“Promise?”

Sunday, December 11th, 2005
Advent 3B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Isaiah 65:17-25

17 For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. 18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. 19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. 20 No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. 21 They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22 They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. 23 They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD-- and their descendants as well. 24 Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. 25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent--its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.

“Promise?”

If you’ve ever had to look into the eyes of a six year-old that you’ve just told you’d do something with and they ask you that haunting, penetrating question, you get the idea of what it is to hope – to await with eager expectation, to dream and yearn with every fiber of your being for something to come true.

“Promise?”

Isaiah was written to a people undone, in captivity, in exile, far from home, wishing every moment of every day that they were somewhere else.

The picture we see in the passage this morning is not unfamiliar to us – it echoes similar passages throughout the Bible that show us a glimpse of what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.

What do we hear of first? Jerusalem as Joy and its people as a delight. Though I’m sure there are moments in which the inhabitants of today’s Jerusalem feel that way about their city, I strongly suspect those moments are all too fleeting. The line one phrase down rings truer to what our experience of Jerusalem has been -- no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. Keep in mind, this passage was written at the very least, nearly 2500 years ago, and yet, it could easily be applied to today’s inhabitants of Jerusalem.

The picture painted by Isaiah is one of a just, peaceful, joy-filled Kingdom that is altogether earth-centered – not a pie-in-the-sky soft-focused harps-playing in the background otherworldly image of something that is out of the grasp of even our most vivid imagination. This is a NEW EARTH. Where there will be no infant mortality, where centenarians will be considered children, where people will enjoy the fruits of their labors THEMSELVES – not be dispossessed of them by ruthless employers. Did you see? People will build houses and live in them themselves – people will plant vineyards and eat their fruit themselves – it is a none-too-subtle statement for all who have people working for them, isn’t it? And it is a promise to those same workers – the ones who DO toil in another’s field, who DO build someone else’s house, who DO plant and tend someone else’s vineyard.

The vision is mortal also in that in the new earth depicted – even though people live far longer lives than we do today, they still die. It is significant to note that detail … it does not seem to be speaking of the heavenly realm so much as a transformed earthly one.

This week, I sat beside a man who lost his sight at the age of 46. He commented on the fact that he believed in Jesus, believed the Bible, and since it says in the Bible that Jesus healed a blind man, HE wants that for himself. He cannot understand why he has had to suffer the traumatic loss of his sight.

I was reminded that though Jesus did heal the blind man, he also did not promise us an easy life here on earth – not YET anyway – that man knows that far better than I do.

In the coming of the Christ child, Brennan Manning says in Shipwrecked at the Stable Door - “God entered our world not with the crushing impact of unbearable glory, but in the way of weakness, vulnerability and need. On a wintry night in an obscure cave, the infant Jesus was a humble naked helpless God who allowed us to get close to him."

Jesus could have transformed the world while he was here. Being God incarnate certainly meant that he had the power, the ability to do it. But he chose not to. Did he choose to not redeem the world in one fell swoop in order to allow us to continue to suffer? The man I sat with said at another point in the conversation that he’s ready for his life to be over. He FEELS like it is over already. His loss is so overwhelming that he can’t yet find anything redemptive in the experience. I won’t stand here and say that he will. He very well may not in his remaining time. I hope that will come to him. I hope I nudged him in that direction, but I can’t say with any certainty that anything I said got through.

Ultimately, we know the true sense of Joy by understanding and perhaps experiencing despair and sorrow. If we did not have the valleys, we would not recognize the mountaintops. It sounds pithy, but it is true.

It is the same with understanding God’s promise of Joy. We cannot truly know that Joy without having been through this life here on earth – in its present condition.

We celebrate Christmas in the only way we can -- with a partial understanding of what that Joy really is, because we are still on THIS side of knowing it fully.

Christ’s promise to us is that we WILL be with him. Just like that 6 year olds’ eyes pleaded with me to spend time with him, we look toward the coming of the Savior both in our lives and in our world –

Let’s pray.