Fixing the Mess (Isaiah 64: 1-9)

I want something more than this reading from Isaiah.

Maybe I’ve seen too many Christmas ads this week, but: I want more!

I want Christmas joy and celebration and happiness.

I want candy canes and shepherds and sheep bleating blissfully on the hillside.

I want the Disney Parks Christmas Day parade, with its non-stop positive feelings coming down Main Street and into my living room.

But that’s not what we get today.

Today, we get… Isaiah. Which isn’t exactly full of Christmas cheer.

You see, for Isaiah, the world was a mess.  Jerusalem had been destroyed. The temple, destroyed. God’s people had been in exile for a long time; their exile was about to end, but the world was still a mess.

And, according to Isaiah, this mess was the fault of the people. “We’ve sinned,” Isaiah says. “We have all become like one who is unclean. No one among us calls [God’s] name.”

The world was a mess, and Isaiah was pleading with God to please do something.  “We’ve made a mess of things, God; I know we have. Please, come do something! Come sort things out for us!”

“Remember when you met your people at Mt. Sinai; they had made mistakes. Yet Moses brought the people out of their camp to meet you, and there you were, with thunder and lightning and loud trumpet blasts!

“Remember when you helped the prophet Deborah and the army commander Barak defeat Sisera and the Canaanites? As it says in the Song of Deborah: ‘You marched from the region of Edom, and the earth trembled, and the heavens poured; and the mountains quaked.’

“And remember when your prophet Habakkuk saw your glory shining like the sun? The prophet said you stopped and shook the earth. The nations trembled, and the mountains were shattered.

“If only you would do that again, God!  If only you would tear open the heavens and come down! Mountains would quake before you like fire igniting brushwood or making water boil. Your enemies would tremble, and there would be peace.

“We need you, God.  Please.”

Did God answer? Did God appear?

The people did get to go back home, back to Jerusalem, and begin the rebuilding of their nation. But so far, it seemed that God had not answered; God had not appeared; which is why Isaiah pleaded for God to intervene. Things were still a mess.

So as much as I want to jump right in to “Joy to the World” and “Peace on Earth” and “Fa la la la la,” I have to first acknowledge the mess that our world is in.

Because I can’t hear Isaiah plead for God to come and sort out the mess without acknowledging that the world is still a mess. And just like in Isaiah’s time, we’re the ones who have made it that way.

We’ve made a mess of things, and we need God to come and sort things out.

We’re destroying our planet’s climate and its ability to support life. There is an overwhelming consensus among scientists that climate change is happening, that it is caused or aggravated by human activity, and that there are huge risks and costs from a changing climate. The U.S. military even said that climate change poses an immediate risk to national security.

What a mess!

We’re at war; our country has been at war for 217 of its 238 years. My son Tristan, who is 13, has never experienced a year in which the U.S. was not at war.

What a mess!

Economically, we continue to see improvements for the wealthiest people in society, but the poor are being left out. The gap between the wealthy and the poor continues to widen, a direct result of the economic and tax policies we have in place. The number of homeless children is growing. Half a million children in California are homeless.

What a mess!

We even have white police officers shooting unarmed black teenagers, 150 years after reconstruction, 50 years after the civil rights movement. They’re still being killed, and justice is still being denied.

What a mess.

I want to gloss over such things.

But Isaiah is forcing me to take a look at the mess.

Isaiah is forcing me to look, and to wonder: Where is God? I see all the decorations and ads, I hear the carols, but I wonder… Where is God?

We read Isaiah a lot in Advent because Christians have always seen Jesus as fulfilling the hope that Isaiah expressed, that God would come into human history and sort out the mess we’ve made. Jesus probably wasn’t what Isaiah was anticipating, historically speaking, but it sure does all seem to come together in the man from Nazareth.

And it is true that in Jesus, God does come to the world, to sort things out. But not in the way that people expect.

For the earliest Christians, the fact that Jesus was crucified was central. Paul writes often about “Christ crucified.”

Never did Paul write about Jesus’s birth.

But what does “Christ crucified” mean?

For Paul and the other earliest Christians, it meant that Jesus stood up to those who were making such a mess of the world. Jesus stood up to the powers of oppression, and those powers of oppression wanted to kill him – and did kill him – because of it.

And the fact that Jesus was resurrected shows that God was involved in all this. God was in the world, working to sort out the mess, through Jesus.

