he protected his people.  Had YHWH been defeated? Had YHWH abandoned his people?

                And that is the question that dominates this reading: where is God? Where is YHWH? Where is the Divine Presence that would come and take care of the people?

                Just before this passage, Isaiah sets the mood for it by stating: “We have long been like those who you do not rule, like those not called by your name” (Is 63:19).  We are not your people…you have forgotten us, left us, departed from us.  We are not special…even in your sight.

                And then there comes the great cry from Isaiah that opens this chapter: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence!” (Is 64:1).  What a great image! Oh God! Just tear it off and come down! Make yourself known! Be with us! Help us! Set things right!

                Isaiah looks back at history and knows that God has helped his people in the past by wonderful and mighty deeds.  So where is God? Where is He now? Why won’t he help? Why does he not care at the situation we now find ourselves in? This entire passage speaks of Isaiah’s pain…it is pain seeking understanding! WHERE IS GOD?

                Don’t we wonder the same thing too? WHERE IS GOD?

                We see a city burned to the ground – WHERE IS GOD?

                We watch as a twelve year old boy is shot by police – WHERE IS GOD?

                We watch as our loved one suffers with debilitating cancer – WHERE IS GOD?

                We watch as terrorists behead innocent people and kill thousands more – WHERE IS GOD?

                We struggle to make ends meet, give our children clothes and food, and we get further behind every day – WHERE IS GOD?               

                Does He not care? We know that he performed miracles all throughout the Biblical times.  He walked on water, gave sight back to the blind and raised the dead.  WHERE IS HE NOW AND WHY DOESN’T HE DO THESE THINGS ANYMORE?

                Now most of us wouldn’t think to ask these questions in church…because it may sound irreverent.  Others say that He does do these thing today and provide scanty and anecdotal evidence that cannot be verified.  But even if He does, he doesn’t do it on the grand scale that He did in the Bible.  He doesn’t part the Red Sea or raise the dead or provide food for the millions of people starving around the world.  

                We are not the only ones who think about this either.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who was imprisoned by the Nazis.  As he thought about this very problem, he came to a very different answer:

               God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him.  The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34).  The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually.  Before God and with God we live without God.  God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross.  He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.”

“

                In essence, God allows himself to be moved out to the corners of existence because that is where he can help us the most.

                But this may not help when we see Ferguson burn or hungry people struggling to find food or single moms struggling to find answers, but maybe it provides a reason. 

                This divine absence has its negative effects on the people.  Notice in verse 5: “you were angry and we sinned, because you hid yourself, we transgressed” (64:5). Perhaps it’s a notice that we don’t do well as a people without God, without the divine essence.  Because of this, we read, "we have all become like one who is unclean and our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.” (64:6).

                Now this is a happy tiding for the beginning of Advent, isn’t it? How come there are no Christmas carols about this?

                But there is truth in this.  Isaiah is looking at his community and he realizes that there is no one who is righteous, no one who is immune from the evil and no one who has it completely ‘right’.  But more than this, we all have our sins and we all participate in the evils of our community.  We are all, in a sense, part of the problem.

                In the reaction to Ferguson, I have noticed that there have been some who have tried to paint this into other people people’s problems.  This about ‘looters’ or ‘thugs’ or ‘police’ or….fill in the blank.  What they fail to realize is that what happened in Ferguson is indicative of the fact that our society is broken and that is because it is made up of broken individuals.

                We may never know the exact details of what happened in Ferguson.  Since there will be no trial, there will be no further chance to examine evidence.  But what we do know is that Ferguson reveals a major crack in our culture and in our society.  Our world is broken and we cannot always sing for joy when we see these cracks. 

                But this does not mean that there is no hope.  Isaiah begs and pleads with YHWH, “Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and not remember iniquity forever.  Now consider we are all your people” (64:8).  Even more desperate is the end of the chapter, “Our holy and beautiful house, where our ancestors praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins.  After all this, will you restrain yourself, O Lord? Will you keep silent and punish us so severely?” (64:11-12).

                The answer there is supposed to be a ‘no’ that we are expecting God to show up and answer his people and to reveal his presence to us once again.  Even though our world is a mess, even though our relationships are in tatters, even though our security has been breached and even though our economy is anemic…God is not done with us and He will be heard again.

                It may be easy for us to look at Ferguson and wonder where God is.  It may even be easy for us to dismiss his presence and say that he has abandoned us and this world…but this is not the whole story.

                Advent reminds us that even in the most ruined of places, in the most desolate spots in our lives, hope can still be sung and joy can still be found.

