Isaiah 64:1-9 Save!

Isaiah 64:1-9 (Evangelical Heritage Version)

1Oh, that you would rip open the heavens and come down.

Mountains then would quake because of your presence.

2As fire ignites stubble and as fire makes water boil,

make your name known to your adversaries.

Then nations would quake in your presence.

3You did amazing things that we did not expect.

You came down. Mountains quaked because of your presence.

4From ancient times no one has heard.

No ear has understood.

No eye has seen any god except you,

who goes into action for the one who waits for him.

5You meet anyone who joyfully practices righteousness,

who remembers you by walking in your ways!

But you were angry because we sinned.

We have remained in our sins for a long time.

Can we still be saved?

6All of us have become like something unclean,

and all our righteous acts are like a filthy cloth.

All of us have withered like a leaf,

and our guilt carries us away like the wind.

7There is no one who calls on your name,

who rouses himself to take hold of you.

So you hid your face from us.

You made us melt by the power of our guilt.

8But now, Lord, you are our father.

We are the clay, and you are our potter.

All of us are the work of your hand.

9Do not be angry, Lord, without limit.

Do not remember our guilt forever.

Please look closely.

All of us are your people.

Save!

I.

The howling winds of a storm have caught you out in the elements unprepared. Do you take the time to carefully construct a prayer to God for help? Probably not. “Save me!” is all your numb mind can come up with as you continue to trudge along in search of shelter.

Your car careens out of control into oncoming traffic on the slippery road. One part of your brain remembers that hitting the brakes will only make it worse; another part works with your hands as you wrestle the steering wheel, desperately trying to regain control of your car; still another part squeaks out the only words you can form in your prayer: “Lord, help!”

You stare at the email, not sure what to think. This letter of reprimand from your boss could be just a warning, or it could mean that you won’t have a job at the end of the day. Losing this job would be devastating for your family. You might lose everything you have. No words even come to mind as you try to formulate a prayer; you just sit there staring at the screen.

Maybe one of these scenarios has happened to you. Maybe not. If you are a person who prays, at some moment of your life you have probably prayed a short prayer without really giving much thought to what you were praying. That’s ok. Most of the time.

II.

“Oh, that you would rip open the heavens and come down. Mountains then would quake because of your presence. 2As fire ignites stubble and as fire makes water boil, make your name known to your adversaries. Then nations would quake in your presence” (Isaiah 64:1-2, EHV).

You can almost feel the violence in Isaiah’s prayer. The sky itself ripping open. Earthquakes and volcanos shaking whole mountains. Fire raging through grass and brush so quickly that ponds begin to steam and boil. “Come down now, Lord,” he prays. “Make your presence known as you eliminate those who oppose you.”

Isaiah may have been thinking about Israel’s history. “You did amazing things that we did not expect. You came down. Mountains quaked because of your presence. 4From ancient times no one has heard. No ear has understood. No eye has seen any god except you, who goes into action for the one who waits for him” (Isaiah 64:3-4, EHV).

God did amazing things as he brought his people Israel out of bondage in the land of Egypt. The plagues showed God’s power. So did the shaking and rumbling from Mount Sinai as God spoke to Moses and gave his Law to the people. God’s amazing displays of power also came in quieter things: manna to eat and water to drink that sustained the people in a wilderness where survival for such a large population should not have been possible. As the people entered the Promised Land and took control of it, the hand of God was evident time after time. What could be more amazing than the things God did for his people Israel?

“Oh, that you would rip open the heavens and come down... 2 Then nations would quake in your presence” (Isaiah 64:1-2, EHV). “Repeat such amazing things, Lord,” Isaiah prayed.

Sometimes we pray the same thing. “God, deal with my enemies.”

Catechism students at Holy Trinity find the word “schadenfreude” in their list of vocabulary. To have schadenfreude is to take pleasure in the pain or misfortune of others, especially your enemy. Even if we aren’t so blatant as to pray for bad things to happen to our enemies, we certainly feel schadenfreude when an enemy experiences misfortune.

Is that what Isaiah was praying? Defeat my enemies so I can have schadenfreude?

