God's Creative Imagination

Isaiah 65:17-25

As I sit and write this sermon it has come to my attention there are 40 shopping days left till Christmas.  Those of you who are Biblical scholars know that the number 40 has great significance. Noah was on the Ark for 40 days, the children of Israel were in the wilderness for 40 years, and Jesus spent 40 days in the desert before beginning his ministry.  The number forty is not to be taken literally. It is the Biblical way of saying, “a long time”. But for those of us who have children and grandchildren, forty days will be here in no time at all.  There are so many decisions. Do I get them something practical? Would the children rather have money? Do I need to spend the same amount on each grandchild? Most importantly, do I dare make any decision without first checking with Deb?

    There are 40 shopping days left till Christmas.  What sort of dreams and visions do you have for the coming days?

        Our Isaiah text is all about dreams and visions.  The writer of 3^rd Isaiah is all too aware of the length of the number 40.  His generation had spent 40 years in exile, roaming the streets of Babylon, waiting for that precious moment when God’s grace would allow them to travel back to Jerusalem.  The writer was familiar with that marvelous song of hope that serves as the eloquent prelude to Second Isaiah.  “Comfort ye, Comfort ye my people.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.  Cry to her that the penalty has been paid for all her sins.  Through the wilderness the Lord has prepared a way.  Every valley shall be lifted up, every mountain shall be made low and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.”   This song had given him and his generation optimism for the coming years.  They traveled west with the excitement of building a new city, starting new lives and living in the light of the Lord. The exiles made that perilous trip across the desert, gleefully expecting the transformation of Jerusalem to be the simple task of reassembling a few bricks.

        But the hopefulness of Second Isaiah gave way to the reality of a ruined city.    What those exiles discovered was a disaster.  The walls around the city no longer existed. Not a hand had been lifted to restore the temple.  The Jerusalem of their dreams quickly turned out to be a nightmare.  Optimism turned to fear. Hope reversed to pessimism. When one reads Isaiah 56-59, it is hard to imagine anything rising from the ashes of that tragedy.   Yet by chapter 65, something has happened.  The writer of third Isaiah once again was given a reason to dream and as you might have guessed, the source of his hope stemmed from his faith.  In a vision, our writer encounters the very imagination of the Almighty. In lyrics that still ring in our ears, the poet describes Zion’s coming glory.  “God is in the process of doing a new thing.  God is creating a new heaven and earth. The former things shall not be remembered.  God will transform Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight”.   The poet spoke of a time when peace would reign, a time when the inhabitants of the city would be righteous and a time when good tidings would lift the poor and the broken hearted.    Listen again to his words.  “Everyone will  own a home and harvest fruit from their garden.  Children will live to be adults and the elderly will be respected.” 

For a people born in slavery, a people who had heard tales of children slaughtered by their enemies, a people who had seen their elderly cast aside, this was a radical vision. People who have suffered, people who experienced grave disappointments are not easily swayed by words.  To transform someone who has never risen out of the dust of their own misery takes more than wishful thinking. It must be acknowledged, then believed and finally lived. The writer of Third Isaiah believed that once the people of Jerusalem visualized life’s possibilities through God’s eyes, a radical transformation would emerge within their thoughts and they would live as if nothing other than God’s covenantal word mattered.

That is a deep-seated and dangerously radical thought.  Who here has not had their hopes raised only to be crushed? Just a week ago people in the Philippines were preparing to celebrate Christmas. Their dreams and visions centered on a promise of peace and justice that was promised to us 2,000 years ago. What are they dreaming about today?

Hope can be a dangerous mistress.   Let’s face the facts.  We don’t have to pick up a newspaper or listen to the murmurs from last week’s election to know that many folks feel they are slogging their way through complicated and difficult days.  Some find it impossible to see the world as anything other than a survival of the fittest.  Yet this passage from Isaiah serves to remind our weary and suspicious minds that God has always encouraged us to strive to create beauty, and goodness and holiness even in the midst of our chaos.