                Right now, things look pretty bleak for race relations in the United States…even and especially in the church.  Despite Paul’s insistence that there is neither Jew nor Greek (Gal 3:23), Sunday is the most racially divided day of the week.  The break down on opinions about Ferguson came down on racial lines with over 70% of white people believing that Michael Brown got what he deserved.  The posts on the internet range from borderline insensitive to downright offensive concerning race. 

                And yet, in spite of this…there is a sense of tremendous hope.

                Church groups are beginning to bring up the issue of race in their midst once more.  Church groups are responding and reaching out to those who have needs.

                Advent reminds us that just when things seemed their most desperate, God showed up.  After 400 years of not hearing from God, Israel could have easily abandoned their beliefs about God altogether.  Their kingdom was gone, tattered in ruins.  Yet in the midst of those ruins, in the most unlikely of places, God showed up and the world was never the same.

                As we look at the smoldering ashes of Ferguson, a world tattered and in ruins, dare we to hope that God may show up again this Advent…to change the world once more? 

“What are you Looking For”

            It was a dark time…a time of civil war.  There was not one region that was not affected by the war.  Life was in constant upheaval and people were displaced.  Smuggling was at an all-time high and crime was everywhere.  Hope was a foreign word that nobody believed in any more.  Death and destruction were at every door.  But there were whispers that something was coming, someone was coming to change the tide of the war and to usher in a new era of peace.  Finally, the long awaited savior arrives on the scene…a dirt farmer from a backwaters planet called Tatooine!

         

   You might be a little disappointed to realize that all your hopes and dreams are pinned on a whiny teenager who knows nothing about the Force, international politics or seemingly anything else of importance.

            Of course we know that in Star Wars, everything turns out to be great.  Luke Skywalker arrives on the scene and takes care of the evil Galatic Empire and restores order, peace and harmony to the universe.  But if it was real life, you might be a little skeptical at first…and nobody would blame you. 

            In fact, that is probably exactly how the Israelites felt about Jesus when he was first revealed to them.

            Imagine the scene, John the Baptist is in the wilderness and people are flocking to him.  There was something about John’s message that connected with people and they wanted to hear what he had to say.  So they came in throngs out to where John was preaching to come and be baptized in the Jordan River. 

            We don’t know exactly how long John was out in the wilderness, other than he was at least out there for about a year.  Day after day, people came and asked him questions, “Are YOU the messiah? Are you the one who is going to end the EXILE? Are you the one who is going to kick the Romans out and restore the holiness of the temple?” And every day, day after day, John would answer the question negatively.  “No…I am NOT the one.  There is ONE  who is coming after me…HE is the one.”  And so the very essence of John’s ministry has been to point to the one who is coming, to draw the attention away from himself and to point to the real Messiah, the one who is to establish the Kingdom of God.

            You can almost sense the anticipation that is building up in the people. 

            Today we build anticipation in a number of ways.  We use ‘Kickstarter’ campaigns to help people find out what is going with different people’s efforts.  We launch movie trailer campaigns sometimes two years out (Batman vs. Superman, anyone?) and we try to build as much suspense as we can.  Presidential campaigns start two years before the actual election and the news is already reporting polling data on potential races, before anyone has announced they are running!. 

            But none of these ways existed back in John’s time.  The only thing he had was preaching and word of mouth.  And this generally worked as people waited and waited and anticipation grew and grew.

            Finally, one day, he announces, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”(John 1:29).  In fact, so excited is the Gospel of John to announce this that it skips over the account of the baptism…John draws all of his attention on Jesus. 

            But for somebody in the first century, we might expect a little disappointment.  “Where? Where is he?  Is it that Nicodemus guy? He seems pretty rich and politically poised to take control! No? Is it that strong looking young Sadducee? No? What about that guy…over there? No?  Then who the heck is it?”

            Slowly the attention gets directed to a young carpenter from Nazareth.  Nazareth? Can anything good come from Nazareth?  I mean this is like saying that the greatest world leader is coming from Jersey…and we know nothing good comes from Jersey. Jersey is the land of Snooki, just as Nazareth is the home of nobodies. It’s the bad news bears of the ancient world.

            We can almost hear some whispers, “Really?  He doesn’t look like much.  He’s a carpenter?  How is a carpenter supposed to get rid of Rome? Or cleanse the temple?”  

            In fact, it doesn’t seem like it ‘stuck’ the first time.  Jesus left and comes back the next day only to hear John declare for the second time, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” (1:35).  It’s almost as if John is declaring, “um…look, wasn’t kidding…HERE is the Lamb of God!”

