Isaiah 64: 1-9

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down…” This is the prayer, the plea, of a desperate man, indeed a desperate people. One Old Testament scholar has called Isaiah 64, “The most powerful psalm of communal lamentation in the Bible.” These are anguished words spoken by people who have returned from exile in Babylon only to find Jerusalem, the temple, and the surrounding countryside in ruins. How can such a thing have happened? Doesn’t God care for them anymore? Are they still God’s people? Has God turned away? They feel like strangers in their own land, but even worse, they feel like strangers in the sight of God, fearing, as we read in verse 7, that God has hidden God’s face from them.

Calvin and his tiger buddy, Hobbes, are lying on the grass under a tree when Hobbes asks, “Do you think there’s a God?” Calvin thinks about it for a minute, then responds, “Well, somebody’s out to get me!”

Ever feel that way? No matter what you do, no matter what you say, the powers of the universe just seem lined up against you. Certainly that is the mood of Isaiah 64, as the people now stand in the rubble of a lost temple, the ruins of a lost faith. And so the prophet cries out for God “to come on down!” for God to make a dramatic appearance. “God you did it before, now do it again!” This is the prayer of a people who long for God, yet cannot see or hear God, people for whom the God who was once so very close, now is absent.

Again, ever feel that way? I met with a family on Wednesday - mother, father, seven-year-old child. She is dying from cancer. She has put up a gallant fight, but is now not sure she will see another Christmas morning. “God, tear open the heavens and come down! We need you here, people are hurting here! Come and make things right!” You know how the prophet feels. You know what it is to pray and feel like you are only talking to yourself. You know what it feels like to stand by the bed of a loved one who is ill or in pain and pray for God’s help, feeling all the while that God is far away. This text is so honest, so richly human. “God, tear open the heavens….For God’s sake, do something!” And then it’s Advent.

Our UCC Conference Minister, Rev. Mary Susan Gast, wrote this Advent reflection a few years ago:

Disrupting the predictable and placid orbitings of the planets,

There came a star.

Radiant, yet not distant.

Great joy for all the people

For those huddled at the edge of prosperity,

For those dwelling on the margins of acceptance,

Here is good news.

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, You are with us,

In our undistinguished circumstances.

Wrapped in bands of cloth, bare of ornamentation,

Your Love for us is born among us.

Outlandish message, outlandish messenger,

You sneak into our lives unannounced,

Born of mystery, yet human, frail, limited, bound.

Your power pulses in the peaceful regular breathing of a newborn,

A tiny and tender gift of undeserved and undeserving love,

You have come to share our common lot.

Radiant. Not distant. Great joy for all the people!

We look out upon our broken world, or within to our broken lives, and with the prophet we cry out, “Please God, tear open the heavens and come down. Make the nations, make us, tremble at your presence. Repeat the awesome deeds you performed in the past. We could use a little intervention here!” And what we get is this baby. Not quite what we are looking for, but perhaps just what we most need.

A couple of years ago, the New York Times published a picture of an Afghani woman who had lost a leg to a land mine. She had attached something to the stump, it might have been a table leg – it was hard to tell from the picture – but whatever it was, it enabled her to walk. And in the picture she was walking, another refugee injured and driven from her home by warfare and violence. And as she walked, she was carrying her newborn baby. A colleague, after gazing at that photo, asked, “Is this how Jesus will be born this year?”

The answer is yes. And therein lies our hope. We hear Isaiah’s plea for dramatic action, then we see a baby in a manger, and we may be tempted to agree with these words of that noted theologian, Woody Allen: “It’s not that I hate God. I have nothing against God. I think that the worst you could say is that God is an underachiever.” Yes, you could say that. Or you could hear Isaiah’s plea, then see the baby in the manger, and see revealed there a God who never tires of birthing love and hope in a tired and broken world.

“Outlandish Message. Outlandish messenger…A tiny and tender gift of undeserved and undeserving love….come to share our common lot.” Again, perhaps not the intervention we expected or even wanted, but perhaps the one we needed most. I have always liked these words of Edward McDonald: “The great events of this world are not battles and elections and earthquakes and thunderbolts. No, the great events are babies, for each child comes with the message that God is not yet disgusted with us, but still has hope for each human life.” No, this birth, this tiny and tender gift, may not reveal to us a God who is going to take dramatic action to make everything all right. But it does reveal a God who chooses to be present with us in light and darkness, in time of fear and despair, in illness and death, who seeks us out and joins us in the midst of life.

I think back to the picture of that severely wounded refugee woman and her newborn child. Not a classic Hallmark Christmas card to be sure, but a powerful reminder of where the Christ child can be found, where he always is found. Not distant, not moving on, but moving in, ever deeper into our humanity. As one colleague writes, “Ever since the word took flesh, there is no body part, no human life, that does not register in the heart of God.” I hope you feel the hope here – the possibilities here, I hope you are prepared to hear the angels sing anytime – whether beside life’s weary road or from the mountaintops of life’s great accomplishments. They do, you know, they do.

I must have been in a poetic mood last week. As I reflected on this text and this sermon, I found myself returning to these words of Madeleine L’Engle:

God did not wait till the world was ready,

Till…nations were at peace.

God came when the Heavens were unsteady,

And prisoners cried out for release.

God did not wait for the perfect time.

God came when the need was deep and great.

God dined with sinners in all their grime,

And turned water into wine. God did not wait.

In joy God came

To a tarnished world of sin and doubt.

To a world like ours, of anguished shame

God came, and God’s light would not go out.