Advent 1, Year B
Isaiah 64:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37
This podcast is also available on Apple and Spotify.
I.
Have you ever been on a particularly turbulent flight, one that’s shaking the plane all around, so much that the flight attendants have to stop the cabin service and take their seats?
I have.
And one thing I’ve noticed is that despite all the shaking, there’s always one or more passengers who are fast asleep.
Now, maybe they have nerves of steel. Or maybe they took a sleeping pill. The point is that they are an apt illustration of Isaiah’s words today, words that speak a word of warning to a people who are asleep, despite the spiritual turbulence all around them.
II.
Isaiah 64:7 reads:
“There is no one who calls upon your name,
who rouses himself to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities.”
Several things can be said about this verse.
First, Isaiah bemoans the loss of true religion. “There is no one who calls upon your name.”
Calling upon the name of the Lord was the earliest form of biblical religion. Genesis 4:26 says:
“And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD.”
The whole of the Old Testament is the story of mankind first learning to call out to God, to trust Him, and then to forget Him and to stop calling on His name.
The second thing to notice is that the loss of true religion leads to laziness. This is not simply about sleeping in on Sunday. It is saying that sleeping late becomes its own punishment.
In other words, to lose sight of God is to become complacent, to stagnate, and finally to lose all the “get up and go” that is required to be a doer of God’s word and not just one who listens passively to it.1
The third thing to notice is that spiritual sloth not only leads to a cutting short of our earthly ambitions, but it alienates us from God.
If we cannot be bothered to rouse ourselves and to put an effort into having a relationship with God, He will withdraw from our lives. He will not stick around. He will hide His face from us.
The last thing to say about this verse is that after the loss of true religion, and the laziness that sets in, and the loss of God’s friendship — after all that — comes destruction.
We will “melt in the hand of our iniquities.”
Paul explains what Isaiah means here in Romans 1:18-28.
Paul writes:
“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity.”
And:
“For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.”
And:
“Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.”
In other words, God doesn’t so much punish sin as He allows sin to become the punishment.
III.
Have you heard of Clown World? According to at least one definition on Reddit, Clown World is:
“… the idea that the world is becoming more and more like a grotesque freakshow, with degeneration on various fronts (social, political, racial, etc.).”
Another priest, Ben Crosby, has worried out loud that the church is losing both the ability to think theologically about issues and to reason together.
Regarding the debate over the church’s role in medical assistance in dying in Canada, Crosby writes:
“…we don’t have a genuine conversation, we have a set of incompatible fragments offered to each other without any sense of how they might be put together.”
When discussing the morality of doctor-assisted suicide, it is as if each of us has a piece of the puzzle, and is willing to make a few clowning gestures with it, but together we are too lazy to put the puzzle together.
For what it’s worth, I think both the Bible and centuries of Christian teaching are the cure for Clown World. It’s clear from both that suicide is self-murder and that helping someone to murder is unacceptable.2
Still, when men cease to call upon the name of the Lord, when they stop practicing true religion, such a perspective is likely to sound harsh and doctrinaire.
I suspect that is because it is attempting to rouse sleepers who do not want to be awakened.
IV.
Sin puts us to sleep, but the consequences will surely wake us up.
Jesus says in today’s gospel, in Mark 13:24:
“But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”
No one will sleep through that.
Two principles are at work in our lives, both unfolding their consequences until the very end.
The first is the principle of death. Every moment we live, every decision we make, leads to this outcome. You could almost say that everything in our lives is determined by this dreadful fact. Inch by inch we are backing ourselves into this corner. The effect sets up all the causes that inexorably lead to it.
God says in Genesis 2:16-17:
“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Many have called God a liar, because Adam and Eve went on to live for hundreds of years after they ate of the forbidden fruit. But the point is that in the moment of their disobedience they died. The rest of their so-called “lives” was merely the working out of the principle of death at work in them.
The second principle is eternal life, however, this principle only operates in the lives of believers. This is what it means to be born again.3 From the moment this second principle begins to work in our lives every moment we live, every decision we make, leads away from death and towards life with God.
This is why Paul can tell us 1 Cor. 13:7 that:
“…you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
V.
Jesus asks His followers to stay awake.
He says in Mark 13:35:
“Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come.”
And in Mark 13:37:
“And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.”
We do not know when the first principle, death, will fully run its course. Neither do we know when the second principle, eternal life, will be fully consummated.
Therefore, we are to place ourselves fully in God’s hands, as clay is in the potter’s.
Isaiah 64:8 says:
“But now, O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.”
“We are all the work of your hand” certainly means everyone — all of us — who pray this prayer.
But I think it also means the sum total of the moments and choices in our lives, these are also the work of God’s hand.
This means that the first and second principle, death and life, are “all the work of your hand,” O God.
This makes the prayer in the last verse, Isaiah 64:9, possible:
“Be not so terribly angry, O Lord,
and remember not iniquity forever.
Behold, please look, we are all your people.”
Iniquity (or sin) which is the principle of death at work in us, cannot last forever. By its very nature, death must die.
The good news of Advent is that the death of death is coming and is now already here among us and at work. Amen.
See: James 1:22.
The Didache puts it this way: “And the second commandment of the Teaching; You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born. You shall not covet the things of your neighbor, you shall not swear, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not speak evil, you shall bear no grudge. You shall not be double-minded nor double-tongued, for to be double-tongued is a snare of death. Your speech shall not be false, nor empty, but fulfilled by deed. You shall not be covetous, nor rapacious, nor a hypocrite, nor evil disposed, nor haughty. You shall not take evil counsel against your neighbor. You shall not hate any man; but some you shall reprove, and concerning some you shall pray, and some you shall love more than your own life.”
See: John 3:1-15.
"Stay Awake!"