Waiting and Working
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Yesterday, Cathy and I had the opportunity to go down to Fort Street Presbyterian Church and hear a wonderful performance of Handel’s Messiah. I had forgotten just how different thing like violines and sapranos sound in person rather than as a recording. The Messiah isn’t just a concert, its a journey from the earliest prophetic voices promising a deliverer to Israel through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus until the final chorus that views the triumphant Christ ruling over a new creation. It’s something like a two and a half hour journey. This of you who know the work would doubtless agree that the two best known parts of the Messiah are the Hallelujah Chorus and Worthy is the Lamb. It’s tempting to ask, why not skip all the other parts of the Messiah and cut straight to the Hallelujah Chorus then close with Worthy is the Lamb? But, we’re not ready to hear the Hallelujah Chorus until we’ve journeyed with Handel through the promises of Isaiah and heard the cries of the Psalmist. We can’t understand the final definitive Worthy is the Lamb unless we’ve stoped to think about Isaiah 53 and joined in the lament of the Psalmist. The artistry of the Messiah is in the journey.
Our lives are about journeys that we take. We like to get in a hurry, we love to skip the small parts, the boring parts, the discomforting parts and the embarrassing parts and cut straight to the parts we like to hear. I love the image in the book of Ephesians that God had made you and me so that in the future, when there’s no more sin, sickness, suffering or death, you and I will be trophies of God’s grace.
so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
I love the part about showing, its the making part that I’m not too keen on.
Advent is about preparation and waiting. Its about the parts of our lives we’d really rather skip. But like Handel’s masterpiece, we won’t be ready for the Hallelujah Chorus unless we take the journey through some other stuff first. This Advent season, I simply want to tell four stories, four Profiles in Patience, about people who learned to do the preparation work, who learned what it means to wait for the Lord and what it is that we are supposed to do during the hard work of waiting.
The first of those four characters is Uzziah, the 12th king of Judah. and one of the major characters in the Book of Isaiah. Uzziah was a direct descendent of King David who had been a great warrior king. Uzziah’s father was Amaziah who had also been a great warrior king. Amaziah had expanded Judah’s army to 300,000 foot soldiers and had made war with the enemies of Judah. It was after fighing with one of those neighboring countries that Amaziah brought back to Jerusalem other gods and made places to worship those other gods. YHWH, the God of Israel, sent a prophet to Amaziah to pronounce judgment. Because Amaziah had abandoned the God of Abraham, the God of Israel, God would abandon Amaziah. The next time Amaziah went into battle, he was defeated, humiliated and brought bound as a captive back to Jerusalem. Amaziah managed to use all the gold and silver in Jerusalem to buy his freedom, but the inhabitants of Jerusalem never look at him the same. He clung on to power as the King of Judah for another 15 years, but he never really exercised any power. Eventually, the people of Judah plotted his assassination. The decided that they would rather have Amaziah’s young 16 year old son Uzziah; they killed the father and made the son king.
Like his father, Uzziah was a warrior king. To his father’s 300 soldiers, Uzziah added shields and spears, coats of armor and machines of war. Uzziah was, like his father at the beginning a king like David, someone who worshipped the God of Abraham and didn’t bring back idols into Jerusalem:
He did what was right in the sight of the Lord, just as his father Amaziah had done. Nevertheless the high places were not taken away; the people still sacrificed and made offerings on the high places.
While there was still idol worship in Jersualem, Uzziah had learned by watching his father Amaziah to avoid the worship of foreign Gods. By avoiding idoltary and building a powerful army, Uzziah was a smashing success, news of all he was doing went as far south as Egypt and as far north as Damascus.
God helped him against the Philistines, against the Arabs who lived in Gur-baal, and against the Meunites. The Ammonites paid tribute to Uzziah, and his fame spread even to the border of Egypt, for he became very strong.
By the time he was a mature King, Uzziah was successful beyond his wildest dreams. And that was the problem
But when he had become strong he grew proud, to his destruction. For he was false to the Lord his God, and entered the temple of the Lord to make offering on the altar of incense.
Don’t miss the irony here: Uzziah’s father Azariah was rendered impotent because he worshipped idols. The son Uzziah will be rendered impotent because he usurps the role of the priest in the temple. The priests of the temple try to stop Uzziah from his error, and Uzziah’s pride and arrogance gets in the way
they withstood King Uzziah, and said to him, “It is not for you, Uzziah, to make offering to the Lord, but for the priests the descendants of Aaron, who are consecrated to make offering. Go out of the sanctuary; for you have done wrong, and it will bring you no honor from the Lord God.” Then Uzziah was angry. Now he had a censer in his hand to make offering, and when he became angry with the priests a leprous disease broke out on his forehead, in the presence of the priests in the house of the Lord, by the altar of incense.
We’re not told how old Uzziah was when he contracted leprosy, only that this great warrior king became an outcast, forced to live outside Jerusalem, forced to give his throne to his son Jothan, barred from every walking into the temple. Like his father Azariah who spent the last 15 year of his life as a powerless and ineffective king, Uzziah spent the end of his life stripped of power, patiently waiting.
Uzziah’s story is background to the book of Isaiah. The young prophet never knew Uzziah the warrior king, Uzziah the famous king, or Uzziah the powerful king. At most, Isiah knew only Uzziah the leper king. But in the eight century, the journey of Azariah and Uzziah was the journey of Judah. The nation needed to learn that there were would never enough spear or shields or machines of war to keep Judah safe. No king could make Judah safe, only YHWH could do that. How long would it take Judah to learn
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
That vision of a world beyond Uzziah and Azariah, beyond warriors and the weapons of war wasn’t something that developed overnight in Israel. For them, and for us, that is a journey, something that we only gradually come to see and understand as God’s design. Judah was no more ready to understand that their God was both their glory and their source of protection in the eight century than we are today for the prince of peace to come back and judge whether we’ve been peacemakers or not, whether we’ve loved our enemies or not, whether we have embraced God’s vision of a world beyond that of a terribly long line of warrior kings.
Uzziah had learned from his father the terrible price to be paid for idolatry, Judah had learned from Uzziah the terrible price to be paid for pride, contempt and arrogance. He spent the rest of his life patiently pondering the error of his ways.
Advent calls us into that act of patiently pondering, of considering what we’ve learned from those who have gone before us and what we’ve learned about ourself. How are we to go forward if our journey is one of always examining, always preparing, always trying to learn from our own missteps and the missteps of those who have gone before us.
O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord!