Waiting for the New Creation

Rev. Alex Sloter Isaiah 64:1-9 Waiting for the New Creation Advent 1 (11/29/2020) Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Today is the first Sunday in Advent. Advent is a season of waiting. Last week, we stood before the judgement seat of Christ. The end of the world was here. Christ had returned to make all things new. But this Sunday, he is far away. We stand with the people of God who longed for the face of Christ but never saw him. We stand with those who never experienced God’s promises in their fullness, and with them, we wait. This week, we are waiting for a new creation. The Waiting Prophet Waiting is where we find Isaiah in our Old Testament lesson. But to understand what he is waiting for, we have to look back to chapter 63. In chapter 63, the prophet writes, “I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord.” Which is exactly what he proceeds to do. He remembers all the great deeds that God had done for Israel in the past. How he looked down from heaven and saw the peoples’ slavery in Egypt, and how he saved them through his servant Moses. Isaiah recalls God’s unfailing love as he led them through the wilderness on their way to the promised land. He remembers how mount Sinai shook when God descended on it in darkness to make a covenant with his people. It’s true that the people sinned against God repeatedly, but God’s love remained steadfast, and he led them like a shepherd leading his flock. His love for his people never failed, and he saved them. But this is a memory from long ago. A memory kept alive in sacred song and story, but not Isaiah’s personal recollection. Isaiah is living hundreds of years after God did these great things. And when Isaiah looks around, he sees something very different. He sees the land of Israel occupied by foreigners. Jerusalem in ruins. The temple destroyed. Puppet kings sit on David’s ancient throne, a mockery of Israel’s national sovereignty and great history. Where is God? He is far away, as distant as a memory. It is like he doesn’t see his peoples’ trouble, or he doesn’t care. So Isaiah falls on his knees to intercede for the nation. And that is where our reading begins. With an old man praying on his knees, asking God to rescue his people. “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down.” But Isaiah recognizes a problem as he prays. He says, “You meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways. But when we continued to sin against your ways, you were angry. How then can we be saved? We have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags. We all fade like a leaf, and like the wind, our sins sweep us away.” God meets the righteous, but that does not describe Israel. They are the unrighteous. The unclean. The stubbornly unrepentant. If God meets the righteous, then he is not going to meet Israel. But still, Isaiah prays. God is Israel’s only hope, their only possible savior. So he remembers God’s ancient works. He recalls God’s ancient compassion. And he prays that God would rescue his sinful people one last time. He writes, “But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” In other words, “It is true, O Lord, that we do not deserve your compassion, and that left on our own, we would refuse to repent. We are sinful through and through. But if you place your hands on us, like a potter on his clay, then you can make us into something different. You can make us into the righteous whom you meet with joy. Please look, O God, we are all the work of your hands.” Isaiah now waits for an answer to his prayer. He is waiting for God to put his hands on his people. He is waiting for new creation. The Waiting Church Our own situation is not so different from Isaiah’s. Like Isaiah, we have memories of God’s great deeds, ancient memories kept alive in sacred song and story. We remember the life of Christ, his birth, his miracles, his healings, his exorcisms, his control of nature. We remember him eating with the sinful and unclean, making them clean and guiltless by the touch of his hands and the words of his mouth. We remember his holy death, how the earth shook and the sky was darkened as he breathed his last. We remember his rest in the tomb, his glorious resurrection, and his ascension. We remember how his twelve disciples received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost when tongues of fire descended on their shoulders. We remember the courage of Peter and how a single sermon converted three thousand people. But these are ancient memories. Things we remember from the memories of others, not because we have seen them ourselves. When we look at the world, we see a different situation. We see a church in ruins. Many churches are Christian in name only, trying to survive this secular age by abandoning Scripture for worldly wisdom. Other churches try to be faithful, but they shrink year by year and seem headed for extinction. Even Peace, on its best Sunday, is only half full. Where is the Spirit of