            Now, let’s talk about this phrase, “Lamb of God”.  It was probably not the leading description that people were expecting as they talked about the Messiah.  The Messiah was not supposed to be meek and mild like a lamb, but fierce and strong like a lion. When John announces that this messiah is the “Lamb of God”, they may have been confused. 

            A few years ago, there was a great movie called Gran Turino, starring Clint Eastwood.  We all know Clint…he’s the gunfighter, the angry cop, the loose cannon who is just waiting to get even with the bad guys.  I went into this movie knowing nothing other than it was a Clint Eastwood movie, and I was pumped. As I watched the bad guys take over his neighborhood and as I watched Clint make the ‘Clint’ face, I just knew that they were all in for it.  I kept waiting and waiting for Clint to take out his old Colt .45 and light up the night.  Except he didn’t.  This was CLINT EASTWOOD! Where is the gun fights.  Except there are none.  In the end, Clint Eastwood solved the situation without killing anyone or firing a single shot.  He turns into a lamb instead of the lion I was expecting.

           

We have a hard time when our real life heroes don’t live up to the hype.  We expect Tim Tebow to be the best quarterback in the NFL because the media hyped it so much.  We expect all the problems in the country to go away after Barack Obama becomes president.  We feel let down and disappointed when people reveal themselves to be different then our expectations. We lose heart and we lose hope and we find ourselves walking away from the very thing we had been wishing for.

            After this incident, Jesus is walking through the land, and two disciples of John begin to follow him.  They understand that John has called them to follow Jesus, and not John anymore.  So they follow after him. 

            Jesus, looking at them for a little bit, asks them, “What are you looking for?”

            Wow.

            What a loaded question. 

            Notice it’s not, “who are you looking for?” or “What do you want from me?” But rather the entire question is “What are you looking for?”

            I don’t know that if Jesus were to ask me that question that I would be able to give him an answer.  I might try.  I might list all the things that I find wrong with the world and suggest that He fix them.  I might say that I am looking for someone to take care of all things, or I might just say that I am looking for salvation.

            Or I might just go with what the disciples themselves answered.

            “Where do you live?”

            Now this too, is a pregnant question.  Where do you live might mean, “where are you, I’d like to come and visit.” It might also mean, I want to live with you and share my life with you.  More than likely, the latter is meant here because it seems that the disciples are asking to become Jesus’ disciples.  At that time, having a teacher meant more than ‘going to school’.  Students often lived their lives with their teachers and shared day to day existence and chores with them.

            What are you looking for?  I think this is a question that Jesus asks each and everyone one of us.  It’s an important question, especially important when we think of the person of Jesus.

            What are you looking for?

            Are you looking for somebody just to talk to? Are you looking for somebody to give you ‘salvation’ or are you looking for somebody that will help give meaning to life? 

            All of these questions depend on the view that we have of Jesus.

            Currently one of the nation’s bestselling books is on Jesus.  It’s called Zealot by Aslan Reza, a Muslim scholar.  His answer to this question is that Jesus was just another political revolutionary, a zealot

who wanted to free his country from the tyranny of Rome.

            The Fundamentalists have a different view of Jesus, one who has come to destroy the corrupting power of sin and to justify ‘those who believe.’

            The Liberals have a view of Jesus as one who is here to spread the gospel of universal love.

            The Catholics view Jesus as the King of Heaven and Earth, ruling over the universe from his throne in heaven and through his representatives here on earth.

            And the list goes on and on.  For almost every person, there is a different view of Jesus.  Each of us starts the Christian life from a different vantage point and from a different place.  We all begin following Jesus with a different goal in mind.  Some of us just want to get through the day, while others want a companion along the way. 

            When Jesus answered the disciples, he did not give them a direct answer.  This should not surprise us because after all, it is Jesus we are talking about.  Rather he gives them the cryptic message, “Come and see.” (1:39).

            It’s an invitation, not only to see where Jesus lives, but to see who He is.  It is an invitation to life with him. 

            You never really get to know somebody until you live with them.  We all have hopes and dreams about getting married and we dream about how perfect life will be with our intended spouse.  There are many couples, however, who had false and unrealistic expectations.  “What do you mean you leave your socks on the floor?  THERE’s A PERFECTLY GOOD HAMPER OVER THERE!”  We may discover that our spouse’s view on fun is not exactly our own.  We may discover that there are things that irritate us about our spouse.  We find out that this person is different than the one we expected to live with.

