This sermon was shared at St Denys, Evington on 3rd December 2023. When the recording is available I will link to it here.
Hope. I wonder if, as you heard our passage read this morning, you found any signs of hope in them? I admit, when I first read them as I was preparing, they both seemed rather miserable – Isaiah 64 is part of a poem which is reflecting on a tragic part of Israel’s history, and Mark 13 focuses on the destruction of the Temple.
As I read in more detail though, and as I prepared for the sermon, I discovered seeds of hope in both. Starting with Isaiah 64, let’s see where these passages fit into the ‘big story’ of God and the world He created, a story full of a hope founded on the character of God.
Isaiah 64 describes God as our potter. I invite you to think about a potter, or other creative artisans and their relationship with their work. That relationship is permanent, in the sense that they cannot disown what they have made. In the same way, God is our potter, we are His craftsmanship – His created us, and His relationship with us is permanent and, in that regard, unchanging. God is our potter, our creator, our artisan. So what is this God, our creator, like. What is His character? This is our ‘seed of hope’, which I will return to later on.
The chapter starts by expressing a longing that God had acted, and begs God to come down and make His name known to His enemies. Isaiah is expressing the question every person of faith asks in times of tragedy or suffering – why hasn’t God acted? Quickly though, the prophet speaks with faith.
“Since ancient times no one has heard,
Isaiah 64:4
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.”
The Jewish faith is clear that there is no other God except Yahweh, and the prophet echoes this belief. This God, Yahweh, is holy, set apart, and acts in particular, unchanging ways:
1) God acts on behalf of those who wait for him
God acts on behalf of those who have a patient, confident and expectant faith, a faith that simply trusts without wavering in God’s promises.
This advent, I am using Mary’s Voice, by Amy Orr-Ewing for my reflections. What has struck me each day so far has been Mary’s trust that God’s word to her would be fulfilled, and echoed by her relative, Elizabeth as she blesses Mary with the words “Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfil his promises to her.” Trust that God will fulfil His promises, a trust that changes how we behave, is central to following God.
I invite you to pause and reflect on what God’s promises to you have been, and what it would it would look like for you to wait patiently for God – to trust in His promises.
2) The moral requirement of doing right, gladly.
The Hebrew literally reads as “those who rejoice and do right”. God is holy, and ‘righteousness and justice’ are the foundation of His throne, so those who do not do right, those who sin, are separated from Him and cannot draw near to Him, they cannot expect God to help them.
The problem, for Isaiah and the people of Israel, and for all humanity, is that they, as we do, continued to sin, and did not remember God’s ways – Isaiah acknowledges that this makes God angry! How then can we be saved?
The reason why our sin is such a serious issue is described by Isaiah
“All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags”
Isaiah 64:6a
Our sins make us unclean! Even our good deeds look like filthy rags, because everything we do is affected by our fallen, sinful nature. Our sins alienate us from God – we cannot call on God’s name, we cannot ‘lay hold of God’, because God has hidden his face from us. We are internally, spiritually and practically separated from God, and this has a serious effect.
Using pictures from nature, Isaiah describes the effect of our sin. We “shrivel up like a leaf”. Alienated from God who gives us life, we shrivel up and die, as a leaf detached from the plant that gives it life shrivels up and dies, and the wind sweeps us away, just as the wind sweeps away the shrivelled up leaf.
How then can we be saved?
And so we return to our ‘seed of hope’, the description of God as our potter. Isaiah calls God ‘Father’, and expresses in faith that we are ‘all the work of your hand’. It is this that means that Isaiah can plead for mercy, for God to not remember his people’s sins forever. We, too, as pots made by God our Father, can seek His mercy.
Turning now to our gospel reading, this passage may seem quite complex and difficult to follow. You may have heard it taught on as being about ‘the end times’ or Jesus’ return. I’m not so sure. The focus of Mark 13 seems to be the destruction of the Temple, which happened in 70 AD, so if this part of the chapter is about Jesus’ return at the end of the age, then v30 is problematic – the generation of the time passed away nearly 2000 years ago, and we are still here, waiting for Jesus to return!
The clue is found in recognising the texts that are behind the imagery in this passage. The most important come from Daniel 7, about the Son of Man ‘coming to’ God after suffering, the triumph and vindication of the Son of Man. These factors lead Tom Wright to suggest that, rather than being about ‘the end of the world’, Mark 13:1-31 is about ‘the end of the world as people knew it’, the end of the Temple and Temple sacrifices, and a vindication of Jesus as the Son of Man, God’s Messiah. Others suggest that there are two focal points in Mark 13 – the destruction of the Temple, and then, in our passage, a focus on the end times.
From verse 32, the command is clear, “Keep awake, be alert!”. Given the earlier focus on the destruction of the Temple, this with the urge to notice the ‘signs’, is most likely directed at the disciples and the early Christians – to notice the signs of the destruction of the Temple, and to flee to the mountains, as verse 14 states. This doesn’t mean that we have no need to be alert though. The destruction of the Temple, and the city of Jerusalem, can be seen as a foretaste of the judgement of the world. This time we aren’t told of any signs to look out for, no advance warnings. There is only the command to Christ’s people to be faithful to him, without compromise to the changing fashions of our present culture, to keep awake, keep alert.
In advent, we remember Jesus’ coming as a baby, his incarnation as a human being, who came to ‘wash our dirty linen’, if you like, and reconcile us to God, presenting us before His Father in the clean clothes of His righteousness, rather than the stained clothes that we are able to manage at our best. We also look forward to the day when Jesus returns to judge the earth.
How can we be sure that we’ll be able to stand before Him on that day? By trusting in God’s promises, trusting in Jesus’ sacrifice, resurrection and ascension, God comes to our help and acts on our behalf in Jesus Christ, clothing us in Christ’s clean clothes rather than our filthy rags. These seeds of hope sustain us as are keeping watch ‘through the night’ of waiting for Jesus’ return, doing what is right with joy and remembering God’s ways.
repairerofwalls 