Have you ever said a prayer like Isaiah’s?  “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence!”  Isaiah doesn’t want God to make a quiet entrance.  Isaiah wants God to come down to earth with footsteps so loud and heavy it makes the mountains quake!  Come down as a forest fire that burns so hot it made the water in rivers and lakes boil!  Make such a dramatic and grand entrance that the world trembles at your presence!

How’s that for a way to start a new year?  Instead of opening this new liturgical year with a party, today we have a lament.  Laments are prayers that mix the depth of the writer’s pain with the depth of his faith.  Can you hear the longing and desperation in these words?  This prayer was written about 500 years before the birth of Jesus, after the children of Abraham had returned to Jerusalem after spending about 60 years in exile.  The exile was a very important event in Israel’s history.  Around 597 BC, the Jews were expelled from Jerusalem and forced to make a life for themselves in foreign lands.  It was as if God said, “This is my holy city, and you don’t deserve to live here!”  The Hebrews understood the exile as God’s punishment on them for failing to hold up their end of the covenant, and so it was a very bleak time in the history of Judaism.  They had failed to keep God’s laws, failed to take their status as a holy nation seriously, and failed in their mission to be a blessing to the world.

After 60 years in exile, they were allowed to return to Jerusalem.  That’s good, right?  Well, yes and no.  It reminds me of stories I heard when I visited New Orleans a few years after Hurricane Katrina.  On the one hand, everyone says it’s good to be home.  They survived the storm, and their city was still on the map, at least.  But on the other hand, home didn’t look much like it used to!  There was so much devastation, so much rebuilding to do.  Getting “home” seemed like a small victory compared to what it would take to get their city back to its former splendor.

That’s similar to the situation behind this prayer in Isaiah.  The Jews had been allowed back into Jerusalem, which was something to celebrate:  they had survived the period of exile, both physically and in terms of keeping their faith, and their city was still on the map.  But on the other hand, home didn’t look much like it used to!  Their city was destroyed by the foreigners who occupied it during the exile.  The temple was ruined.  Their holy spaces had been defiled.   How long will it take to rebuild?  How long will it take until their city returns to its former splendor?

Apparently, longer than they thought it would!  Rebuilding was made even harder by the fact that people had lost hope.  They were back in Jerusalem, but God’s presence did not seem to be there with them.  Come on, God, the prophet seems to be saying, do something!  Do something like you did before, when you did awesome deeds that we did not expect but that saved us from terrible situations.  Help!  Rescue us!  At least let us know you’re here!

Does that sound like a prayer you have ever prayed?  Not many of us have had to rebuild our lives after being in exile, or even after a flood like in New Orleans.  But many people are struggling to rebuild our lives in the face of other struggles:  rebuilding after a divorce; rebuilding after an illness; rebuilding after losing a job; rebuilding after someone we loved and trusted disappointing us.  On some level, all of us understand this frustration that comes from finding out things often take longer than we thought!  All of us understand the despair that can set it when we don’t see progress.  All of us understand how easy it is to conclude that God is absent when we face difficult circumstances.

A lot of time has past since the writing of this passage of Isaiah—roughly 2500 years!  But the lament of humankind is basically the same:  we need you to make your presence known, God, in an unmistakable way.  Then the world will change.  People will know you are God.  They will stop sinning.  They will work together, and work for the common good.  Then we could rebuild your house, and we will all join in praising you together.  Come as an earthquake!  Come as a forest fire!  If you would just come, Lord, then things would change.  That’s verses 1 – 7 of our passage, a prayer as relevant today as it was over 2000 years ago.

But in verse 8, there is a change in the tone of the prayer.  “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are the potter.”  Remember a few minutes ago when I said this prayer is a lament:  it’s a blending of the writer’s deep despair, and the writer’s deep faith.  This is a prayer that says, yes, Lord, things are bad.  Yes, Lord, it seems like maybe you’ve forgotten about us.  But!  In our text this morning it’s translated “yet”—three little letters that completely change the tone of the prayer.  All this bad stuff is true, but!  We are near despair, and yet!  We have not given up.  We believe you are God, and that you are with us even if it doesn’t feel that way.