            The same is true with Jesus.  His invitation to us to ‘come and see’ will change our lives and our expectations. 

            We will see Jesus in action.  We will see both his call to the righteous and the unrighteous.  We will see him show up in the most unlikely of situations.  We will discover that His reactions are not OUR reactions to things on a great deal many of things.  We frankly discover that the Jesus of our expectations is quickly overshadowed by the Jesus of reality.

            Some of us will have a hard time and we will reject the real Jesus and construct for ourselves a false Jesus.  Others will fully embrace this idea and some will remained shell shocked for quite some time.

            The disciples quickly realize that although this Jesus did not match their expectations, He is in fact the true Messiah.  They come quickly to Peter and they announce to him, “We have found the Messiah”(1:41).

            When they announce that they have found THE messiah, the disciples are announcing that this person, this Jesus, is the one who is to bring about the Kingdom of God.  They don’t know how and they don’t know when and they aren’t sure of all the particulars, but this is the ONE.  This is the one in whom all the hopes and fears were be consolated.  This is the one who will bring harmony back to creation and this is one who will restore the nation of Israel.  All they have to do is ‘come and see.’

            So what are you looking for?  Who are you seeking?

            Jesus invites us all to come and see.  Jesus invites us all to follow him.  In doing so, our preconceptions and our expectations of Jesus will be shattered. We will be surprised, amazed, filled with wonder, at times hurt, maybe angry, but ultimately the reality of Jesus will far outweigh our conceptions of him. 

            My hope and my prayer is that in following Jesus, we will come to the place where we can say with the disciples, we have found the Messiah.

What's in a name?

Names are funny things.  One of the largest industries in today’s world is the whole baby-naming market.  We can hire consultants for just names and some communities try as hard as they can to make unique names or unique variations of names (Shaniqua or Cheerokee).  We may have lost our minds when it comes to the whole name thing.  We publish lists on the most popular baby names and we read books on the meanings of names. 

            We had fun naming our kids.  My wife and I know that we wanted our kids names to mean something, so that when our kids asked, “what does my name mean?” we could answer with something better than “because we liked it.” (When we found out we were having a boy, I tried to convince Marilee that we needed to name him ‘Luke’ so I could say, “Luke, I am your father!”).  We agonized over names and we tried to be political, so as to not have one side of the family represented too much. 

           I had wanted to name our oldest daughter, “Autumn.”  In fact that was going to be her name until the day she was born.  I had heard of the name “Abigail,” but I was pretty sold on “Autumn.”  But on the day she was born, when the nurse asked us what her name was, I responded, “Abigail.” Abigail is a Hebrew name, from the Bible, that means, “My Father’s Joy.”  It just seemed to fit her and the situation we now found ourselves in as a family.  We have similar stories for our other kids, and we each wanted their names to be something significant.

            Today’s readings are all about names…well, one name in particular….ok...two names in particular.

            Our gospel reading is the familiar story of Jesus’ birth, told in Matthew’s gospel (Matthew 1:18-25).  Matthew sets up the story for us perfectly by saying, “When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child…(Matthew 1:18).  So we have here a young couple (no matter how old Joseph is, he is still fairly young) and they are engaged to be married.  What a wonderful time of life!  Happiness and joy abound and there is to be a celebration soon!

            Except Mary is pregnant.

            Now many of us know we live in a time when this would not be a particular problem.  In fact, in our day and age, this seems to be a normal transpiring of events: Boy meets girl, boy and girl have sex, boy and girl exchange names, boy and girl move into together, boy and girl have child and then eventually maybe boy and girl get married.  This is not the time nor the place to discuss the merits or demerits of such a situation, just be it to say that this caused a problem for Joseph. 

            Ancient Jewish purity laws called for a woman to be a virgin when she was married.  The punishment in more of the rural areas like Nazareth, the punishment for not being a virgin was either divorce (which involved disgrace and abandonment) or death.   

            But, why? Why is this such an important deal? Was it just that they were uneducated hicks…you know the sort that watch Duck Dynasty and drink beer out of a can? Or was it just that they were prudes and wanted to stop everybody from having a good time?  Or were they just not enlightened like we are (I mean you can see how well our current sexual ethics are working out for us!) So what was it?

           

            Well, mainly it was about a name.  In a time before DNA and genetic testing, family lines were extremely important to people.  This was a society were everything, from the throne to property lines depended on your family heritage.  As we have moved further and further away from hereditary rights, bloodlines have become less important (as well as our sexual purity). Joseph couldn’t legitimately give his blessing to a child that wasn’t his and he would mess up all the genealogical charts for generations to come.

