 ST. PAUL’S UNITED CHURCH Petrolia, Ontario |
Hope Beyond A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Robert M. Gibson © November 30th 2008 Advent 1 Isaiah 64:1–9 Change, refining, Psalm 80:1–7, 17–19 ) Shine upon us, shepherd of Israel. Mark 13:24–37 Keep awake and alert; we do not know when the time is coming. |
Lighting the Advent candle of hope in a hopeless world
As we light the first candle in the Advent wreath entitled “Hope”, will its flickering light remind us we are to be a hopeful people? Is there any hope for us on the brink of a recession? Is there anyone for the hope for the working family who has to make their first visit to a food bank? Is there any hope for those who experience Christmas as one of the loneliness seasons of the year?
Will the light from the candle of hope fuel in us the audacity to be a people of hope in this Advent season?
When I think back to what hope is and how it works, my mind goes back to what I learned about hope from placing Isaiah 64 alongside the experience I had with a Vacation Bible class of 12 year olds.
I remember being asked to be an assistant to two Vacation Bible School teachers to a group of ten, 12-year boys, and girls. The prospect of volunteering to teach this class was daunting. They were kids who were almost entering the teenage stage. I know everything you know nothing stage. Some of these kids had attitude problems. I would have preferred to volunteer, assist with five or six year olds. However the leader V.B.S wanted some male influence in some of the classes, and so she thought of me. I would not have to teach, just be an assistant or a gofer as she called it.
On the second day of the class Lisa one of the teachers brought six or seven containers of red, blue, yellow, play dough. She asked each kid, to pick out two lumps of play dough and place them in front of themselves. As each kid was talking a lump of dough, they were asking each other: What is it that you want us to do with the play dough? The teachers said nothing. The kids asked again. To which the teachers said nothing. This went on for about five minutes until there was complete silence.
God says nothing
In today’s scripture Isaiah is not an idealistic young man as he was when he was praying in the temple and heavens opened and he saw God sitting on a throne. In today’s scripture, he is an old man returned with his people from exile, returned to a city in ruin, a temple in ruin, and a people in ruin. His outburst similar to the kids is “what are you going to do to us God. What is to become of us? God says nothing. Isaiah keeps shouting and God like the teachers keeps silent.
After what seemed to be a lifetime of questioning for these 12 year olds, when in fact it was only five minutes, Lisa looking at the kids said to them” I want you to look at the blobs of clay in front of you , touch it , smell it, but don’t eat it. Than I want you to tell me what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of the doubt. The answers went back and forth. Of all the answers, the they mostly described the blob of play dough as formless, shapeless, nothingness..
Israel had become a blob
What the kids were describing was pretty much sums up Israel’s life. Isaiah says that they are “clay.”
As a blob of clay, they are shapeless. His people lost there shape when they strayed from God and decided it was better to worship other gods.
Once upon a time Israel had formed a relationship, a covenant with God. Bonded by these words: “I am your God and you are my people cemented the relationship. Something happened to break the bond and now Israel was without the form of that relationship.
When the Israel returned home from exile, they eyes opened up wide when they saw that while they were away, their adversaries had trodden down their sanctuary. Without a sanctuary, their faith was nothing.
Our lives without shape, form, and nothingness
Being a blob of clay pretty well sums up our lives sometimes. Like the Israel people, our lives can be shapeless, formless and nothing like a blob of clay
Once our lives had the form of a relationship without someone we loved and cared about but suddenly death came and snatched the person away form us and are left without form.
There was a time when we had the perfect shape, a perfect body , only to find that some sort of addiction to food, drugs or something else, or the ravages of cancer eat away our body, or diabetics takes away a toe and a limb
Of course, there are times or occasions when we feel like a nothing, a blob of nothingness where nobody notices us , we become invisible in a room full of people.
We have been like those Israelite people, a blob of clay living an existence without form, shape, and being.
The blob of clay does not have to remain the blob of clay forever.
Israel will not always be a blob
In the hands of God as artist, the Israelites as clay will not always be a blob of shapeless, formless and nothingness. They have hope.
Isaiah the artist announces that God as artist is a potter. The God who with skill, sensitivity, and delicacy formed the human persons, formed the animals and birds and the earth will form Israel
God the artist is to imagine forming object that has never yet existed and then implements this form with imagination into reality. God the potter will shape, form, and make Israel into something by mashing , pressing, squeezing , rubbing and massaging shaping, forming them into God’s people again, by making sure the once nothing in their relationship with become something new and exciting.
Yet O lord you are our Father
we are the clay , you are the potter.
We are all the work of your hand.
Neither will we be become the blob
When our lives become a blob our hope is that God will do to us what the kids will do the clay and what God will do the people of Israel. God will
God will do all these things
If only the clay could talk
As the kids worked on their works of art, I almost wished I could put my ear down to the dough and listen to what it had to say as it was being shaped and formed. I suspect the dough would be saying: In order for me to become, I need to trust in the hands of those kids to make me into something.
In order for God to shape and form the blob of clay into something, Israel has to trust in power of the potter. Trust is a firm conviction, a belief in the reliability of the other to place my clay in his /her hands to work God’s power.
Hope is allowing oneself to trust in the power of God to do something with us as a blob.
Sometime ago I heard the story about two men who both were diagnosed with tuberculosis. They went to the same sanatorium together. One was home in 10 months, full recovered and healthy. The other man was dead in six months. Why? There were no physical or biological differences. The man who died complained every day, sunk into the pit of despair and fear. The man who survived faced his illness with hope and courage. He allowed the potter to shape and form his life into wholeness and healing.
Hope is trusting that God will keep his promises
What did He promise? God promised that He would be under us, that he would be over us, and that He would be ahead of us and behind us. Emmanuel is not God apart-from 0s us, but God with us. Shaping and forming us to be in relationship with him as we go through the messes of life.
In this season of Advent, we are reminded God will continue to keep God promise by sending us a son born in swaddling clothes lying in a manager. The child will be called Immanuel. Immanuel is not God apart from us but God with us. God with us in the blob of our lives
God is still Emmanuel, God is still with us, giving us strength and understanding and wisdom to live in this messed up world inside us and around us. Emmanuel! God is with us…in our mess and messes.
God comes into our life to be with us, to be Emmanuel, to give us the strength and wisdom to live through times like these, no matter how terrible or awful.
Kids producing something wonderful
As the morning session of Vacation Bible School was ending, all of the kids had produced beautiful works of art. Some had even completed two pieces of work.
Looking at there words of art, the teachers and me included realized how far these kids came from plopping a piece of clay on the table. They had taken the clay and brought form , shape and somethingness. What wonderful works of art.
On this first Sunday in Advent, we are like the clay of Israel. Plopped in this world, enclosed by hopelessness, or feeling hopeless ourselves: life without shape, form and nothing. Waiting for the potter, for God to come in the form of a child, to shape us and form us and allow us to be something in a world of hopelessness. Today we sit and wait, trusting and in patience and allowing the Divine Potter to shape us
Let us prayer together the prayer in Voices United number 275
It is not you who shape God; it is God that shapes you.
If then you are the work of God, await the hand of the Artist
who does all things in due season.
Offer the Potter your heart, soft and tractable,
and keep the form in which the Artist has fashioned you.
Let your clay be moist, lest you grow hard and
lose the imprint of the Potter's fingers. .Amen