Advent of Joy: Unexpected Blessings
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Isaiah 55:1-13
Today, and throughout history, so many songs are about love… so many plays and novels – an enormous percentage of artistic expressions are about love! Why is that? Human beings need love. It was Victor Hugo, author of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables, who said, “The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.” Even Sigmund Freud wrote that, “Love is the first requirement for mental health”. We know this to be true. And throughout The Bible we are taught that “God is love” and that God loves us. One verse, I often sing to myself is Lamentations 3:22, which declares, “The Steadfast Love of the Lord never ceases”. It is a fundamental truth declared from Genesis through Revelation. To realize that God is love and that God loves you, is so profoundly important. Nothing matters more.
But the people of God have often forgotten this, or despaired because of hard challenges and come to lose hope or faith that they are loved by God.
We can feel so separate from any signs of God in our lives that we doubt God’s love or that God even exists. Especially when people who say they are followers of God do unjust, hateful, or destructive things…it can be easy to slide into believing that hate, or injustice is equal to God.
FEELING UNLOVED & ABANDONED
This was something like the experience Israel was having as God inspired the Prophet Isaiah to speak to them. We’ve been looking at the great prophets these past few weeks, and this passage from Isaiah contains one of the greatest invitations in the whole Bible. It comes as a surprise – like a song about love that catches you out of the blue. This song, speaks a promise of God’s steadfast love. Let’s take a look.
Isaiah 55 was written to Israel as they were hungry. They were poor, and suffering. They had been captives in Babylon for 70 years. To this people God speaks a poem of love:
“Hear, everyone who thirsts;
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!”
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
What an extraordinary offer! Free food is always good! But what makes this extraordinary is not free food. God offers far more than food.
…2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread
and your earnings for that which does not satisfy?”
3 Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.
God uses food as a metaphor for every need they may have. God’s people had grown detached from trusting in God. But God calls them home – not with a stick of discipline – but to be received in love. Like a mother who baked all week to welcome her children home – God throws the doors open and says, “COME!”
The hunger and thirst, the pains Israel had experienced drew them away from trusting God’s love. They assumed God had abandoned them.
In fact, Israel felt judged, like God had rejected them, and like God could never accept them or love them. There was truth in part of their feelings. God had judged their worship of other gods, and the inequity they had shown to each other. But, God never stopped loving them.
In verse 7, God speaks directly to the idea that anyone could be too wicked or too unacceptable to come home to the Lord:
7 let the wicked forsake their way
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
God still looked to Israel as a beloved child.
What God said here to the Israelites is also true for everyone in this room, and everyone you will ever meet. You are a beloved child of God. God has flung open the doors of heaven to say, ‘I will give you what you need, and I will grant you mercy and grace. My thoughts are not your thoughts.’
I remember three teenagers - Jackie, and her sister Rhonda, and their brother Jordan. They didn’t go to church. They thought they weren’t welcome. In fact, they felt abandoned by God. They had a mom who loved them dearly, but tragically had a severe addiction to drugs. It crippled her. Their father had abandoned the family. So these three felt unloved and even unlovable. By some incredible miracle, one of the young people in a church I was pastoring, invited Jackie and Rhonda to come visit the church. They were the only African American people in the sanctuary that day. They were afraid, and extremely cautious. But, by the love of God at work that Sunday, everyone greeted them with warmth and love. They heard something about God’s love in my sermon…and they felt it in the community.
Soon they wanted to go to Confirmation. We created a small class for all ages and we shared teachings from the Catechism and throughout the Bible. Over a couple of years they struggled honestly through many questions of ethics and theology. But eventually they became youth leaders. Love has a way of being shared!
We receive this invitation, too. At this time of year, we’re invited to consider everything that pulls us away from God’s promises, anything that that stands between us and hearing the good news of God’s love for you right now.
God welcomes you today. God will always receive you in mercy. God always has hope for you, no matter what difficult place you are in. We trick ourselves into thinking we aren’t good enough – or worse yet, we trick others into thinking they are not worth being loved - but it’s not true.
God’s wisdom sees the worth in each person. God’s love is truth. Thanks be to God!
God invites the Israelites into closer relationship, and proclaims that they are being called home… where they will find joy and a new creation. The new creation will be - open to ALL PEOPLE and nations that they don’t even know will come to them. This new creation will be like heaven on earth, because God’s people will align their love to look like God’s love.
12 For you shall go out in joy
and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
This promise of Joy is what we see in Jesus. Like the first nation of Israel, we too are called to be part of the new creation God is making through all who call Jesus Lord.
One Final Note
This can be a strange time of year filled with the burden of going home. For some, going home is a joy and privilege. For some, it’s burden and struggle. For others, going home isn’t even an option…and may never be. For still more, they can go home – but the person who made it feel like home won’t be there.
For the exiles, “going home” would not have felt much like home. The land hadn’t been theirs for generations. But what made it their home was God’s invitation. God assures them that this is where they need to be. God promises to be with them and provide for them. Their presence in this place is designed to make the world rejoice.
May you and I know that same truth. Home isn’t a location or a group. It’s where we’re welcome. It’s where God’s love is known and reflected. It’s where we can go out in joy and be led back in peace. May this gift of God become true for ALL people.
In this season of preparation, who will you meet that needs to know that God loves them unconditionally? Will you find a way to reflect that love through a simple smile or kind word within a frozen parking lot at the grocery store? Will you take time with someone experiencing homelessness, or perhaps share with someone who needs food or a toy this Christmas? Perhaps your reflection of heaven will be the joy brought to someone of East African origin or Hispanic, who feels afraid this season. How can you reflect a warm welcome and the love of God to your neighbor?
Let us pray.
God, your love is our true home. Guide us with that love. And make our lives into a place where others are truly valued, cared for, and respected. Fill our lives to overflowing with your love in this season and always. Amen.
Pastor Doug Cox