            So Joseph, a righteous man, now has  choice to make…how to get ‘rid’ of Mary.  Perhaps if he lived in Jersey or worked with the Sopranos, there would be a different option, but Joseph decides to divorce her secretly. 

            And most of us would probably agree with this decision…I mean, after all, what else could he do? He couldn’t marry her and care for her child, could he? He couldn’t really kill her, right? So a quiet divorce sounds like the best option.  Things are desperate for the young carpenter and his fiancée.  And Joseph probably felt that God had  abandoned him, that God was distant from him and that there was no help coming from God in this situation.

That is, until, God pipes in.

            The Angel appears and first tells Joseph “do not fear” (v. 20).  Interesting choice of words…it is not that he should not fear because of the angel, but that he shouldn’t be afraid to marry Mary and to raise her Son.  The reason for this is because “that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit…”(Mathew 1:21).  This is all done in fulfillment of Isaiah 7, which culminates with the baby’s name, “Immanuel”.

            Immanuel. 

            What a name!

            But what’s in a name anyway?

            To understand this prophesy, we need to go back to Isaiah 7.  As we return to this text, we have almost forget everything we know about it.  We have imported the Christmas story so much to it, that we go back to see what was happening.

            It was a desperate time for the nation of Israel.  The country was at war and was about to be destroyed.  King Ahaz was frightened the king of Assyria would overwhelm him and his people would be enslaved, killed, or deported.  He is looking at the end of his reign, the end of his kingdom and the end of the world, as far as he knows!

            Into this, Isaiah comes to him and says tells Ahaz to ask for a sign…any sign! But Ahaz is so scared that he won’t ask for a sign. So Isaiah give him a sign anyway:

Behold the virgin shall conceive and give birth and bear a son, and his name shall be Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14). 

            There has been a lot of discussion about this sign…does it present a miraculous sign? Is the “virgin” still a virgin when she conceives, etc?  I don’t necessarily don’t want to be dogmatic here, but I think we should take the following things from Isaiah.  First, the ‘virgin’ isn’t really a virgin.[1] There is nothing supernatural about the sign, as it is a reference to the time when the siege will be over.  Rather, the most important thing is the name:

            Immanuel

            But what’s in a name?

            Immanuel literally means “God with us!”  The message that Isaiah wants to present to Ahaz is that despite the overwhelming nature of the events that are happening around you, God is with you. God is with you and will deliver you, save you from your enemies.

            That’s a powerful message.  Because Ahaz probably felt that God had abandoned the people of Israel.  He probably felt that God was distant from him and that really there was no help coming from on high. 

            How many of us feel the same way?  How many of us feel that God has abandoned us, that He is distant from us and that he is not coming for us.  This time of year, I always think about those people who feel that God has completely ignored or abandoned.

            I think of Scott, who was desperately trying to put his family back together after his wives numerous affairs and disastrous financial decisions.  “I don’t know where to go from here,” he said as he sat in my study.  “I don’t know who I am supposed to be and I don’t know how I’m supposed to get there.  Where is God?”

            I think of Alice who has been struggling with alcohol for such a long time.  “All I want is one more drink and then I can stop.”  Rehab never quite worked for her and she keeps losing the battle with the bottle. She has lost her job, her family and her God (she thinks).

            I think of Jacob, a youth group member who is trying to find his identity.  He feels an attraction towards men and feels that his family would completely reject him if they ever found out the truth about him.  “I mean, God hates fags, right?”

            And yet, we see the truth played out before us in this reading.  Jesus, the Angel declares, is God with us.

            God with us in our joy.  God with us in our despair.  God with us in our victory and God with us in our defeat.  God with us in our struggles and God with us in our sin.  God with us when we are happy and God with us when we are sad.  God with us in the crowd and God with us when we are alone.  God with us in all aspects of our lives. 

            This is the Gospel for us today, that God is with us.  God was with Joseph in those dark moments of his life, to give him courage to live out God’s plan for him.  God is with us in all situations of our lives.

            The theologians like to use big words and the word they like to use for this is “incarnation”.  That the fullness of God has come to dwell in the baby in Bethlehem.  This was a miracle in the biggest sense of the word because what it says is that, “I, God of the universe, Creator of heaven and earth, the one who has the power and the ability to preserve and destroy any life I see, have come to live in your world.  I want to experience all things with you.  I want to experience your joys and your sorrow.  I want to be with you in all things.”

