Thomas J Parlette
“Come Down”
Isaiah 64: 1-9
11/29/20, 1st Advent
When I was an elementary school student, I remember how we’d get those book order forms from Scholastic – I used to love those. I loved looking at all the cool books I might order. One of my favorites was the Guinness Book of World Records. I loved just browsing through it and seeing all those obscure, weird records that people set – wondering if maybe I might be able to break one myself. Like this one from the 1999 edition – “The longest time living in a tree.”
It seems a man in Indonesia named Bungkas went up a tree in 1970 and has been there ever since. He lives in a crude tree house he made from branches and leaves of the trees.(1)
No one knows exactly why he took up residence in a tree, but 29 years later he was still there. He might be still living in his tree. Neighbors, friends and family have repeatedly tried to get him to come down, but he won’t budge. “Come down Bungkas, come down.” To no avail. He won’t come down.
That’s an interesting story for this First Sunday in Advent. It fits pretty well with this text from Isaiah. Isaiah cries out to God, “Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down…”
Isaiah’s desperate plea was the result of a great feeling of helplessness in the face of two troubling phenomena: the suffering and the sinfulness of God’s people.
The people of Israel have known great suffering throughout their history. It was true in Isaiah’s time and it was even more true in the twentieth century when Hitler and his Nazi storm troopers put millions of Jews to death. Even today, there is a strong undercurrent of Anti-Semitism, even though we should know better.
On the one hand the Jewish people believe themselves to be a chosen people with a special relationship to God. And on the other hand, there have been times when God seemed very far away from them.
How is it possible to reconcile the notion “We are God’s chosen people,” with the reality of six million Jews slain under Hitler alone? We can appreciate the difficult dilemma faced by the devout Jew as he or she wrestles with what it means to be a descendant of Abraham in the face of unmitigated tragedy.
It’s like the story Elie Wiesel used to tell. Wiesel himself was a Holocaust survivor. He would tell about a Jewish rabbi during that terrible time. The rabbi would faithfully come to the synagogue each day and pray, “I have come to inform you, Master of the Universe, that we are here.”
As the number of slain, deported and missing Jews increased, the rabbi still came faithfully and prayed, “You see, Lord, we are still here.” Finally, he is the only Jew left alive. With a heart that is numb with grief he comes to the synagogue once more and prays, “You see, I am still here.” Then the rabbi asks, “But you, where are you?”(2)
Many people have asked that question. Where were you God. When my son was in that terrible accident? Where were you, God, when my wife suffered so horribly before succumbing to cancer? Or, as we view the world’s enormous problems such as out-of-control viruses, who has not asked, “Why doesn’t God just come down and straighten the whole mess out? Then there would be no more starvation or war or oppression or disease. Why don’t you come down, O Lord?” Isaiah, the most sensitive of all the prophets, was struck to the core of his being with the suffering of his people.
Just as troubling, however, was the sinfulness of the people. Listen as Isaiah prays, “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.”
More than any other faith on earth, the Jewish faith is one of doing right. The Jews were called together as a people to give witness to God’s moral law. They had the law before they had a temple or a homeland. This was their mission, the reason for their election – to maintain the law.
In the beginning, they believed, God created humans to live in perfect harmony with creation and with the Creator. But something was amiss in the very heart of humanity. Something there was that alienated human beings from their environment, from their fellow human beings, and even from the loving God who had created them. That something was humanity’s sinful nature.
It was sin that dug a chasm between God and humanity. It was sin that made humanity unacceptable to God – for the very nature of God is holiness and righteousness. Thus, the Psalmist wrote, “Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false god…”
The law was given to bring light to humanity’s dark existence. But here were God’s people who were to witness to God’s law, and they were people with dirty hands and impure hearts. That sounds like us today, doesn’t it? We, too, are people with dirty hands and impure hearts.
We are like the three young men many years ago from a conservative denomination who were caught red-handed breaking the Sabbath by playing poker. Guilt-ridden for their sins and fearful of the punishment they were likely to receive, they stood before their stern pastor. They shook with fear as he asked for an explanation of their behavior.
The first young man, feeling great guilt, said, “Sir, I was absentminded and forgot it was the Sabbath.”
“That could be,” replied the pastor. “You are forgiven.”
Also very upset, the second young man said he too was absentminded. “I forgot that I was not allowed to gamble on the Sabbath,” was his excuse.
“Well, that could be,” said the pastor. “You are forgiven.”
Finally, the pastor turned to the young man who had hosted the card game, “Well, what is your excuse? I suppose you were absentminded, too?”