Maybe Isaiah didn’t give much thought to the early part of his prayer. Maybe we don’t, either, when we pray for the defeat of evil.

“You meet anyone who joyfully practices righteousness, who remembers you by walking in your ways! But you were angry because we sinned. We have remained in our sins for a long time. Can we still be saved?” (Isaiah 64:5, EHV).

In one verse Isaiah’s posture of prayer shifts. God, he recognizes, would deal favorably with the righteous. But there is a problem: sin. “You were angry because we sinned,” Isaiah says.

If God were to “rip open the heavens and come down,” as Isaiah first prayed—and as we sometimes pray, too—we would be caught up in the inferno of his wrath. Can we still be saved?

“All of us have become like something unclean, and all our righteous acts are like a filthy cloth. All of us have withered like a leaf, and our guilt carries us away like the wind” (Isaiah 64:6, EHV). Things get even worse. This passage is one that shows up often in my sermons. Even when Christians try their best to be good and do good, we fail miserably. Our best is a complete mess. The withered leaves of Fall are a picture of what we are worth because of sin. Our guilt should carry us away from God with the Fall winds.

“There is no one who calls on your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you. So you hid your face from us. You made us melt by the power of our guilt” (Isaiah 64:7, EHV).

There’s the result of the filthy cloth of our righteous acts and the withered leaves of our guilt. We have not—we cannot rouse ourselves to take hold of God. If we pray that God would “rip open the heavens and come down,” we might actually be praying that he would hide his face from us, or make us wobbly in the knees by the power of our guilt.

Schadenfreude-style prayers end up calling for our own devastation.

III.

Or do they?

Earlier in today’s service we prayed the Prayer of the Day: “Stir up your power, O Lord, and come. Protect us by your strength, and save us from the threatening dangers of our sins; for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.” That prayer is not unlike that of Isaiah when he prayed for God to “rip open the heavens and come down.” It’s a little gentler, perhaps. Like Isaiah did in later verses, it recognizes our sinfulness and the seriousness of that sin. In a sense, the Prayer of the Day asks with Isaiah: “Can we still be saved?”

That’s the question of the ages, isn’t it? “Can we still be saved?”

The answer comes from the Gospel chosen for today, the First Sunday in Advent. There we see Jesus, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey on Palm Sunday. It seems like a strange scene for the beginning of the church year, a Sunday we say is starting to get us ready for Christmas.

“So you hid your face from us... 8But now, Lord, you are our father” (Isaiah 64:7-8, EHV). Can we still be saved? The same God who hid his face from us revealed himself to us.

IV.

God never comes to us in the way we expect. Watch for that in the Gospel readings from Mark throughout this new Church Year.

Who is God? What should he do? When we think God is near, Jesus is far away. When we think God is far away, Jesus is near. When we expect Jesus to arrive in pomp and circumstances as a King, he comes barefoot and half-naked. When we expect Jesus to be meek and mild, he thunders and roars, just as the prophets of old.

When we think we have God all figured out, shouting our Hosannas with the Palm Sunday crowd, we find Jesus nailed to a crude cross in a field, like a common criminal. Except he is the One person in the history of the world who was completely, totally innocent of any wrongdoing.

“But now, Lord, you are our father. We are the clay, and you are our potter. All of us are the work of your hand” (Isaiah 64:8, EHV).

Rather than being discarded like a pile of rags, or dumped into the compost heap like the withered leaves of our guilt, God sent Jesus to be our Savior from sin. He didn’t rip open the heavens and come down with a righteous anger against us, but took our sins away. Now we are the clay that our Heavenly Father lovingly molds into something far more precious than the rags of our own attempts at righteousness.

“Do not be angry, Lord, without limit. Do not remember our guilt forever. Please look closely. All of us are your people.” (Isaiah 64:9, EHV). Thank God. We don’t get what we deserve. We are the work of his hands. We are his people. His own. The chosen ones who belong to him for eternity.

Rather than praying for God to rip open the heavens and come with vengeance, we cried out in desperation: “Save!” And that’s exactly what God did with his gift of the Christchild who is our King—God saved us. Amen.