            One of the great promises of the Old Testament is that “I will walk among you and will be your God and you will be my people” (Lev 26:12).  But there was always something that got in the way.  The people sinned, God got mad and He sent the people into Exile.  But When Jesus comes, he announces to the World, “I am here! I am with you! I am walking among among you! (or as John says, I will ‘dwell’ among you”

            And this promise has no end.  It is no surprise that Matthew ends with Jesus’ promise, “I will never leave you nor forsake you, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).  Did you hear it? I am with you. 

            So what is in a name?

            First, we have a sign that God has not abandoned or forsaken his people.  God will never just cast us off to the winds.  That is a collective as well as an individual promise. 

            Second, we have knowledge that God is going through all things with us.  He is experiencing the joyous moments as well as the defeats with us.

            Third, we have a promise that God will never leave us or forsake us.  By coming in the person of Jesus as Immanuel, God has permanently identified with us.

            So no matter what you are going through this Advent period, no matter what joys and what sorrows you have during this period in life, remember that through it all, God is with us…God is with you…after all, it’s all in his name.

---

[1] The Hebrew of Isaiah 7:14 has hmlc (which means ‘young maid’ and could mean ‘virgin’) and the Greek of the LXX has  paqehnoj (which means virgin).  Matthew definitely has the LXX in view and it is clear that he indicates that Mary was a virgin throughout her lifr

When Jerusalem Burns

Lamentations 3:1-23

It was a bright beautiful end of summer afternoon…the kind that makes you want stay out forever and run and play in the grass and just enjoy life.  You can imagine the kind of anticipation that we had while we waited painfully for that school bell to ring and we could escape the shackles of an societal prison, the school.  When it finally rang, we bolted out of the school faster than a streak of lightening, each to their individual homes to frolick the last vestiges of summer.

The school bus never saw Kevin…and Kevin never saw the school bus.

In the blink of a moment, a young boy’s life was ended and a family’s world was destroyed.  I remember sitting in our classroom, trying to absorb the news that our friend and our classmate was gone, never to see him again.  His desk sat as an empty reminder of this lost life and as an awareness that life was so much more fragile than it had appeared to be.  We all understood the rules of the game: old people die, not young ones.  10 year old boys are not supposed to die…EVER.  And if they did, there was always some miracle, some new drug or some new medical power that could bring him back to life and everything was going to be alright, all the time.

I remember going to the viewing and seeing Kevin’s family.  What do you say to a family that is mourning the loss not only of their loved one, but of their future, of the world they once knew, and their entrance into a new world where things no longer make sense, where ‘God’ no longer operates in the rules they are accustomed to.  Somehow the words, ‘sorry for your loss’ when I finally managed to utter them out of my lips didn’t seem to help or even begin to address the issues that were going on.

What do you think when death and destruction haunt our doors? What do you do when your world crumbles around you and becomes a devastating mockery of the life you once knew? Where do you go when Jerusalem burns to the ground, never to be restored again?

\

This is much more than an academic question, and the answer has life and death consequences to it.

We live in the midst of suffering, sometimes more and sometimes less,  but the reality of suffering surrounds us and at times threatens to overwhelm us.  We see it in the death of children, the destruction of families, the scars of warfare, and the struggles of the sick.  We always don’t know what to do with it, and so at times in the Church we pretend that it doesn’t exist.  We put our church faces with our big smiles and we enter the door of the church and we pretend for a couple of hours that our suffering doesn’t exist, that we are happiest people on earth.  We are afraid, sometimes that the Church…or God…might see us in our weakness or in our struggles and we may be laid bare before it all.  We sing praise songs we don’t mean to ensure that nobody will discover the pain and the anger that all too close to the surface. 

Where do you go….when Jerusalem burns?

This is the reality that Jeremiah faced when his world ended.

Jeremiah is one the most fascinating people in Scripture, for me anyway.  He is the longest of the writing prophets and he is the prophet that we know the most about, emotionally.  He is not ashamed, as here in this passage to express the full rains of emotions.  It is interesting that when Jesus asked who the people said that he was, “Jeremiah” was one of the answers (Matthew 16:14), and that says a great deal about how people viewed Jeremiah…or Jesus for that matter.

But Jeremiah lived in a time of great suffering.  He lived at the end of the Southern Kingdom.  Jeremiah prophesies for over 40 years.  At the end of his ministry, Jeremiah suffered the most devastating loss one could imagine.  The Babylonian army came in and crushed Jerusalem.  They put Israel’s leaders to death, they exported the brightest, the best and the beautiful to Babylon, and they burned Jerusalem to the ground.  At first Jeremiah was put on the Exile train out to Babylon, but then he was given a choice and he chose to return to the ruins of Jerusalem, and to live minister among the people.  It is in this situation that Jeremiah writes the Lamentations.

