Sermon at St. John’s Parish Church,
West Grimstead – Parish Eucharist -
Sunday 15 December 2013
Isaiah 35:1-10; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11
May the words of my
mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable to you, O God. Amen
As a child, these last few weeks before Christmas would
conjure up two great emotions – frustration and the excitement which comes with
anticipation. The frustration was
brought about by what seemed an indeterminable wait – Christmas never seemed to
get any closer and the school term seemed to stretch on for ever and ever and
ever – and the great anticipation of the hope and joy that the special present
I had asked the real Father Christmas in Hull to bring me (we didn’t call him
“Santa” – that was too American in our household and I was convinced that the
real St. Nicholas could only be found in Hammonds store in Hull) would duly
arrive under the Christmas tree. Today,
for me, Christmas seems to come around exceedingly quickly and as for hoping
for that special present, well it is no longer a great issue for me – the
special present we now hope for is that our children have a lovely time.
The three readings we heard today are linked by those same
emotions – the frustration we often associate with waiting and the anticipation
of the joy which will come about at some future time.
In our first reading, Isaiah is prophesying to those same
exiled Jews to whom he had said earlier in Isaiah
6 that the Lord would “stop up their
ears and shut their eyes”. You will
recall how the author of the book of Isaiah earlier described having a vision
in which God asked who would go to his people with this unhappy message and
Isaiah had replied “Here I am, Send me!” It
is a popular piece of scripture at ordination and licensing services. The
message is also captured in the hymn we often sing on those occasions, “I the Lord of Sea and Sky”.
Back in Isaiah 6,
the Jews, who had been taken into captivity in Babylon after the fall of the
Temple and City of Jerusalem, were given this terrible message and when Isaiah
asked how long this would continue he was told in Isaiah 6.11 – “Until cities
lie waste, without inhabitant and houses without people and the land utterly
desolate” – In other words a long time.
In fact the Exile lasted for around 70 years and when the Jews did
finally return with Ezra it was to find Jerusalem pretty much in the condition
just described.
But in our reading in Isaiah
35, the prophet is now telling the exiled Jews that the long wait will come
to an end and result in the reversal of all those things he was told by God to
tell them would happen. In our reading
this morning he now says that “the eyes
of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped”. The
period of the exile, of being in the wilderness, will end and that there will
be rejoicing and singing – another hymn springs to mind - “You will go out with Joy”. But it took seventy years before the
prophesy could be fulfilled.
The stories of the Hebrew bible are constantly ones of the
Jews waiting for something to happen and often when they try and force the
issue God’s wrath seems to be generated – for example, Abraham was told that he
would found a great nation and that his descendants would be more numerous than
the heavens – but he tried to force the issue by sleeping with his slave girl
Hagar who was later sent into the wilderness with her son Ismael; David wanted
Bathsheba, the wife of his good friend and brother-in-arms Uriah to produce an
heir to the throne of Israel, and resorted to murder to cover his
adultery. The result was to cost the
life of the illegitimate son and the delay in the building of the Temple. Time
and time again, whenever God’s hand has been forced against his Will, things
simply go wrong – wrong as far as we are concerned.
In our Gospel reading, John the Baptist is in a dark place.
He has been imprisoned and, as we know, will eventually lose his head. He hears
news of what Jesus is doing and his mind must have gone back to the prophesy of
Isaiah – the blind will see and the deaf
will hear. News of the coming of the
Messiah was long overdue. And it is
indeed very interesting that Matthew in this passage talks about “when John heard what
the Messiah was doing” not Jesus or Christ but the Messiah. John must have
thought that the long wait was indeed over but still sent his disciples to
Jesus to ask whether he was indeed the one who is to come - or did they have to
wait for another?
Isaiah’s prophesy took some 400 years to be fulfilled in its
entirety.
But if Jesus could heal the sick, make the blind see and the
deaf hear then why could he not or more precisely did he not free John from
prison? Surely that would have been an
easy task for the Messiah.
And that, in the words of former Bishop of Durham, Tom
Wright, leads us to the “dark mystery of the ‘now-but-not-yet’ of
the gospel” – both in Jesus’s ministry and after the resurrection – hence
James’s call to Advent-style patience.
I love the Book of James – his no nonsense black and white
style and his clear pragmatic viewpoint on life and faith. James harks back to the prophets of the Old
Testament and praises them for their endurance.
And such praise is justified for the Jewish people went round and round
and round – not only in their wanderings in the wilderness but also at times in
their Faith as they conquered and were conquered. No wonder God sent his only Son – he had
tried time and time again through the prophets to keep his people on the
straight and narrow and time and time again they failed. But God is patient
with us when we don’t answer him and we, likewise, must be patient with Him
when we pray and wait for our prayers to be answered.
This modern technological world has changed us greatly. When I first started work in a lawyer’s
office in the 70s I would dictate a letter, wait for it to come back from my
secretary of the typing pool, correct it if needs be and then eventually send
it off in the post. Some five to seven
days later I would get a response – possibly longer. Today, that same message would be sent by
email typed by me personally and I could expect a response within the
hour. That is how our patience has
changed. We no longer want to wait for
anything – and this has led to terrible over extensions of credit. My children now see the latest gadget and it
takes quite a lot to convince them that often they must wait.
God often has a completely different time scale to us – he
must also become frustrated with us too.
For example, my call to ministry came a good year, probably two, before
I did anything about it. I kept putting it off and off until the nagging became
more of a shout. Once called, and after
I did something about it and started training and so on, I then asked myself
and God through prayer, why had he called me to this ministry so late in my
life? I am still figuring that one out
but in all probability it has much to do with his desire to form me into the
person he needed to do that ministry and that my lengthy formative years were
as much about carrying out his ministry, it’s not mine, in the places I found myself
then. I am also grappling with and
praying to try and discern where he might want to place me in the future. But I have a great sense of calm and serenity
about that because I know that, in the words of Jeremiah 29:11 he knows what
plans he has for me and each and every one of us – but we must be patient – not
like my wife who goes around feeling all the presents under the Christmas
tree. All will be revealed at the right
time.
But that doesn’t mean that we should abdicate all
responsibility and do nothing whilst we await God to reveal his plans for
us. He very much wants us to get on with
life and to act towards Him and each other in accordance with the Great
Commandments which Jesus left us – “To
love God with all our hearts and to love one another as he has loved us”. In other words, to continue to do his work on
earth.
In a few days time we will celebrate Jesus’s birth. In our hymns and carols we sing about the
nativity and about his crucifixion and resurrection. We sing about his coming for our salvation –
but we should never forget all the other aspects of his ministry which he did
over those three short years – ministry prophesied by Isaiah, Jeremiah Malachi
and other Old Testament prophets. A ministry
which he has left us to continue here with the aid of the Holy Spirit. As James says, the farmer nurtures his crops,
he does indeed wait for the rain and the sun to do their work before
harvesting, but he must also weed and tend to them too.
So as we wait for Jesus’s coming, let us remember that
patience is indeed a virtue. Let us
listen out for God’s voice in those moments when the hustle and bustle of daily
life slows down sufficiently to give us the time to re-connect with Him.
Let us pray:
Almighty Father,
At this time you remind
us once more of the joy you gave to the world in the coming of your Son, Lord
Jesus Christ.
As we wait for the time
when he will come again confirm our faith and fix our eyes on him until that
day dawns
And Christ the Morning
Star rises in our hearts.
Amen
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