Paul also said that all of us are called to die with Christ, to lose ourselves, and join with Christ in his mission; Paul said that, dying with Christ, we are also resurrected with Christ, receiving new life, made into a new creation.

So while we are waiting for God to clean up this mess, God is waiting for us to clean up this mess! We are called to make God’s kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven. God’s power is at work within us.

The Spirit is upon us, just as it was upon Jesus, to preach good news to the poor, and to proclaim release to the captives. The Spirit is upon us to proclaim recovery of sight to the blind and freedom to the oppressed. The Spirit is upon us, to work for peace, heal the world, fight for equality, and pursue racial reconciliation.

This understanding of how God worked through Christ and how God calls us to share in that work is very participatory. We are all in this together, working to sort out the mess the world is in. Each one of us is called to this task.

Unfortunately, that’s not how many Christians see things… and here’s why.

About a thousand years after Jesus, a theologian named Anselm came up with an idea that changed how people thought about Christ.

Anselm agreed that humanity has made a mess of the world, and we needed God to come sort things out.

But instead of us sharing in Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, working with God and allowing God to work through us, Anselm said we don’t have to do a thing. Jesus did it all. Jesus took our place. Jesus paid the price.

All the work of making the world a better place, Jesus took care of on the cross.

There’s no dying with Christ, said Anselm. Jesus took our place, he paid the debt.

Do you see the difference?

A lot of people today talk about how Jesus took our place, and how Jesus paid the debt. These ideas are not biblical. They were invented by Anselm, a thousand years after the time of Jesus.

It’s the difference between a wish and a hope. A wish is something you want, but aren’t willing to work to achieve. You make a wish, and then you sit back and wait for the wish to come true.

A hope is different. A hope expresses something you want; but a hope is also something you are willing to work for. You are willing to join in the process of making what you hope for, happen.

When we express our hope that God comes to earth to set things right, we wait. We wait for that to happen. But we don’t just sit still while we’re waiting! We don’t sit and do nothing while we wait.

Because the Spirit of the Lord is upon us, at work, always, even when it seems that God is absent. And the Spirit of the Lord is continually molding us and shaping us, so that the kingdom of God can come to earth through us.

The kingdom of God is how the Bible describes a world in which things are as they should be, as God desires things to be. The kingdom of God is a world of wholeness and shalom.

It is a kingdom that has not yet arrived, and so we wait for its arrival.

But at the same time,  it is a kingdom that has arrived. The kingdom is present in you.

So as we hope and wait for God to sort things out and make a better world, in the meantime, we know that the Christmas joy and celebration we hope to see in the world already dwells within us. And Christmas hope is revealed in every person who seeks peace, every person who acts with kindness, every person who cares for the earth, every person who demands justice, every person who pursues racial reconciliation, and every person who stands up for equality and freedom for all people.

When people like that move from passive wishing to active hoping.and share in the work of Christ, then we will see God in the world, bringing wholeness and joy.

Every Sunday, we sing what we call a “Hymn of Invitation” following the sermon. I don’t say this every Sunday, but the reason we call it that is that, traditionally, it is the time in the worship service when people are invited to come forward and join the church.

What does it mean to join the church? It means to join in the work of making God’s kingdom a present reality in our world today. It means not sitting by, waiting for someone else to fix the world, but actively continuing Christ’s work of bringing wholeness to everyone. It means dying with Christ – dying to living only for yourself – and allowing God to remake you into someone new, someone committed to helping sort out the mess the world is in. It means recognizing that the Spirit of the Lord is upon you, and is calling you to share in the work of Christ.

Because God is in the world today. God does come to earth at Christmas, as well as every other day of the year. God is present in those whose hearts follow God, and who join with others in creating a movement that works to bring peace and joy to earth.

If you’re not officially a member of Bixby Knolls Christian Church and have questions about what this means, please ask me about it. Or better yet, ask one of our members, what it means to them.

If you are not a member, but are ready to make a commitment right now, then meet me at the bottom of the steps as we sing. I will simply ask you to affirm your faith in Jesus Christ, God’s son, Lord and Savior. That’s it. And if you’ve never been baptized, we can talk about baptism, which symbolizes this new life with Christ.

And you will officially be welcomed as a member of Bixby Knolls Christian Church.

And together, we will continue to work on sorting out the mess the world is in as we bring peace and wholeness and joy to all of God’s people.