November 29, 2020 Text: Isaiah 64:1-9
Dear Friends in Christ,
I am going to assume that almost all of us played hide and seek as a child. Count to 10 or 100 and then go find your friend or cousin or sister. Did you ever do this? Decide you wouldn’t look for a person who was hiding. Make them think you forgot about them.
Does God ever do that? Our text from Isaiah says, “you have hidden your face from us.” Really, is God hiding? Ready or not, here I come . . .
“WHAT DO YOU EXPECT?”
The prophet Isaiah is not painting a pretty picture this morning. It is a prayer, but why in the world is he using the language he does. “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down.” (v. 1) Isaiah is praying that the storm of God would come down upon the whole sorry lot of us, enemies and allies alike, the whole scene that pits nation against nation, neighbor against neighbor, family against family.
If God hides, if God take himself out of the picture, we all almost literally go to hell in a handbasket. “We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” (v. 6)
Did you notice that earlier in our service we prayed a prayer almost identical to Isaiah’s? We prayed it a little more politely but it is just as powerful. It was the Collect: “Almighty God, Judge and King, the whole creation waits for your coming. Come, Lord Jesus with your grace and fill our lives with your presence. Use all of our time for your gracious purpose.”
We prayed that we wanted the Lord’s presence. We do not want Him to hide because He is angry at our sins. We want God to deliver us. We wait for God to deliver us. Think of those who waited for God in the storms of their life. Job had to be patient. Jonah wanted some regurgitation as he waited in the belly of the fish. Do you ever play hide and seek with God? God where are you? I’m a little lonely here. I’m questioning my faith as I deal with this family problem. God? Hello?
I don’t want to besmirch those who plan the Scripture readings for each Sunday but how many of you were thinking “Palm Sunday, Palm Sunday” as you heard the Gospel read? Aren’t things a little out of order? Except for this. The God who is both hidden and revealed in this man named Jesus – born in a little town called Bethlehem, raised in an even littler town called Nazareth – never comes in the way we expect.
The Gospel of Mark, which we are going to hear a whole lot over the coming year, shows how this God of Isaiah reverses our expectations of whom God is and what God should be doing in this person named Jesus. When we think God is near, Jesus is far away. When we think God is far away, Jesus is near. When we think Jesus should enter to the sound of trumpets, he comes barefoot and half-naked. When we expect Jesus to cower in a corner, he thunders with words that offend. Jesus comes to overturn all our expectations about who God is and what God will do.
We shout our “hosannas” one minute and then we are nailing Jesus to a beam of wood. He is like a common criminal, yet He is hanging there for crimes He did not commit. We can thank God for that, even when we don’t get what we want. Because it means we won’t get what we deserve. And when we finally get to the point when we realize that, we can see God as God truly is. And Isaiah’s prayer becomes our prayer.
Going back to hide and seek, did you ever play it with someone who always wanted to be found? They had to make a noise or they might even scream out, “I’m in here.” Maybe you were that child. We can’t stay hidden, God has found us and He didn’t need our help either. “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.” (v. 8)
What a beautifully simple image. The very hand of God molding and shaping our lives into a life we could never have on our own. He blesses us like a clay pitcher and then the Lord uses us to pour out blessings on others. He makes us vessels to do his work.
What do you expect? He is not hidden at all.
Amen.