that thou wouldst open the heavens and come down. (Isaiah 64:1)
The evidence of God's goodness and his presence had been rather thin in Israel of late as portrayed in the narrative from this portion of Hebrew Scripture. Israel's enemies to the north were having their way, and God seemed to be staying out of the way. "O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down.
" Come down to save us. Come down to deliver us. Come down to free us. Come down and do something to save us. But God seemed to be playing peek a boo with his people. Come down, come down, wherever you are. God was hidden.
"You have hidden your face from us and delivered us into the hand of our iniquities." That is how God deals with sinners, the two-fold way of the Law and the Gospel that Israel, and Isaiah experienced. Before God reveals himself to us in mercy, He first hides himself in wrath. Before God shows himself as our Defender and Redeemer, He turns us over to our enemies and lets them abuse over us.
Faith that is not tested, cannot be trusted: Before God forgives our sin, He gives us over to sin. Before He opens the kingdom of heaven to us, He lets us experience hell. Before He raises us from the dead, He gives us over to death and lets death have its way with us. Before God opens the empty tomb of Easter Sunday, there is the bloody cross of Good Friday - not only for Christ, but for all who are baptized into his death and resurrection.
Faith that is not tested, cannot be trusted: Death is the enemy who snatches a child before he / she learns to play in the sunshine. Death does not respect the young or the old. Only the wisdom of God can guide us at moments like these. Isaiah was troubled by this. He had some questions to ask of this God who had gone into seclusion, this "hidden God."
“This God who plays peek a boo” Why had the people, who were God's chosen people, turned away from God? Why did Israel reject the word of God? Those are logical questions to ask. If faith is God's gift, and if God preserves us in faith, then unbelief and the hardening of our hearts must be God's doing too, right?
Why some believe and others don’t? Why do some cling to their baptismal promise and others reject it? Why do some catechumens cling to the Word and Sacraments in which they have been taught while others turn away from God in unbelief?
John Calvin is able to supply a logical answer. It's God's doing. Faith and unbelief, salvation and damnation are all God's doing because God is sovereign and the buck stops with Him, he says. The prophet Isaiah sounds as if he is of the same line of thought when he asks, "Why, O Lord, do you make us wander from your ways?" (as if sin were God's fault). "Why do you harden our hearts so that we fear you not?" (as if their hardened hearts were God's doing.)
We have many why questions to ask God ourselves, don’t we? "Why do bad things happen to good people?" was a popular one a few years back, and still is today among those who have bad things happened to them. Rabbi Kushner answered that God was all loving, but He wasn't all powerful. God would love to do something but He just doesn't have the power to prevent every little bad thing from happening. He just doesn't have his finger on every button.
Rabbi Kushner answer has provided some comfort to some people, as long as they don't think about it too long. God doesn't want planes to crash and babies to die but He can't stop those things from happening. While it may be nice to know that God is love, if He doesn't have the power to act on that love, He isn't much of a God and there isn't much comfort in a loving but powerless God, is there? (2+2=4, 4+4=8 etc)
When you and I moralize God, that's what we get: A powerless God of love or a loveless God of power. But if God is both powerful and loving, then He is "immoral" for not exercising that power, and the most "immoral" thing God ever did was hang an innocent Jew on a wooden cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
* We interrupt the regularly scheduled sermon for a special announcement: (whisper) Jesus is coming
Why does God permit the famines in Africa and the political corruptions that keep people from getting their food in due season? Why does God permit cancers, HIV, diseases, destruction, wars, and death? Why does God put up with injustice, violence, and evil in the world?
Why does he permit 50 million black people to be systematically uprooted from Africa brought to the Americas as slaves? Why does God permit six million Jews to be systematically killed in Nazi death camps, or Why does God permit three million unborn defenseless babies to be systematically killed in abortion clinics yearly in North America? Why doesn't he just come down right now and clean the mess up?
Little children like to play the "why" game with their parents. "Don't play in the street." "Why?" Because you might get hit." "Why?" "Because a driver may not see you?" "Why?" "Because you're short." "Why?" "Because you're a child." "Why?" "Because I'm your parent and I say so and if you ask one more "why" question, you're going into room." "OK."
We all have plenty of why questions for God, don’t we? And when people ask them of us, we become tongue-tied. It is pretty tough defending God who is gone into hiding, but we try anyway. We need to learn with the prophet Isaiah that the "why question" is out of bounds and unanswerable. I wonder if it is the place of the clay to question the Potter? I wonder still if it is the place of the creature to judge the Creator? I wonder yet still if it is the place of the redeemed to question the judgment of their Redeemer?