“I sure was, sir,” said the young man, who had a reputation as a troublemaker. “I forgot to pull the shades down!”(3)
Quite a modern attitude. He’s not sorry he did it – he’s sorry he got caught. You know, there is an unspoken rule in pick- up basketball, “no harm., no foul.” If I don’t get caught, it’s all right. If no one gets hurt, what’s the problem. It’s only myself that I’m hurting, so it’s my business, isn’t it? No harm, no foul.
Somehow, we, like ancient Israel, have deluded ourselves into thinking that sin is no big deal. We ignore its power to destroy health and home, to damage our witness and impede spiritual growth. We disregard its power to block our view of God and leave us slaves to our own passions. It was as a warning to us that Jesus taught, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” In other words, there is something about sin that coats the soul with grime and prevents us from seeing God. Rare are those who listen, however, until it’s too late.
There was once a policeman who watched as a young man backed his car around the block. Then he did it again, and again. Finally, the officer stopped the young man and asked him why he was driving backward. At first he was hesitant to explain, then he admitted that he had borrowed his father’s car and driven farther than he said he was going to – he was driving backward to try to take some miles off the odometer.(4) By the way, odometers don’t work like that – and neither do our spiritual lives.
Isaiah saw that there was no hope that Israel could save itself from the moral abyss into which it was drifting. The only hope was that God would come down and bring healing to its people. Isaiah knew that was the only thing that would work.
Standing on this side of Jesus’ birth and resurrection, we know that God has come down. That is what Advent is all about. God has come down to share our humanity. In a little obscure town outside of Jerusalem, in a simple stable, God came down as a tiny baby born to a humble couple from a little village called Nazareth. God has come down. That which Isaiah prayed for has happened. God has come down in the person of Jesus Christ, and he is the answer to humanity’s sin and suffering.
There is a story told by the late Dr. John Claypool about a play written in 1945 by a German pastor named Guenter Rutenborn. This story was set at a time when Germany was still reeling from the tragic impact of World War II.
Many people in Germany were agonizing with the question of who was responsible for the terrible agony that the Second World War had brought on the world. Characters in the play voiced the opinions of those who were looking for answers. Was Hitler alone responsible? What about the munitions manufacturers who financed him? Did an apathetic German population share the blame?
But then a man comes out of the crowd and says, “Do you want to know who is really to blame for all the suffering we’ve been through? I’ll tell you. God. God is to blame. God is the one who created this world. God is the one who has let it be what it is.” Soon everyone on stage is echoing the same indictment – “God is to blame. God is to blame.”
And so, God is put on trial for the crime of creating the world… and is found guilty. The judge sentences God to what he considers to be the worst of all sentences. He sentences God to live on earth as a human being. Three archangels are given the task of carrying out the sentence.
The first archangel walks to the edge of the stage and says, “I’m going to see to it when God serves His sentence that He knows what it’s like to be obscure and poor. God will be born on the backside of nowhere with a peasant girl for a mother. There will be a suspicion of shame about his birth, and God will have to live as a Jew in a Jew-hating world.”
The second archangel adds to that harsh penalty: “I’m going to see to it that when God serves His sentence that He knows what it’s like to fail and to suffer disappointment. No one will ever understand what He is trying to do.”
The third archangel said, “I’m going to see to it that when God has served His sentence, He will know what it’s like to suffer. I’m going to see to it that God suffers all kinds of physical pain. At the end of His life, He is going to be executed in as painful a way as possible.”
And suddenly the three archangels disappear and the houselights go down. The play is over. And the audience is left for a few moments in darkness as the reality dawns upon each person that God has already served the sentence. God knew what it’s like to be obscure and to be poor. God knew what it’s like to fail and suffer disappointment. God knew what it’s like to suffer a horrible death. God experienced all of this in the life and death of Jesus.(5)
Jesus is the answer to humanity’s suffering and sin. He has come down, just as Isaiah prayed so long ago.
Once there was a little girl named Annika, not quite four years old. Annika was fascinated by a waste basket filled with scraps of fabric left over from one of her mother’s sewing projects. Annika decided to root through the scraps of fabric and retrieve some brightly colored scraps for a project of her own. She took the scraps out to the backyard. Her mother found her there sitting in the grass with a long pole. Annika was attaching the scraps to the top of the pole with giant wads of sticky tape. “I’m making a banner for a procession,” she said. “I need a procession so that God will come down and dance with us.”
“With that,” writes her mother, “she solemnly lifted her banner to flutter in the wind and slowly she began to dance.”(6)
There you have the spirit of Advent. We call out to God and ask God to come to earth once again and dance with us.
“Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…” prayed Isaiah. That prayer was answered. God did come down, in the person of Jesus Christ. God has come down, and will come down again to join the procession and dance with us, God’s children.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVI, No. 4, p51.
2. Ibid… p51-52
3. Ibid… p52-53.
4. Ibid… p53.
5. Ibid… p53-54.
6. Ibid… p54.
