This sermon is written in a bit of a different style than my sermons of the past. There are a multitude of grammatical mistakes, broken up lines, etc. Please bear with me and remember that it is primarily a spoken thing, which explains the weird breaks. Thanks!
Isaiah 65:17-19, 25
Isaiah 65:17-19, 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.
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.
I had just finished loading my gear in my car at the end of a long weekend of
backpacking.
As I typically do I called Claire
to update
her on the weekend,
tell
her how backpacking had been.
get
the update on her.
As she usually does at the end of a backpacking weekend she
gave me a quick rundown
telling me about her weekend:
where
she’d been, what she’d done;
and then we
got to the point in the conversation when she updates me about the world,
and she told
me about the typhoon in the Philippines.
I asked her
for some basic, pointed details:
How
many people are dead? Is the storm over?
It was like
a weird routine.
Claire
knew exactly what to tell me and how to tell it.
And I realized in that moment, something that I knew
deep down
from
the moment in our wedding when I said, “I do.”
Claire has me figured out.
In case
there is any doubt, I say it now, for the record:
Claire
has got me figured out.
We pull our verse today from a section of Isaiah called Third
Isaiah.
It is the end of the prophetic book,
and it is
characterized by some sweeping prophecies.
This section was written as the Hebrew exiles were returning
to Jerusalem
after the
exile in Babylon.
They
returned with many hopes
many
plans to rebuild their once glorious city.
But they ran into obstacles as soon as they returned.
There were
people living in the ruins of the city,
who
had taken over their homes.
Rebuilding
was slower and more difficult than they imagined.
As so often
before, the people didn't turn to God when the going got tough.
So Isaiah writes, the rebuilding of this city is not
something that you people are able to do.
At least not
you by yourselves.
Right before our passage today, Isaiah says that the former
troubles will be forgotten.
The
Israelites had lots of former troubles:
Jerusalem
had been conquered
they
had been exiled in Babylon
they
had spent years in exile, in a foreign land
their
temple had been destroyed.
Theirs was a
peace-less land.
Yet God says, into all of this trouble, that there is going
to be
a new
heavens and a new earth
that
God will create.
And this is going to be a place marked by something
different: marked by peace.
Isaiah describes this wonderful place of peace in the verses
in between our readings,
where no one
will die as a young person, all will grow to old age,
where there
will be shelter and food for all,
where
children will not be brought into a violent, chaotic world,
where people
will not hurt or kill on another.
This is going to be a remarkable place, and God instructs the
Israelites
to be glad,
to rejoice forever, for they will weep no more.
I think about the world they faced.
I think
about the world we face and I wonder…
How can this be?
It didn’t take long for
Claire to realize that the best way for me to find out about terrible things
is by her voice.
She knew from very early on that I was particularly
sensitive to shootings.
I was a student at
Virginia Tech in 2007 when 32 students and faculty members were shot and killed on campus by a mentally disturbed
student.
I knew people who were shot and injured,
I had a professor who was killed at his blackboard
in the middle of a German lesson.
I lived through the chaos,
through the fear,
through a day of uncertainty and hospital waiting after
discovering
that a friend of mine had been shot in
the leg three times
in her French class.
Through months of watching her
recover.
Claire learned very
quickly that tragedies like the one at Virginia Tech
are particularly painful to me.
She woke me up from a nap
in seminary once
by coming to my room before class.
She sat down next to me and told me
that a police officer had been killed at Virginia Tech
and they were still looking for a gunman
who might be loose the campus.
Claire knows that when there is a mass shooting or senseless
violence,
it’s best if
it is her voice that tells me,
or at least
if her voice is the first one I hear.
It seems that this routine
has become a near daily experience.
It’s hard to go a full day
without seeing an eye-witness report
or a breaking news story,
about some kind of disaster or shooting or
instance of violence.
This seems to be the
unending violence that our world embraces.
This is the chaos that we
seem to breed.
And I find myself asking: “How long oh Lord. How long?”
How long must we endure this unending cycle
of chaos?
And I open to find the
words of Isaiah.
Be glad, and
rejoice forever,
for I am
about to create a new heavens, and a new earth.
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is a reporter for the British newspaper The Guardian.
He is Iraqi by birth, and he has
covered conflicts
in the Middle East from
Afghanistan to the Sudan.
He tells a story about the reporting
he did in Libya
following the uprisings
which have come to be known as the Arab Spring.
In the Spring of 2011, he was in Libya reporting on the
rebels
who were fighting against Muammar Gaddafi.
In the course of his reporting he was
captured by
Gadhaffi’s
forces and, despite the fact that he was there legally
he
was dumped in a damp prison cell.
Ghaith was kept company by one light bulb and a dirty
mattress on a prison floor.
After a few days in the cell, Ghaith started to realize
there was
only one way he was going to leave.