To ask "why" of God for me is to call God's inscrutable judgments into judgment. It is to make God answerable and accountable to me, to make myself lord and judge over God, to be god over God. It is to hold God responsible for our evil and sin and unbelief. Someone has to be at fault, it has to be God. Surely not us.
* We interrupt the regularly scheduled sermon for a special announcement: (whisper) Jesus is coming
When we ask for explanations, we are accusing God of making a mistake, of bad judgment, of powerlessness, loveless ness, and failure. The why question lays a moral judgment on God. God is not behaving morally, and we want to know why.
To ask "why questions" of God is to deal with the God who plays peek a boo, or as Luther calls him, the "naked God." Like the prophet Isaiah, we would call down the hidden God from heaven to deal with the situations in this world.
"O that thou wouldst open the heavens and come down" and clean up our streets, neighbourhoods, and our communities, rid the world of evil and vice, straighten out our sicknesses and wipe out everything that threatens our lives and offends our sense of justice and morality.
But what would become of us, if the (Shekiana) God would come out of his hiding place? Would we be able to stand in the presence of this hidden God? Remember what Isaiah said. This is the God who works for those who wait for him, and who joyfully meets the one who works righteousness. With what good works would you and I greet this hidden God, who causes even the mountains to shake in their foundations?
If God tore open the heavens and came down to wipe out sin and evil from the world, what would prevent him from wiping us out first? Isaiah rightly confessed, "We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our so-called "righteous deeds" are like soiled and stained rags.
Isaiah literally calls our "righteous works" "filthy cloths" in God's eyes. In the presence of the hidden God we are like leaves in the fall. We dry up and wither and His breath blows us away. There are no answers to the why questions. Job didn't get an answer when he questioned why his life was stricken with so many misfortunes.
Jesus didn't get an answer to his why question when He cried out on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" We know why. It was because he was made sin for us, though he knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
The Father abandoned his Son so that He would not forsake us. That's why Jesus suffered. O that thou wouldst open the heavens and come down." God did come down. God tore open the heavens and came down to us, but not quite in the manner Isaiah had in mind.
"He came down from heaven and was conceived by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man." He came down much lower than Isaiah expected. God came down, not as the hidden God of power, but as the God of the manger and the cross (both were made of wood).
He came down to be with us, to be one of us, and one with us, to be joined with us in our humanity. He came down as the God who breaths, and bleeds, and sweats. God came down to us in the Child of Bethlehem, the obedient son of Mary, the poor carpenter of Nazareth, the preacher from Galilee, the beggar King on a borrowed donkey, the crucified King of Calvary.
When Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River, we are told that there was a voice from heaven that testified that this man is God’s beloved Son. Therefore we are to look for no for other God, but this One - God's Son, Mary's Son. To look for this hidden God anywhere else is futile and dead end. You will not find him, and if do let me know!
Today is the first of four Sundays in the season of Advent. Advent means "coming." Advent is not a date on the calendar. It is a way of life. It is a time to reflect and prepare for the visible coming of Jesus Christ in his glory. Opening of our heart for Gos in Christ to take residence. Then once again the heavens will be torn open, and the One whom we do not now see will be seen in glory.
* We interrupt the regularly scheduled sermon for a special announcement: (whisper) Jesus is coming
We don't know when the heavens will be torn open for the final time. It could happen in the evening, at midnight, at dawn, in the morning. But we do know is who it is that will be coming down. The One who comes down to us here and now in Word and Holy Supper. Jesus Christ. He will come down to bring us up, to raise up all the dead and to give eternal life to all who trust in him.
Until that Day, we work and we watch, leaving the why? and the when? The questions to our gracious Father in heaven. We work at the tasks we have been given by God to do as parents, workers, parishioners, citizens. "Each and everyone having his or her own task." And keeping watch for the master's coming.
As we work and watch with confidence, through faith that gives food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, faith that welcomes the stranger, company to the sick and imprisoned, knowing that he who will open the heavens and come down is He who opened the heavens and came down and die for us. He comes again to save us, keep watch, keep watch, keep watch.
Faith that is not tested, cannot be trusted:
Amen.
Rev. Samuel King-Kabu
November 27, 2005