Communion Meditation

December 5, 1993

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Scripture: Isaiah 40:1-11

Is there a writer in the Bible, is there a writer anywhere, whose poetry is more lilting, more soaring, more ecstatic and more exquisitely tender than that of the person we know only as the unknown prophet of the Exile?

His verses almost sing, and, of course, many of them are sung. G.F. Handel, is only one of countless composers who have taken the words of this anonymous prophet and transformed them into melody. It’s hard now even to read the familiar words I have just read without hearing the strains of the Messiah resounding in your inner ear.

What the prophet wrote— “Every valley shall be exalted.... And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.... He shall feed His flock like a shepherd” .... Those stunningly beautiful words, so hopeful and positive, are all the more surprising when you realize that the setting of them is the low point of the Jewish experience. They come out of the absolute nadir of Hebrew history, the time of the Exile when the people were refugees in a foreign land.

They had lost everything----homeland, homes, prosperity, dignity.... EVERYTHING. It was ignominious defeat when Nebuchadnezzar marched into the city of Jerusalem with his troops, tore to pieces that magnificent Temple Solomon had spent millions constructing and then hauled thousands of people away into slavery across the desert sands to Babylonia.... It was ignominious defeat. The better ones knew they deserved it, but it was still bitter medicine to swallow.

Now, out of that debacle, out of the ashes of that painful disaster, comes a song, thrown into the air by a sensitive, far-seeing poet--- “Comfort, comfort my people, speak tenderly to Jerusalem...cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid.”

It’s over now. Something new is about to happen, something fresh and transforming---God is about to let God’s people go home, back to their familiar hills and valleys so they can make a new start... PREPARE THE HIGHWAY.... Get it in gear.... We’re going home to begin all over.

The larger message of the passage, expressed superbly in terms of a particular historical

setting, is that God doesn’t give up on God’s people when they sin, when they stumble, when they “blow it”. God allows them to suffer the consequences of their foolishness, their arrogance, their obstinacy.... BUT GOD DOESN’T GIVE UP ON THEM. The hardened heart of the children doesn’t harden the Father’s heart. There’s something enormously touching about that.

The poet, whom we sometimes call 2nd Isaiah, since his writing now is attached to the writing of Isaiah of Jerusalem, saw with remarkable spiritual insight that the misery which had befallen God’s people was not the final story, not the last word, not the ultimate thing to be said, NOR did it represent a fair picture of the way God felt about them.

God hadn’t sent chastisement because God hated them. Like a caring parent, God sent it because God loved them, and because GOD wanted them to understand how much their apostasy hurt God.

They weren’t the only ones who suffered because of their sin. God too, suffered because of it. It broke God’s heart, in fact. BUT IT DIDN’T BREAK THE RESOLVE OF GOD’S UNQUENCHABLE LOVE.

We’ll start again, together. I’ll be with you. We’ll start all over.... This time we’ll get it right…or we’ll keep working at it until we do. “The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the Word of the Lord will stand forever.” It’s a magnificent theme, magnificently articulated.

It’s an Isaiah theme, an Old Testament theme, and it’s an ADVENT theme. That’s who we’re dealing with when we worship this Advent God...the God who won’t give up on us.

Philip Yancey is a writer, a professional author. One year he locked himself in his isolated Rocky Mountain cabin in the middle of the winter, and determined to read his Bible straight through, from start to finish, in order, he said, “to try to get a feel for the big picture, what is, after all, the essential plot of this epic drama.”

He read with sensitivity and insight. When he finished, he concluded that the Bible was not principally a collection of moral laws, or divine dictums, not essentially a rule book. SOMETHING MUCH BIGGER, MUCH MORE GRIPPING. It was, rather, he said he realized, the story of a romance, the story of God the jilted lover, turned down, spurned, rebuked, simply forgotten...time after time, but continuing doggedly in pursuit of His beloved.

He couldn’t get over it, he said, the patience and restraint of God, coupled with determined ardor.

Yancy’s final amazed reaction to the story of God’s unrequited quest after humanity was, “Why would the God who created all that exists subject Himself to such humiliation from His creation?”

In a way, the Church exists to pose that very question. And the only plausible answer to that question is GOD LOVES US. In this Advent season, as we ponder again the mystery of God’s deliberate self-confinement, the wonder of this enormous act of love in which God stooped to come to us in the form of a servant because God wanted to persuade us, not overwhelm us… as we ponder the amazing nature of that act we call “incarnation”, we are moved deeply....

And as we ponder further that God not only came for us, He DIED for us, in a form especially gruesome and cruel, pouring out His very life’s blood to bring us to our senses, it is almost too much to take.

Is there no limit to this God’s persistence?

We take Holy Communion on this Advent morning mindful that no matter the depth of our degradation, no matter the filth of our past, no matter how low we have slipped, no matter the ticklishness of our predicament, no matter the apparent hopelessness of our situation, God has not given up on us.

God is there... GOD is HERE. GOD is with us, to purge, to cleanse, to restore. THAT’S THE GOSPEL.

“He will feed His flock like a shepherd; He will gather the lambs in His arms and carry them in His bosom.” That’s the ultimate word, thank GOD! “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.”

Take, eat, rejoice. The unstoppable, persevering, tireless Shepherd God awaits you at His table.