‘O that you
would tear open the heavens and come down’
+
What a desperate plea we hear in the
prophecy of Isaiah: ‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down’.
It echoes our desperate plea now, that God
would come and make things right: make things right on the international stage;
make things right with the pandemic; make things right in human society; make
things right in healing the creation.
That is an Advent plea!
Isaiah’s plea is followed by his reflection
on the earth-shaking impact of the word and works of God. For God comes to his
creation, shaping and moulding his people to his ways as a potter handles and
works the clay, turning them not on a capricious wheel of fortune, but turning
them back to him.
That is a Advent response!
The season of Advent echoes the desire that
the Lord will come - the ancient Aramaic cry of the Church is, ‘Maranatha’
meaning, ‘Amen. Come Lord Jesus’ – and a commitment on our part to turn our
hearts to the Lord again.
In Advent we call to the Lord to come again,
as surely as he came in the flesh in his first coming: ‘O come, O come,
Emmanuel’.
This year we cannot come together on Advent
Sunday to sing that and other great Advent hymns. And what will our celebration
of Christmas be like?
It is a dark time of the year and we seek
the light; it is a dark time for many people – losing jobs, dropping incomes,
being ill, feeling lonely, separated from family - and they seek the light.
What does our faith tell us about these
times? The words given to us by Isaiah speak powerfully, ‘O that you would tear
open the heavens and come down’.
Has God abandoned us to Covid, to Brexit, to
populism, to authoritarianism, to anxiety and loneliness?
The story of scripture tells us we are not
abandoned, not abandoned to any of these things.
As the psalm says, ‘The Lord of Hosts is
with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge’
The One Who Comes is with us and as that
psalm begins, ‘God is our refuge and our strength; a very present help in times
of trouble’ (Psalm 46.7)
The gospel tells us that in days of
confusion, doubt, fear and darkness we are to stay awake and alert to the ways
of the Most High, for it is in those times that we will see ‘the Son of Man
coming in the clouds’.
Now is the season – Advent – the season to
wake up to see the one who comes, to see the heavens torn open, so ‘let every
heart prepare a throne and every voice a song’.
No comments:
Post a Comment