Please note the words I used. “God has always encouraged us.” That is a far cry from saying, “God will do it for us.” Consider the following. If God is completely responsible for the human experiment then the first step in moving away from a belief in God begins with an examination of the human condition. Helplessness can overcome any amount of optimism. Then it is only a matter of time until we blame God for our present circumstances and reassess the very foundations of our faith system. This process leads to two highly relevant questions. “If God is not involved in transforming the world, what good is God?” This is followed by the equally volatile suggestion, “If God’s transforming action is no longer evident, is this not proof of the non-existence of God?”

Many folks have reached the conclusion that proving the non-existence of God is easier and far more logical than grappling with the possibility that this mystery we call God my still be relevant. You will be happy to know I have I yet to join this group. Not only am I continually overwhelmed by God’s creative genius, I have not succumbed to holding God responsible for the madness that dominates our headlines.

It would be so easy to judge God based on the desires of my heart. If I were God there would be no more wars, no more hurricanes, no more school shootings, no more poverty, no more disease, no more madness. What about you? If you could be God for a day what would be first on your priority list.  Knowing that all of you are a compassionate people, I suspect your desires mirror everything God desires for humankind. So what is the problem? Why will we wake up tomorrow to another tragedy?

You know the answer before it leaves my lips. God placed us in charge. Unfortunately, we who celebrate freewill more than life itself are driven and derailed by memories. We remember the Alamo, the Maine, Pearl Harbor and 911. Tucked deep in our psyche is the idea there is someone out there trying to get us. It might an Islamic terrorist; it might be a politician in Washington; it might be a stranger that lives in the neighborhood; it might be our brother-in-law. Regardless who it is I believe our level of trust toward other humans is not great enough to create a society based on God’s desire for justice and compassion. We have memories and those memories are not easily reconciled.

When the exiles from Babylon arrived in Jerusalem, do you know the first thing the new occupants did? They kicked out all the current residents. They believed only those who had suffered captivity could be trusted. They believed the ones left behind must have collaborated with the enemy. Those memories fueled distrust, this distrust forced long time residents from their homes, and this expulsion left the city with too few folks to build a wall in a timely manner. Memories derailed the task at hand.

So God announced, “Together we will build a society were children are treasured, the elderly are honored, folks live in the homes they build, and each family eats from the gardens they cultivate. But in order for this to happen, you are going to forget the past and embrace the opportunity of today.”

So how did that workout? You know the answer. Look at the human equation or should I say human divisions today.  Forget the political impasses that dominate our headlines. Forget Liberal and Conservative; Forget Palestinians and Jews; Forget North Korea and Iran; Forget Global Warming. Just think about your life and that one irreconcilable issue that cannot be resolved. You know what it is. It fills a good part of your brain and tears up a bigger part of your heart. You can’t let it go and I dare say perhaps you don’t want to let it go. That memory has become a permanent part of your psyche. You feast on that memory not realizing you are the one being devoured.

        How can we move toward healthy resolutions if we refuse to place our memories aside? I know the famous quote, “Those who forget the past end up repeating the past.” But I also know fixating on the past seldom leads to new and creative ways to mend a broken world.

“God is creating a new heaven and a new earth.  The former things shall not be remembered or come to past.” Christmas is less than 40 days away.  In Christ, God did a new thing. In Christ, God desires us to do a new thing. During the next 40 days we are probably going to spend a load of money on children, grandchildren, spouses and even ourselves. Why not spend some time on examining our memories? Keep the good ones. But let go of the ones that hurt and destroy your inner peace. Trust in the possibilities of tomorrow.  If the past controls our future and our past is controlled by our fears, how can tomorrow ever be any different, unless, for the next 40 days, we go a little crazy. Imagine a world where the lion and the lamb lie down together. Imagine the possibility of working toward God’s peaceable kingdom, perhaps not in the world, perhaps not in the nation, but just in you own little hemisphere. Imagine letting go of your hurtful memories in order to create a better future. Imagine restoring just one relationship in the next 40 days. Imagine what kind of Christmas you might celebrate if you forget the past and welcome an old advisory to a new future.                                         

There are forty days left until Christmas. What sort of dreams and visions do you have for the coming days?