All Earth is Waiting

Lying there in the hospital bed surrounded by tubes and machines he grimaces in pain with every laboured breath. Sitting there beside the bed keeping vigil hour after hour through the long night they repeat their whispered prayer like a mantra: "O God, where are you when we need you? where are you when we need you?" The sound of the mail arriving through the slot makes her heart sink. She knows that there will be more cards with happy letters from happy families wishing her a Merry Christmas. If they only knew how impossible such wishes sound to her now, how many years she has prayed to God for a Merry Christmas how dark and lonely it is in her apartment. If they only knew maybe they would stop wishing and start demanding the 'peace on earth' that the angels promised so long ago. "But then", she says to herself, "I shouldn't think such thoughts". Half way around the world in the heart of East Africa we can only imagine what it is like to be a refugee trapped in the forest without food without water the children crying the rebels catching the innocent in cross-fire. Sitting here well fed and warm safe and sound we can be sure of but one thing ... the prayer that rises up out of the jungle has a familiar ring: "O that you would rend the heavens and come down ... O God, help us". And here we are on the first Sunday of Advent unpacking the creche setting the animals in the stable at church and putting up the lights at home ... preparing to catch the Christmas Spirit when the Book is opened Isaiah speaks once again. Isaiah with his desperate lament. This doesn't seem right somehow. We come to light the candle of 'hope' and instead hear a prophet who sounds full of gloom. We come to get ready for the arrival of God, to celebrate the presence of God but all Isaiah can speak about is the silence of God and the absence of God. Isaiah. Remember Isaiah? He is the one who, years before, heard God's voice - clear as a bell;- and felt God's touch - like hot coals touching his lips. While watching the coronation of the King in the Temple God had called him to speak and to act. And Isaiah said: "Is it I, Lord? I will go, Lord." There is no doubt about it ... Isaiah knows all about the presence of God. But now, back home from years in exile, wandering through the rubble of the once magnificent Temple and seeing the remnants of a once great nation reduced to bickering and scavanging Isaiah prays in a way that we're not expecting ... not in church at any rate ... and not in the Bible, that's for sure. Sure, people may rudely blurt out demands of God in the heat of the moment ... but you and I know that by the time our prayers make it into church or the Bible they have been cleaned up for public consumption. Yet here is Isaiah wailing at God: "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down so that the mountains would quake ... and the nations might tremble at your presence! Like you did in the good old days ... no one had ever seen or heard anything like You ... You who respond to those who wait faithfully". Those who wait faithfully. Maybe that is what makes Isaiah think twice. All of a sudden his lament changes. Now he is no longer lamenting a God who is nowhere to be found. Now Isaiah names the lamentable state of the world. "That's just it", he thinks, "we aren't waiting faithfully ... Look at this mess, we are polluted our society abandons its poor, children go unprotected and the addicted are left to themselves. Even our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We try to clean ourselves up to make amends ... instead we make even more of a mess. We develop new government programs, the self-help sections boom in every bookstore we go to church with every intention of cleaning up our act and still things go from bad to worse." Isaiah paints a bleak portrait. But it is not clear who is to blame. Yes ... he says that we have sinned that we have messed up ... that we no longer call on God's name or even try to get a hold of God. We've got no one to blame but ourselves ... right? Well ... Isaiah doesn't seem so sure. He has the audacity to point a finger at God as well ... at God who has stopped speaking, stopped acting, just plain stopped being involved. "No wonder", says Isaiah, "no wonder things are so bad. What did you expect, God?" Well this is just a bit much, don't you think. Imagine, daring to speak to God in such a tone. And a prophet, too ... hasn't he been to Theological School ... hasn't anyone taught him the 'dos' and 'don'ts' of writing the Prayers of the People?! He should know better than to use such a harsh tone when saying his prayers. Or should he? Maybe Isaiah understands the 'dos' and 'don'ts' of the people's prayers better than we think. Maybe Isaiah knows that it is the real prayers not the 'theologically corrected' prayers that need to be heard in heaven's courts. Yes ... maybe Advent needs to begin here with the real prayers of a world that wonders just where God is ... really. A world full of spiritual craving and searching. A world lamenting its sorry state A world that finds every move to escape the quick sand of sin just causes the mire to deepen and the problems to worsen. Yes ... Advent must begin here. Not with the sure and certain hope of God's never failing presence ... but with the anguished cry from the common human experience of God's seeming silence and of God's apparent absence. But do you see? Isaiah knows that this can not last. Isaiah's lament is actually full of hope. He is not waiting in despair for the other shoe to drop. No. Isaiah trusts in God even as he knows the absence of God. Here ... as he wails in lament Isaiah calls God "our Father". Now we have become so used to this language of intimacy that we forget its rarity in the Old Testament. Isaiah is the first to use it. And look ... he calls God "our Father" not when he is snuggled safe and warm in God's arms but when he feels abandoned, orphaned, alone. He calls God "our Father" because he is sure that we are God's children, God's dependents ... that, in the final analysis we are God's responsibility. Standing here under these banners this morning takes us back ... back to the tent of gathering for the World Council of Churches in 1983 ... the tent which welcomed that multi-coloured ecumenical throng. "Oeikumene" ... ecumenical. It means "the whole inhabited world" ... And in 1983 under these banners we heard the prayers of the whole inhabited world in every language and in a wondrous variety of melodies. All of them responding to the same desperate lament. For, you see, all earth is waiting for one who will rip open the heavens and come down ...: for one called 'Emmanuel' ... God with us. But there is something different about our waiting. We have learned not to expect the unmistakeable, ear-splitting sound of the heavens being torn open in earthquake, wind and fire. Instead we keep our ears tuned for the still, small voice of One whose cry from a manger and lament on a cross all too easily falls on deaf ears. So watch ... and listen. He comes.