We are the work of your hand

Isaiah 64: 1-9, OT pages 649-650 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, So that the mountains would quake at your presence, as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil – to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, You came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; Because you hid yourself we transgressed. We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people. Sermon Wine was served at Thanksgiving this year, which is a little radical. When we gathered around the Thanksgiving table with my wife Sara’s family, the adult places at the table came complete with a wine glass. That is starting to feel normal enough, though it is something that never would have happened if Aunt Ester were alive. In fact, while Aunt Ester was alive, all alcohol was forbidden, and every Thanksgiving dinner at her house, a group of dissenters would assemble with sweet tea in their glasses – we’d huddle together on the deck or front yard, just out of ear shot from the matriarch – and together we’d dream about the day when prohibition would end on that corner of Knoxville, Tennessee. It did. The first Thanksgiving after her funeral, Thanksgiving was hosted by another member of the family who was excited to take up the torch, and Aunt Janie was not a teetotaler, so not all, but many members of the extended family quietly sipped from wine glasses at that first Thanksgiving without Aunt Ester, whispering to one another, “This never would have happened if Aunt Ester were still around”. The second year, wine was served more openly, then by the third year everyone was just about comfortable; but by the fourth year – the invitation to this big Thanksgiving dinner for the whole extended family never came. The host family needed a year off, and Aunt Janie asked that families celebrate their own thanksgiving, a meal for all the cousins at her house was just too much. We all understood. And we gave thanks in smaller numbers, around dining room tables in Atlanta, Washington DC, Knoxville, and Spartanburg, all looking forward to getting back together the next year. But another year passed. Then another without the invitation, and now we don’t even look for it, so this Thanksgiving we had wine, but no extended family. Now that never would have happened if Aunt Ester were still around. According to the Prophet Isaiah, the Exile would not have happened if God were still around either. In our second Scripture lesson for this morning the prophet writes: “Because you hid yourself we transgressed. We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” Isaiah wrote these words sometime after Babylon invaded Israel, destroying the city, the Temple, and taking so many of her citizens as captives to live in Babylon as exiles. None of this would have happened, none of this destruction or heartbreak would have happened had the Lord been there, says the Prophet. And while it’s not the Lord’s fault that it happened: “you were angry because we sinned,” the Prophet says, but it was “because you hid yourself that we transgressed.” We are all like kids who come home from school to an empty house. The computer is locked, but we figured out the password, and the liquor cabinet is too, but we’ve had enough time to find the key. Now, no one is there to stop us from taking the first sip. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,” because you are the glue that holds us together and if you are gone than things fall apart. “You hid yourself, we transgressed,” because temptation is too much if you are not there to save us from ourselves. “You have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.” We have done all this – created a world of materialism where we all rush through giving thanks to get to spending more money than we have. We work and we work, and no one is there to tell us when to stop, so tension rises in our homes. There is no rest, even on the Sabbath, because you are not here to speak over the loud voice of our culture that never stops telling us to produce and spend. We are entertained, but seldom happy. Our bellies are full without ever being satisfied. We keep going at a fools pace, but where are we headed? “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” Deliver us Lord, from the hand of our iniquity. Come, Lord Jesus, we cry. And he will come. We anticipate his birth during this season of Advent, preparing for his arrival as a precious mother’s child. But do not forget that this baby comes to bring change. He is the incarnate Father, “We are the clay, and he is our potter.” He comes, not merely to give us an excuse to exchange gifts, but to make all things new. He comes, the way a baby once did to the apartment door of a woman I met in prison. I was a chaplain for the summer, and she was a convicted drug dealer, and she told me her stories. One morning, it was just a year or so before she was arrested and ended up in prison, a woman came to her door. She was one of the regulars, desperate for exactly the product that this drug dealer sold. It was raining that morning, and this customer only had eyes for one thing, but that morning she was pushing a stroller. The drug dealer had a kind heart, so after she sold the woman what she wanted, she demanded that the baby be left in the apartment where he could get warm and dry. Now that she had what she wanted, his mother agreed, leaving the baby and the stroller with the drug dealer to go get high somewhere in the rain. The drug dealer lay the baby down on her bed. Took the wet clothes off his body, and he barely responded as she took off his diaper, full, obviously not having been changed for some time. She sent her partner down to the corner store for clean diapers, dry clothes, and formula. While she was gone she bathed the baby in her sink. When she returned she dressed the baby again, and as she fed him he began to come back, to respond, even smile, but holding him in her arms this drug dealer came to understand something about the drugs that she sold, something that she had never understood before. “We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” But to save you from your iniquities, to bring you back from exile, to redeem you and make you new, to reshape you and make you worthy once more, the Potter is sending a child. Thanks be to God. Amen.