Isaiah 35:1-10
Third Sunday in Advent
16 December 2007
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
“He who has ears let him hear” [Matthew 11:15].
“And O Lord Jesus Christ, we pray for open ears today to hear what You have to say. We pray for open eyes to see what You want to reveal to us. We pray for open hearts to again receive You by the power of Your Spirit. In Your Name, O Jesus, we pray, Amen.”
“He who has ears let him hear.”
Those could potentially be very important words of instruction from Jesus today for you and for me. They are words of Jesus that admit that not everything is easy to believe. That’s actually a very core ingredient of faith itself – believing what we do not see; being certain of what we hope for [Hebrews 11:1].
“He who has ears let him hear.”
Those words are actually very necessary for us as we open the pages of Holy Scripture this morning to the Old Testament prophet, Isaiah. In today’s reading, Isaiah frankly describes a world that is very foreign to anything we have probably seen or experienced.
When I lived in Wyoming, one of the first lessons the locals taught me was that when your car broke down on one of the long deserted stretches of road, look around the horizon and walk to the nearest tree. Not only would the tree provide necessary shade and shelter. In addition, wherever there was a tree growing in Wyoming, there was water. Stuff doesn’t grow in a desert without water.
Isaiah’s world sounds like a fantasy world. The desert and parched land will be glad. The wilderness will rejoice and blossom, bursting into bloom. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool. The thirsty ground will become bubbling springs. Grass and reeds and papyrus will grow. Does that sound like any place you’ve ever seen? To be quite honest, that place sounds quite impossible.
But, wait! It’s gets even more fantastic. Not only does nature and creation itself operate in seemingly impossible ways. So do human beings! The feeble hands are strengthened. The knees that give was are steadied. Fearful hearts are comforted. The eyes of the blind are opened. The ears of the deaf are unstopped. The lame leap like deer. Mute tongues shout for joy.
What is going on here? Nature operates in ways contrary to its very nature. People operate in ways that reveal a transformation. What is going on here? Where is this fantastic place? What accounts for all this stuff that quite frankly takes substantial faith to believe?
The answer to all those questions Isaiah does not leave unanswered. In fact, Isaiah puts the answer right in the very middle, the very center, of all these fantastic descriptions. The answer is that “Your God will come ... He will save you.”
It is God that saves and redeems the desert and the wilderness and transforms them to be like nothing we have ever before seen. It is God that saves and redeems broken human beings and transforms them to better reflect His own image, just as He created them. It is God that brings about singing and rejoicing and shouting and joy!
How appropriate it is during this Advent season to hear those fantastic words and to know how true they really are. Remember when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, strange things happened. A star moved across the sky from East to West, slow enough and long enough for men on camels to follow. The Heavens opened and angels appeared singing “Glory to God in the Highest!” A virgin conceived and gave birth to a Son. Those are all aspects of God’s creation, aspects of nature, that responded in extraordinary ways simply because God came among them.
But human beings also responded, didn’t they. Those shepherds left their flocks in the field nearby and hurried off to Bethlehem. Those flocks of sheep were their livelihood. They are what paid the bills and put food the table but they were left behind wandering the hills shepherd-less. The presence of the saving God in their midst made the shepherds do something out of the ordinary, something downright unsafe and unwise. The wise men – often called kings by tradition – traveled many days and many miles following a star, not knowing what it meant or where it was leading. That doesn’t sound very wise to me, but then again when God appears who are humans to question wisdom. And remember King Herod, King of the Jews? He was threatened by the news of the birth of a baby, a baby who, even if he were born to be the king of the Jews, could not possibly cause a real threat to the real king for many years. Human beings joined all creation in responding to the presence of God among them.
How about you? How about me? When we leave this place Sunday after Sunday, do people look at us as if we don’t fit into reality? They should look at us in that way, you know. We have been in the presence of the living, saving God. We have been personally invited into His presence. We have been adopted into His family. We have heard His Word. We have received His Body and His Blood which has become a part of our body and which circulates in our blood. Shouts of joy and gladness, unbelievable blooming and gushing should bubble out of our lives. People around us should be asking, “What got into him?” ; “What got into her?”
Why doesn’t that seem to happen, at least not all the time to all of us? I believe it’s because our eyes and ears and hearts haven’t been open to see God and to see what He is doing. And if we don’t see God and if we don’t see what He is doing, our bodies, our souls, our spirits cannot respond in those extraordinary ways. We get stuck in sin. We get stuck in our infirmities. Instead of joy and gladness we live in pain and despair. Perhaps that’s why Jesus said, “He who has ears let him hear.” Jesus wants us to respond in ways that show that we have seen God and that we’ve seen what He’s doing in our midst and in our world. And, don’t be fooled. God IS working in our midst and in our world, whether or not we see it, hear it, or accept it.
So our Advent prayer this season should be two-fold:
➊ That every time we walk into this place and every time we open the Scriptures in our own homes, our eyes and ears and hearts are unblocked and open to see God and see what God is doing in Jesus Christ in our lives and in the world around us.
➋ That as our eyes and ears and hearts are open and as we involuntarily respond to the presence and power of our living, saving God in our midst and in our world, we ourselves become signs of the Kingdom of God to those watching and waiting and wondering and doubting all around us.
“He who has ears, let him hear.”
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Pastor Christopher Schaar
Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena