First Sunday of Advent (B): Isaiah 64:1–9 and Mark 13:24–37
Bethany and Faith Lutheran Churches, Reading, PA
You can feel the yearning of Isaiah’s words: “O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” Despite the fact that this prophet knows that the “day of the lord shall come as destruction from the Almighty (Isaiah 13)” he still begs for that day to come. No, for God to come. In his time, God seemed so distant. But if God would just show himself, all the nations would know there is a God. Even the earth itself would respond to the glory and power of the Lord, celebrating with its own power, leaping and quaking, whole land masses displaced with only a fraction of the power God possesses.
Jesus, too, describes his coming as a cosmic event, his poetic images piling on top of one another. The sun grows dark, the moon will not shine, the starlight winks out from the sky. Because they are destroyed, they are no more? Or more likely, because in the presence of the brightness of Christ, no other light can be seen. What’s the point of shining when there is a light that outshines all? The cosmic powers, the source of heat and light and energy, all bow themselves down before the glory of the Lord.
We say that God so loved the world, and think of ourselves, of humanity, that caused him to send his only Son. Jesus tells us here that our perspective is too narrow. The world is bigger than us, and God loves it all. And more than it all. The word in Greek is “cosmos,” two million million galaxies, and that’s only the ones we can see. Jesus is born to unimportant parents in a rather small town in a forgotten corner of the Roman Empire, on an unimportant arm of a rather small spiral galaxy in a forgotten corner of the universe. With a birth that seems like nothing, God comes into history, and it has cosmic significance.
Isaiah looks to the Lord of the Cosmos and declares that no evidence of any other god has ever come to light. No eye has seen any god besides you, and you work for those who wait on you. Although human life spans are short, and we all wither and fade like the flowers of the field, God is still ultimately involved with us. A whole cosmos to love, and yet he has claimed you in Baptism, and he comes for you.
The signs are all there, Jesus says. You can see them all around. The leaves start to turn and you know Winter is coming; they grow again and Summer is on its way. The same is true with God. The Old Testament Law and the Prophets, the Gospel story of Jesus and the encouragement of the letters, the water and wine God places before us, the fellowship that gathers and the loving works produced, the world whose values lead only to death somehow keeps producing life. God is coming, God is here, the signs are everywhere.
To his disciples, and to us, Jesus promises we will see it, and not just the signs but the fullness of his coming: “This generation will not pass away until these things have taken place.” It’s a problematic statement, since we know that his first audience passed from this earth two thousand years ago. They waited for his return, and we are still waiting. But we forget too quickly; in the resurrection of Christ, death always keeps producing life. That generation may have died, but they are still alive, and waiting, and they will certainly see and rejoice in the Lord when he comes again.
The cries of a mother giving birth were joined by the cry of a newborn taking his first breath, there beside the cattle one earth-shattering moment, long, long ago. With a life that seems but a moment, God comes into history, and it has eternal significance.
Isaiah hopes for God’s coming, and while he sees that humankind isn’t worthy for his presence among us, he hopes that when God gets here, that will change. Not that people will suddenly live different lives, of course. God tears the heavens open and shows up in the flesh, and most people won’t even notice. But while people won’t just change, Isaiah does hope that God will change them. Beg that God will change them. “We are the clay and you are the potter,” he says. “We are all the work of your hand.” Human nature requires God’s nature before anything can become different.
And so Jesus does come, God’s nature in the flesh. And people are changed. Oh, only a little at first, but enough to gather around him and listen to his teachings, even the most frightful ones, both then, and now. We are here listening, a sign that it’s working. And change does take work. Jesus urges us not to let up. He has come, and is coming, and until he does, we should be hard at work. Not like slaves who should be afraid, lest their master suddenly return and find them idle. Well, not only like that. But like caretakers who have been entrusted with the wonderful secret that will change everything, turn the whole world upside down. And we can whisper and shout and sing (well, not so much singing until that vaccine is out) God’s secret so the whole world can be excited about it, too.
A fleshly thing, a child’s birth, water and blood and placenta, a child in need of swaddling clothes to keep warm and a family to keep loved. The most normal, mundane thing in the world, but soon, that child turns the world upside-down. With life that seems ordinary, God comes into history, and it has transformative significance.
This is the story we are about to tell, the journey on which we are about to embark. The path through Advent to Christmas is one that most of us have walked before. Enough times that it has become rote. We have things to do, people to see—though perhaps only over the computer this year, presents to buy, finances to arrange, decorations to put up, letters to write for Santa, meals to cook, tempers to calm, all on top of the stuff of our normal lives. Just another Christmas, for most of us, it could go by without much attention.
Without our attention, at least. But the servants of the Lord will be hard at work to usher the secret of love into this world. And his coming will be seen and celebrated by countless people long gone, and by many more waiting to be born. And even the heavens in all of their courses will pause in their whirling to bow down and worship the One who is and was and is to come, God made flesh, saving the universe by stepping foot in it, born, living, dying, and rising so death would be no more.
You can feel the yearning of Isaiah’s words: “O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down!”