We can begin to understand the devastation that Jeremiah must have felt as he looked at the ashes of his city and took in the horrific sights around him.  And as we look at this text, we can’t simply read it and explain it.  We must experience it.

‘I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath.” (3:1) This dark and ominous beginning should haunt us.  As we read on, he has driven me and brought me into darkness without any light; surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long.” (3:2) There is a reason why Lamentations doesn’t make it into too many devotional books and this is it!

His entire world has turned to darkness.  Surely we know people for whom this is true…surely this has been true even for us at times. Later on he will say, “my soul is bereft of peace, I have forgotten what happiness is”(3:17)

Why? How could Jeremiah….I mean Jeremiah is a prophet, a righteous man…how could he say these things?

It goes back to the destruction of Jerusalem.  For us, Jerusalem may be just a city on a map, far away not only geographically but culturally.  We don’t think much about Jerusalem and we sure don’t think about the temple in any significant way (for right reasons). But for Jeremiah, Jerusalem was the very heart of the kingdom of God.  The death and suffering of people was horrible enough, but the destruction of Jerusalem was something else entirely!

Jerusalem was the place where God lived. It was his physical location among the people and it was the proof that God had indeed blessed His people with His presence.  Great things had happened there and greater things were yet to come.  Micah and Isaiah prophesied about a time when Mt. Zion will be exalted above all other mountains and the nations would swarm to the Temple and learn about God and the Word of God would go forth into all the world.  The people of Israel, it was claimed, would rule the nations of the world, from Jerusalem, which would be the center of the world.  Jerusalem would be the place where the divine and the human intersected and now it is burning to the ground, reduced to rubble and ashes.  How can that be? How could God do this?

God had crossed a boundary for Jeremiah…a self-established rule that God must not break.

We all have them, if we are honest with ourselves.   We impose rules on God and we expect them to be followed.  Rules such as, I will worship God as long as children do not die.  It’s perfectly fine for adults and old people to die, because after all, that’s how things work.  But not children! I will worship God as long as my marriage remains intact and everything is financially good.  I will worship God  as long as I don’t lose my job.

But the moment any of these things happened, God has crossed a line that we cannot bear and we will not tolerate and we will run away from him and take refuge in our despair.

Look at the source of Jeremiah’s despair:

            He has driven men and brought me into darkness

            HE has made my flesh and my skin waste away

            He has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago

            He has walled me about so that I cannot escape

            He is a bear lying in wait for me

            He turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces

            He has made me desolate

Translate this: God has taken away my life and left me empty and bereft of happiness. “My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.”

Ever meet anybody like this? I know I have.

I remember going to visit a lady at one of the churches I’ve served who was stuck in the past.  Her husband and her daughter had died, only a few months apart from each other.  Her world was completely devastated and she could not recover.  Her heart broke every moment of every day and no matter how much she cried it was never enough.  There was no light, only darkness.

I’ve talked with fathers who have lost their children whose only words that I could distinguish between sobs were “my baby boy….” No light, only darkness.

I’ve seen marriages shattered on the altar of reality where a husband or a wife realizes the type of person they married and life will never be the same again.  No light, only darkness.

And sadly this is where so many people stay.  They can’t get out of these thoughts and they can’t go anywhere with them. 

I remember watching my mother die of Parkinson’s disease.  Parkinson’s is a cruel type of disease because it not only robs you of life, it takes away every ounce of dignity you possess as a person.  I was a relatively new Christian as my mom got sick.  I used to pray every day that God would ‘fix’ her.  That God would perform a miracle, that God would come down from heaven and cure her.  I used to make ‘deals’ with God, that if He would fix her, then I would be a missionary and go the ends of the earth, or that I would make sure that everybody would have a copy of the Bible and I would do my best  to make sure that everybody believed in God.

It didn’t work. 

Mom died, and I remember being broken.  God had broken the rules.  And I began to think, maybe if I had prayed harder or maybe if I had done more or maybe if I wasn’t just a screw up that maybe God would have healed her.  I remember the darkness creeping in, threatening to overtake my soul. I remember feeling like Jeremiah.  “My soul is bereft of peace.  I have forgotten what happiness is.”

Where do you go, when Jerusalem burns?

Jeremiah gives us an answer. “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.  The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.”