And
this would be if the rebels managed to take over Tripoli.
The guards in the prison were severe,
Ghaith could
hear them beating prisoners in cells down the hall.
One guard, a man named Hatam, was particularly fierce with
Ghaith.
The guards
became very agitated,
blaming
journalists for the uprising.
Throughout battles raging around the capitol,
Ghaith was
stuck in the prison
With
no end in sight.
So he decided to try to get to know his captors,
particularly
Hatam, who hated journalists.
Ghaith
slowly formed a relationship with this man,
talking
back and forth with him
not
as guard and prisoner, but just two normal people.
He knew only that the man had a family, and that he loved the regime.
Ghaith
talked to him through the small grate in the cell door
for
two weeks.
Finally, the Guardian negotiated for Ghaith to be released,
and he was
put on one of the last flights out of Libya.
Four months later, the rebels took the capitol.
The day Libya fell, Ghaith called his editor. There was one
person he wanted to find.
The guard,
Hatam.
Ghaith made his way back to the capitol,
tracked down
his house, in a Tripoli suburb and knocked on the door.
For Ghaith,
it felt like meeting an old friend.
There
was a moment of camaraderie.
They were
laughing, and talking, “How are you, how did you find me.”
For Ghaith, it was a moment of vindication.
Out of chaos, a moment of peace is found.
When time is
taken for one person to understand another
for
one person to understand the enemy,
for
a moment of love to pass between two people
There is a
peace that is reached,
And
both men cannot help but laugh.
How did Ghaith move from a place of conflict to a place of
peace?
With a
small, tangible action that increased understanding.
He took some
time to talk to Hatam as one human to another.
Some
time to get to know this other human being;
to
know his struggles and passions
a
little bit about his life.
The changes that Isaiah talks about not sweeping,
unachievable changes.
They are
tangible, maybe even mundane things.
people
will live longer lives,
they
will have fruit to eat
they
will be able to live in houses.
But these
are the things that would embody a new creation.
These are
the things that would make a difference in that world.
They are the same things that might make a difference in our
world.
And we are able to do those tangible things.
We are able
to give that one drink of cold water.
To bring
comfort to the poor, one act of mercy at a time.
One
book given
One
friendship claimed.
One
can of beans
One
moment of caring.
One
moment in which a person is humanized rather than objectified,
One
challenge to the set order,
One
revelation of the evil that hides in plain sight,
One
declaration that every single person is a child of God.
These are the little things that bring about God’s kingdom,
these are
the little things in the face of the chaos of the world
that give us a glimpse of God’s holy
mountain.
(borrowed from Feasting on the Word)
But the task, as Isaiah said, is not ours and ours alone.
In a world where we are totally focused on our capacities,
Isaiah lifts our eyes so that we are forced
In a world where we are totally focused on our capacities,
Isaiah lifts our eyes so that we are forced
to
contemplate God’s capacities.
We are aided in all of these things by a God who is creating
something new.
We are reminded of faithful people throughout the ages
who proclaim
a future hope for peace
and work for that hope in
the midst of the chaos.
People like Martin Luther King Jr.
who knew of
the painful sea of inequality around him
but
stood up in spite of that sea and proclaimed, “I have a dream.”
And
described a future in which that dream would be realized.
about whom
it is said
she would
rather light a candle than curse the darkness.
People who understand that God’s holy mountain is not just
something to be dreamed about
in some far
off place or time,
but
something to be worked for
and
prayed for, now.
These people knew that the world was in shambles,
but into that chaos, they shined a beam of hope.
That’s what Claire’s voice is for me.
but into that chaos, they shined a beam of hope.
That’s what Claire’s voice is for me.
Into the
chaos of a hurricane or an earthquake,
Into the
terror of a school shooting or a violent attack
Her voice
reminds me that God is at work,
It
reminds me that into the horrors of the world,
There
is a still, small voice of God.
Speaking hope when I feel none.
Speaking hope when I feel none.
I have had the sneaking suspicion for years that my mother
used to be a hippie.
She tells us children of a letter that her father sent her
when she was in college,
asking her
to please study more
and to stop going to protests quite
so much.
When I was growing up
and news would come on about violence
in the Middle East
my mother used to say
with a certain amount of
desperation
and despair in her voice:
“I’ve been praying for peace in the
Middle East my entire life…”
Isaiah would tell my mother,
“keep on
praying, keep on dreaming, keep on working
because
the wolf and the lamb will feed
together,
the
lion will eat straw like the ox,
the
Israeli and the Palestinian will sit
down for dinner together,
the parents will send their children to school
without fear of a shower of bullets,
the
nations will not rise up against one another
they
will beat their swords in plowshares
and God says no one shall hurt or destroy
on
all my holy mountain.
AMEN.
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