That’s why this lament is chosen as a lectionary text for the first Sunday of Advent.  Because it’s ultimately a prayer of hope.  “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!  Come with loud footsteps.  Come with bright fire.  Come and take away our doubt, so we can know for sure that you are with us!”  We’re here this morning, in part, because of our faith that someday that will happen.  God will come and make all things new, and while we don’t know exactly what that looks like, we know it will be good!  But we are also here this morning because we know that God has already torn open the heavens and come down.  He came so quietly, only a handful of people heard him cry.  He came so gently, only the insides of a 15 year old virgin trembled and quaked.  He came so humbly, only one star marked his arrival.  But God did come. It turns out that our popular greeting, “Merry Christmas”, is just another way of saying, “Your prayers have been answered.”

In between the writing of Isaiah’s prayer, and our time, is an amazing story of a husband and wife who knew about lament.  Elizabeth and Zechariah had prayed long and hard for a child.  Through no fault of their own, they had never been able to conceive.  They had probably stopped praying years ago for a child, because Matthew records for us that Elizabeth and Zechariah were “very old”.  We can assume Elizabeth was well past child-bearing age.

But when Gabriel comes, he first says, “Do not be afraid”.  And the very next thing he says is, “your prayers have been answered.”  Are there any better words we could ever ask to hear?  The birth of John the Baptist was the answer to Elizabeth and Zechariah’s prayers for a child.  And his birth was the start of the answer to the world’s prayers for a savior.  It turns out, there simply is no advent without prayer.

This year during Advent, we are going to be focusing on learning about John the Baptist, and how he prepared the way for the coming of the Messiah, how he prepared people to receive the message of God’s great love for the whole world.  Preparing to receive is what the season of Advent is all about.  In the ancient world, if a dignitary was going to make a tour of his kingdom, word would go out to all the towns well in advance.  Clean up your streets!  Repair your roads!  Do everything you can to help the official have a pleasant trip while travelling.  Be ready to receive him!  That is the ready we are trying to cultivate in Advent.

And one of the main ways we prepare ourselves to receive Christ is through prayer.  So in addition to learning about John the Baptist during Advent, we are also going to focus on prayer.  Today I’d like to share with you an Advent prayer written by the well-known Roman Catholic priest, scholar and author, Henri Nouwen.

 

Lord Jesus,

Master of both the light and the darkness,

Send your Holy spirit upon our preparation for Christmas.

 

We who have so much to do

Seek quiet spaces to hear your voice each day.

 

We who are anxious over many things

Look forward to your coming among us.

 

We who are blessed in so many ways long for

The complete joy of your Kingdom.

 

We whose hearts are heavy

Seek the joy of your presence.

 

We are your people,

Walking in darkness yet seeking the light.

 

To you we say,

“Come, Lord Jesus.” Amen.

 

What a beautiful prayer!  Phil and I have decided to print it out and put it on our kitchen counter, where we can read it together every morning at breakfast.  I have to tell you, as a religious professional, setting aside extra time for prayer during Advent is really hard!  The month of December flies by faster than any  other month of the year.  But as Abraham Lincoln said, if he had six hours to cut down a tree, he would spend four hours sharpening his ax.  We only have a limited amount of time between now and Christmas.  Devoting more time to prayer may seem counter-intuitive when our to-do lists are so long.  But there is simply no advent without prayer.  Christ comes as an answer to prayer.  How can you make prayer a bigger part of your Advent season?

This is so important, because ultimately, God wants to use us to answer prayer, too.  We need Jesus for ourselves.  And we need Jesus so we can share with others.  Will you commit to praying this Advent prayer with me every day for the next four weeks?

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence!”  That is the universal prayer of humankind throughout the ages.  “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are the potter.”  Dear God, mold us and make us people of prayer, and people of answered prayer, this Advent season. Amen.