Now if he had said this to me, I would have responded with “ARE YOU KIDDING ME? GOD DOESN’T LOVE ME, GOD HATES ME! HOW COULD YOU EVEN THINK THIS?”

But the amazing thing is that Jeremiah doesn’t respond like this.  He has a very different reaction.  He is able to go through the pain of the first nineteen verses of the chapter and end with this absolute and wonderful declaration.

Notice that there is no theological discourse here.  There is no prolonged discussion of the nature of evil or any answers to the question of “If there is a good God, why do bad things happen?” This is because Jeremiah’s purpose is very different.  He is showing us two things: (1) when bad things happen, we need to be honest to God with all of our emotions and (2) we need to root our hope in God and His love.  The only thing that keeps us out of the darkness is knowing the reality that no matter what happens, God’s love is constant.

Jeremiah says, “But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope”(3:21).  “Hope” in Scripture is not an abstract term.  We often use the word “hope” as a “wish” or a “longing”.  If I say when I’m at work, that “I hope that Marilee will bake a pie today,” I am expressing a wish that there will be pie when I get home.  I have no basis on which to base this hope, unless Marilee said “I am making a pie” before I left for work. 

But in Scripture, the word ‘hope’ has a different connotation.  “Hope” refers to a definite knowledge that you have within you.   The Hebrew literally means ‘to wait’ because ‘hope’ is about seeing beyond our current circumstance and seeing beyond the present reality.  It looks to what we know God will do in the future.  It is this that shapes and frames the present, because we know that no matter how bad things are now, no matter how terrible or even how horrific, God wild deliver us from it.

            “But I will hope continually and will praise you more and more”-Psalm 71:4

 “But as for me, I will look to the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.” Micah 7:7

Even the New Testament understand this:

“According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead..” 1 Peter 1:3

And so Jeremiah reminds us that in the midst of all this terror, in the midst of this darkness, there is hope, because of who God is and what he has done.  We may be so captured by our reality that we don’t think there is any possibility that things could change.  But the gospel calls us to hope in God, to know, beyond the shadow of any doubt that things will get better.

But how do we know?  When we are faced  with suffering, with pain, with death, how can be sure that things will change?

Jeremiah again gives us the answer.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.” (3:23)

There is no greater statement in the entire First Testament than this verse! And we are usually in such a rush to get to this verse when we get to this chapter that we ignore the preceding twenty verses.  Devotional books cutout the surrounding material in order to highlight this verse.  But if we do that, we actually miss the point of how great this verse truly is.  In light of great suffering, the ‘steadfast love’ of the Lord never ever ceases. 

The Hebrew word dsx is our anchor in this passage.  There is no one word in English that captures the meaning.  What it refers to is that deep, covenantal love of God that will never be shaken.

            “…His steadfast love endures forever.”-1 Chronicles 16:41

“O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keeps his commandment.” Nehemiah 1:5

“Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens; your faithfulness to the clouds.” Psalm 36:5

The way that the Apostle John puts this statement is, “God is love” (1 John 4:8).  The idea is that God’s love is so closely attached to his character that there is no distinction between the two.

But how do we know this?

Because God proves this over and over again to us.  Scripture is one big story about how God’s constant love prevails.  God loves the people of Israel and proves himself again and again. Jesus reminds us of this love at the end of the gospel of Matthew by declaring that “I will never leave you nor forsake you..”

But most of all, we know God’s steadfast love never fails because of the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In fact, we could re-read this chapter in light of, and from the perspective of Jesus and God the Father.  We can hear the anguish of Jesus as he approaches the cross.  We can picture the anguish of God as he looks at His Son on the cross and looks at the true Jerusalem and the true Temple lying in ruins, shattered on the cross.

God is not far away, a dispassionate deity who is unconcerned with our suffering.  He is a God that knows what suffering is like, who understands our pain and who understands what is to see dreams shattered.  He is not a cruel God who throws us into a world of pain  haphazardly or with no concern.  He is a God who stands right with us in the midst of shattered dreams and broken worlds.  He is a God who hears our grief, and grieves with us.  

But he is also a God who pushes us beyond our grief and our current situation.  That is what is amazing about the Resurrection.   It is not just proof that there is life after death (there is that), it is that God’s faithfulness, God’s steadfast love, God’s hesed is faithful to us beyond all the darkest moments of our lives.  He proves that for every world that is broken and every dream  that is shattered, there is a hope to be had by all people.

So…where do you go when Jerusalem burns, when your hopes and dreams are shattered and the darkness threatens to overtake you? You run into the arms of the Savior, whose steadfast love never ceases and whose mercies are new every morning.