fire who descended on Peter and converted three thousand in a single day? He seems very far away indeed. Then we have the life of Christ. Where is the one who walked on water, exorcised demons, healed the sick, the blind, and the lame, who proved who he was by the power of his works? The church doesn’t feel as though she is the home of a great king. She doesn’t look like the temple of a great God. Christ feels far away, as distant as a memory, absent when we need him to come and save. We have every reason to fall on our knees next to this prophet and pray, “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down!” But as we pray, we recognize that we don’t deserve rescue. Like the people of Isaiah’s time, we are sinful. That is why we begin every service with a confession of sin. If God meets the righteous, then will he come and meet us? Will the God who feels so far away come and save us at last? All we can do is wait. And while we wait, we pray. “O Lord, we are the clay; you are the potter. We are sinful through and through. But if you place your hands on us, like a potter on his clay, then you can make us into something different. You can make us into the righteous whom you meet with joy. Please look, O God, we are all the work of your hands.” We are waiting for God to put his hands on us. We are waiting for new creation. Prayer Answered Back to Isaiah. The prophet is on his knees, waiting for God’s answer, “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down.” Isaiah never sees God come to his people, but the memories of God’s mercy, as distant as they are, strengthen him to keep waiting. God will show compassion again. And long after Isaiah died, God answered the prayer of his prophet. Jesus came into Jerusalem, mounted on a donkey. He was greeted with shouts of “Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” The heavens had been torn open. The king had come to save his people from their sins, to remake them into something new. So Christ placed his hands on the heart of Matthew the tax collector and made him Matthew the apostle. He touched doubting Thomas, or rather, Thomas touched him, and made him Thomas the believer. He touched Peter the Christ denier and made him Peter, Christ confessor. Christ brought the new creation to everyone whose heart he touched. The wait was over. Though Isaiah never saw God answer his prayer, he had the courage to pray and the patience to wait because he had the memory of God’s great deeds. Surely, the God who rescued Israel from Egypt would rescue his people from their sins. Surely, the God who descended on Mount Sinai to make a covenant with his people would descend once more to make a new covenant of love. The past actions of God are guarantees of future faithfulness. Through them, God says, “This is who I am, and who I will always be.” Isaiah prayed to this God because the God who saved once is the God who saves still. Waiting with Hope Today, we wait with Isaiah. The king has come. He did rend the heavens and come down to save his people. For Isaiah, this is the fulfillment of God’s promise and the answer to his prayer. But for us it is a distant memory. Jesus has come, but we need him to come again and finish the work that he has begun. We need him to come and rescue his people once more, to save them from their sins, to fill his church with glory until it is obvious to all that we are the temple of a great God and the home of a great king. We have the beginning of the new creation, but we need Christ to give us the fullness of our redemption. We need the potter to finish his work. Isaiah was able to wait because he remembered God’s great deeds. And we are only able to wait with the saints of old as we do the same, as we remember the great deeds of our God as they are told to us in sacred song and story. The exodus of Israel from Egypt, the conquest of Canaan, the birth of Christ in a manger, his teaching, his miracles, his death and resurrection, the descent of the Spirit and the growth of the church, through these stories God is telling us, “This is who I am, and who I will always be.” The God who saved once is the God who saves still. Someday, Christ will rend the heavens and descend once more. On that day, we will be changed in the twinkling of an eye. The fullness of the new creation will be here. Our struggle against sin, the church’s struggle in the world, it will all be over. God will place his hands on us, and we will become finally and forever the people he wants us to be. Until then, we wait and we pray, “Lord, we are the clay, you are the potter. Please look, O God, we are all the work of your hands.” But we have more than Isaiah did. God has already begun to make all things new. The hands of the potter are in the world already. The hand of God comes on us in baptism; it reaches us in communion; it touches us in Scripture. Can you feel it? The God who saves once saves still, and he is already saving you, even as we wait for the new creation to come. In Jesus’ name, Amen.