Sermon:
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Still Waiting
a sermon based on Isaiah 64:1-9
& Mark 13:24-37
by Richard Gehring
Here we
are, the last day of the month of November. Thanksgiving is now past,
although some of us still may have family to gather with and more turkey
to eat. Our church calendar, however, tells us that this is the
beginning of the season known as Advent. It is a season that has been
observed by the church, in one form or another, for more than 1600
years. The earliest record we have of the celebration of Advent comes
from Spain around the year 380 when a law was passed prohibiting anyone
from being absent from church between December 17 and January 6, the day
of Epiphany. Eventually, the season was extended to include the four
Sundays prior to Christmas Day, December 25.
But while
we may know when Advent is, we aren't always sure exactly what it is all
about. I looked up the word "advent" in the dictionary and found this
definition: "The coming or arrival, especially of something awaited or
momentous." That definition immediately raises a number of questions
for me. What is it that arrives during this Advent season? What is
coming? What momentous event do we await?
The simple
answer to this question is that Advent is the time of waiting for
Christmas. But this is not an answer that I find completely
satisfactory. Why do we need to spend four weeks waiting for one day?
On the other hand, why start waiting now when Christmas decorations have
been up in stores and carols have been playing at the mall for a whole
month now?
Our two
scripture texts for this morning are both addressed to people who,
unlike us, were accustomed to waiting. The Isaiah passage most likely
was written during or immediately after the time of the Babylonian
exile. The people of Israel had been utterly defeated, their leaders
taken away as captives to a foreign land, their cities destroyed and
their temple ransacked and burned. And even after their oppressors were
defeated and the nobility were allowed to return home, they were still
not an independent nation, and it was some time before the temple was
rebuilt.
So the
people waited. They waited for the restoration of their once proud
glory as a sovereign kingdom. They waited for the rebuilding of their
once beautiful house of worship. They waited for the renewal of their
once refined society that had been decimated by the exile. And through
it all, they waited for God to act. They waited for an answer to how
God could let such a horrendous thing happen to the chosen people.
Six
centuries later, in Jesus' time, the people were also waiting. By then,
the temple had been restored and was indeed as glorious, if not more
glorious, than the temple Solomon himself had built. The Jewish people
were allowed to live in their own land and had at least a certain amount
of autonomy over their own affairs. But they still were not a free and
independent people. Their land was still occupied by foreign forces,
now the Romans.
By the
time Mark recorded Jesus' words, some 30 or 40 years after they were
spoken, the situation had reached a point of crisis. A Jewish revolt
against the Romans failed. The Roman army responded by clamping down
harshly on Judea. And in the year AD 70 the magnificent temple that had
been completely restored during Jesus' lifetime was once again
destroyed, never to be rebuilt.
And so the
people of first century Palestine waited. They waited for the day when
they would be free of oppressive Roman rule. They waited for the coming
of the Messiah, the Anointed One of God promised by the prophets of
old. They waited for the Son of David to again sit on the throne in
Jerusalem and rule over his people in justice and righteousness. They,
too, waited for God to act. And they, too, waited for an answer to the
question of why God seemed to be neglecting the chosen people.
It is in the context
of this waiting that the prophecies of Isaiah and of Jesus that we have
heard this morning were spoken. The prophecy of Isaiah opens with a cry
for help. On behalf of God's people, the prophet impatiently calls on
God to do something, to act in the powerful and awesome ways that God
had acted in the past:
"O that
you would tear open the heavens and come down, [continue]
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