Sometimes, we get the idea that it would have been easier to be a person of faith if we lived in Bible times. If we saw miracles with our own eyes, if we had been the ones to walk through the Red Sea on dry ground, if we had been able to drink the water flowing from the rock, if we had seen the walls of Jericho come tumbling down, it would be so much easier to trust God with our own struggles. If only we had seen Moses’ plagues, or how David triumphed over Goliath, or saw the fire that Elijah called down, then faith would be so much simpler.
As silly as it sounds, people in Bible times often wished that they were people who lived in Bible times. What I mean to say is that the vast majority of people who lived in the Holy Land during the thousand years that the stories of the Bible played out never saw a miracle occur. Hundreds of thousands or millions of people lived out their lives just as you and I do: hearing the stories passed down over hundreds of years by generations of their predecessors and trying to make the most out of life given what they knew and what they had been told. And it is out of that blind and desperate faith that the prophet writes in Isaiah 64:1-9:
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you! For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you. Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways.
The prophet begs God to come down and make Himself known, so that all of the surrounding nations that are abusing God’s people will quake and tremble and fall on their knees before God and that justice would be done. The prophet remembers the stories of Egypt being brought to its knees 500 years before, “Do it again, Oh Lord! Save us like you did before!”
But then, he remembers why God has seemed distant, why enemies seemed to surround them on every side, why hope seemed like a dream. And he says:
But when we continued to sin against [your ways], you were angry. How then can we be saved? All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins.
It was easy for the prophet and his neighbors to see the problems that faced them on the surface: tyrannical foreign empires kicking them out of their homes, and threatening them with death if they refused. It was harder to acknowledge the problems that faced them within: their own hearts rebelling against God’s calls for justice and mercy, their own greed insatiably hungry for what others had, their own pride insisting they, not God, are the center. And as they continuously attempt to fill the holes inside their hearts with money and pride and good times, they waste away more and more and more.
But through the poisonous haze of sin separating the people from their God, the prophet shouts out a cry for help:
Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD; do not remember our sins forever. Oh, look upon us, we pray, for we are all your people.
Beset by troubles both outside themselves and within their own hearts, God’s people were desperate for help. They needed someone beyond themselves to show up and make everything better. They needed a Savior.
As we’ve said, today is the first day of Advent - the season of eager expectation at the start of our church year. And once again, we are brought to a place of awareness of our own need. Like the prophet, we’ve all been aware of exterior struggles this year: the looming threats of war in Ukraine and Israel, tension simmering here in the U.S., our own personal struggles with sickness and age. And the reality of our own sin is always staring us in the face: the harsh words we use with those we profess to love, our own greed, or avoidance of responsibility, or pride, or racism, or backbiting, or whatever it is. We, too, are beset by troubles both outside ourselves and within our own hearts. And we know we need help from a Savior.
Our prayers can echo those of the prophet: “God, can’t you just come down and stop the war in Ukraine, can’t you just make peace in the Middle East, can’t you just come and take away my pain and take away my addiction and take away my anger and take away my grief?”
And in the dark, and in the quiet that fills our hearts as we wait, we catch the smallest glimmer of light. For when God shows up and looks upon his people, he rarely does so to take all the hurts away - no, not yet; instead he comes, joining us in our hurt, sharing our burdens, and offering his own body and blood to sustain us as we continue to wait in the dark. Amen.
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