Sermons
from St Faith's
Tearing open
the heavens
Fr Mark Waters, Advent
Sunday
2008
Sometimes it seems that the words of the scriptures, the words that we
have inherited from our faith tradition, are simply too big for us. I
think it is true this morning. From Isaiah:
O that you would tear the heavens open
and come down!
This is the universal cry of the oppressed.
We hear the people of God saying such words throughout the scriptures.
It is the desperate shout of people who are at the limit of what they
can endure.
People who have nowhere else to turn
and have no other option but to shout into the darkness.
We hear this most often, and most loudly, in the psalms,
as Israel’s poets railed against God in loud lamentation.
Isaiah was talking to a people who had returned from exile.
They would have looked much like the long lines of ragged people from
the Democratic Republic of Congo we have seen on our television screens
recently.
The people of Israel must have trudged back to Jerusalem in much the
same way.
Trying to find a home.
Carrying their few possessions with them.
Fearful of being attacked. Not knowing what the next day would bring,
or how they would find food and shelter
And what did they find when they got there? When they got back home?
They found ruins. They found devastation.
Much like the wreckage from bombing that we witness in Palestine or
Iraq today.
The people of Israel came back to find their homes and their temple
reduced to dust.
The promise they had nurtured of a glorious return completely
shattered.
So, just like any group of people at the end of our own resources, they
cry out to God.
O that you would tear the heavens open
and come down!
Come to us, O God. Rescue us. Maranatha – we will be saying again and
again during Advent – Maranatha – an Aramaic word - Come, Lord, come.
In Advent we are particularly aware of the powers of darkness. We see
these powers in the story of the returning exiles in today’s passage
from Isaiah. For them the powers of darkness were experienced very
immediately in their suffering. And in the world’s poor today those
same powers of darkness are evident in hunger, disease, military
occupation, intercine violence, and a downward spiral of debt.
But it is that sort of darkness in which we wish the light of Christ to
come. That is the message of Advent.
But how on earth do we say those words today, in this culture, in this
time that we live, in a way that has any sort of meaning? Most of us
are so protected from such events, and it is easy for us to avoid real
knowledge of them. And sometimes it seems that the nearest we get to
imagining the powers of darkness is that our houses will depreciate in
value, or that our pensions will be smaller than we thought, or that we
will have to forgo a foreign holiday.
But the way forward is not for the church – as it often seems to do in
Advent - to set itself up as the killjoy which condemns materialism.
The way forward is to see that we have much to learn from the poor –
that is what Jesus taught us again and again in the gospels.
The stories in the scriptures about struggling communities all those
centuries ago are not there just to tell us how awful is the lot of
some people, nor to make us feel sorry for them, nor to make us feel
guilty. The stories are there because they tell us about how a faithful
community waited for God in the emptiness and in the darkness without
losing sight of being human, and without falling into despair. They
waited with hope, they waited with purpose, they waited with active
preparation for change. Despite their howls of anguish, this is not a
community that has given up. This is not a community that has lost
sight of its divine purpose as God’s chosen people.
The faithful poor we read about in the scriptures, and those we see in
our world today, give the lie to all our activism in the more
comfortable prosperous society in which you and I live. Their patient
waiting for the Lord puts all of our plans, and strategies, and church
growth initiatives and busyness into perspective.
The faithful poor teach us that Advent is a time to recognise that
underneath all of our grand schemes there is – for most of us - a huge
void, an aching emptiness which we try to fill with endless activity.
They show us that Advent is the time for us to enter the darkness of
waiting, and in so doing to discover that it is not a threat.
As the consumer race towards Christmas picks up speed we see all too
clearly that we have replaced longing for God, the emptiness of
waiting, with a sort of insatiable wanting. The sad truth of that is
that the consumer goods do nothing in the end to satisfy our sense of
need. Only when we know our own emptiness and need and spiritual
poverty will we be ready for the promise that Advent holds. And this
understanding is shown to us in what we as Christians take to be God’s
answer to human anguish, God’s answer to our prayers – the birth of a
baby, the birth of a new human being! This is an extraordinary response
by God to the suffering of his people, an unbelievable, derisable
response as far as most people are concerned. A scandal!
Like many religious traditions the Jewish faith, of which Jesus was a
part, expected help from God in the appearance of a champion, a
superman, a powerful military leader who would put right all of the
wrongs done to the suffering community by victory in battle. And this
is still the human answer to many of the world’s problems – the
emergence of a military leader – whether it is George Bush or Tony
Blair or Osama Bin Laden.
God’s answer is different. We see the answer emerging slowly in our
scriptures. First of all in the book of the prophet Isaiah when we hear
about the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, who will suffer for
his people. And of course for us as Christians it finds its fullest
expression in the pages of the NT – a virgin will conceive, and bear a
son, and his name will be Emmanual – God is with us. God is here.
This is the answer to all who shout to God in the darkness, the small
light of hope in fragile human life – like your life and my life –
through which we discover the fullness of the promise that God holds
out for our lives and our world.
So perhaps the words of the scriptures need not be too big for us if we
develop a faithful imagination. If we can do the hard prayer work of
learning how to see the world through the eyes of others – those who
have a different culture to us, those who live far away, those who look
different to us, those with a different history and faith. And
particularly the anawim, the poor, the little people who always hold a
special place in the heart of God.
O that you would tear the heavens open
and come down!
The tremendous words, these huge scriptural words, that we will say and
hear during Advent are about a world that is waiting for God. If we are
going to get anywhere near what those words mean for us and for the
world this Advent we will need to do some work, some heart work and
some prayer work. So I have 3 suggestions for some spiritual practices
for us for the next four weeks:
First, allow yourself to be taught about your need and your spiritual
poverty by the poor of the world. When you get home today, or when you
get your daily paper tomorrow, look through it and find a story of
God’s little ones, a story of the world’s poor that touches you, cut it
out and put it in your pocket. And take that story everywhere you go.
Re-read it occasionally, maybe follow it up a bit on the internet to
find out more about it, and make that story part of your story.
Second, take some time each week to wait in the darkness to get in
touch with your own need and emptiness. It doesn’t matter how long you
take, what matters is that you take some time – 10 minutes, 20 minutes,
30 minutes whatever you can manage – and just wait. Calm yourself, let
your busy mind relax, and simply wait and discover God in that waiting.
Third, when you get near to Christmas – perhaps the week before - help
yourself to understand a little bit about how much you are loved by
God, and how precious you are in his sight, by buying yourself a small
gift. Some flowers, some perfume, a miniature of whisky – some small
token to remind you that you too are one of God’s children.
Maria Boulding puts the Advent message like this:
The gift of God is for the poor, the needy, the empty. It is for those
who know their need, and hunger and thirst for him. It is for those who
do not even suspect the depth of tenderness with which they are loved,
yet are potentially open. God is most known as God when he gives to the
undeserving, when he fills the hungry with good things, lifts the
downtrodden, transforms hopeless situations and brings life out of
death. His gift is most typically not the crowning of our achievements,
but wealth for the bankrupt and power at the service of the weak. When
human resources are missing but people are open to God, then is the
moment of faith.
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