Sermon 27th November 2011

Rev Dr Ken Jeffrey

 

Advent 1

 

Introduction

‘Oh, that you would rip open the heavens and come down’ is the prophet’s anguished cry of appeal to God on behalf of the people to whom he ministers.

 

Development

1. Exegesis [what it meant there and then]

a. Isaiah 64 v1-9

Context: The people of God were close to despair. Torn from their homes, their villages and towns destroyed, the Temple in ruins, driven into exile, they felt like withered leaves blown by the wind.

 

‘You have hidden your face from us’, they complain to God. But, instead of giving way to despair, there arises among the people a cry of desperate longing, ‘Oh, that you would rip open the heavens and come down’, that you would come down and save us and set us free and take us home.

 

There was something in the people’s faith in God that gave them a sense of hope. They dared to believe their situation would improve, become better. This allowed them to dream of a better day.

 

Repeated by the Psalmist [Ps 43 v1] echoed by the Apostle Paul [Rom 8 v22-25], there has always been, in hearts of God’s people, a hope and a longing for a better day as they cry, ‘How long?’

 

b. Mark 13 v24-27

Jesus, raised among the people of God, lived with this hope of a better day, and spoke about this hope to his disciples. Recorded by the Apostles, these strange sermons about the future appear odd and difficult to understand, with their predictions that the end is near.

 

They sound especially peculiar to our modern ears, and so many of us tend to ignore these sections of the gospels, until we begin to understand they are about a vision of a new and changed world where God’s will is done on earth, as it is in heaven, when hungry will have bread, tears will cease.

 

2. Application [what it means here and now]

a. World Dreams

Still, hope of God’s people and prayer, ‘Oh, that you would rip open the heavens and come down’ can appear misplaced and naïve when we acknowledge the total mess of world in which we live.

 

The C20 was most murderous there has ever been, the seemingly hopeless situation in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine, and conflicts that continue to rage in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia threatens any sense of hope we, as Christians, might have.

 

In the midst of war, great inequality, untold violence, dreadful poverty, hunger are always found.

The fact half of world’s popn live on less than $2 a day, billion people go to bed hungry every night, one and half billion people never drink glass of clean water, drains further any sense of hope.

 

Meanwhile the BBC ‘Frozen Plants’ series, on Wednesday evenings, has brought into our living rooms the wonders of the frozen world of the Artic and Antarctic as we have never seen them before and may never see again, if we continue to do nothing about our world’s fragile eco system.

 

How do we react to this fragile, vulnerable world in which we all live?

Pull the curtains, pour another glass of wine and resign selves to sad fact this is the way things are?

 

Christians cannot rest with such passive, cynical resignation. If we believe in a gracious God of justice, then faith insists this is not how the world is meant to be, and it cannot stay like this forever.

 

b. Martin Luther King’s Dream

Martin Luther King, American Baptist minister and leader in American Civil Rights Movement was a man of vision and hope, which provided the inspiration for his famous dream

 

On 28 August 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, King addressed a crowd of over 200,000 civil rights supporters with his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech. A speech which continues today to inspire people around the world.

 

King said, ‘I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, that one day the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will sit down at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream that one day down in Alabama little black boys and girls will join hands with little white boys and girls as sisters and brothers’.

 

Meanwhile, and almost five years later, on 3 April 1968, the day before he was assassinated by James Earl Ray, at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, King delivered his famous ‘I’ve seen the promised land’ speech, which we shall listen to now. [1m 17s]

 

‘And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And so I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord’.

 

King died as he lived, filled with a sense of purposeful hope, vision, dream of a better day to come.

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c. Personal Dreams

What is your dream and vision, what is your deepest hope for our world, your family, yourself?

 

At Puerto Alegria, Amazon, Peru, in January 2005 God gave me a dream that we would build a home for abandoned boys in Peru, wh they would escape poverty and be given opport of new life. By God’s good grace and your generosity, that dream became a reality

 

My personal dream for my family is quite simple, is that we shall remain safe and strong, that we shall not be injured or hurt, that we shall not become seriously unwell, and that we shall be happy and contented, that we shall always love one another and live as a family at peace within itself.

 

Often ‘life is difficult’. We live fragile lives in a broken world where we are vulnerable to danger and evil, where bad things happen, and where people become ill, suffer pain and die. We live within a broken society where true love can be hard to find, and where many families live at war.  

 

Still, we must never stop dreaming because dreams both challenge and inspire us to consider what can we do, what change can we make, what difference can we create to make our dreams come true.

 

What is your dream? What do you hope, above all things, for self and your family, ch and world?

 

Conclusion

There have been and always will be occasions in every generation when God’s people cry, ‘Oh, that you would rip open the heavens and come down’, when they protest against things as they are.

 

Among the communion of saints, we are a pilgrim people, on a journey to a new Kingdom that is always ahead of us, encouraging us, and so we shall dare to dream of something that is not yet.

How or when this new day will dawn we do not know, but still, in the ‘not yet’, we shall dream…

 

Of the day when swords will be beaten into ploughshares, spears into pruning hooks, when nation will not lift up sword against nation, nor learn war anymore, when our children and our children’s children will not have to fight and die in order to protect our freedom and our peace.

 

Of the day when injustice, poverty, hunger will be a thing of the past…

Of the day when sickness and illness will be no more.

 

Meanwhile, we shall keep this vision and hope alive, as we remember the words of that great protest song which became the anthem of the African American Civil Rights Movement that has been sung by Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and The Boss, Bruce Springtseen…

 

‘We shall overcome… we’ll walk hand in hand… we shall live in peace’.

 

We shall overcome because Jesus, our Lord, has overcome, and when He comes again, we believe that we shall share in His victory over sin, evil and death, when all is well and all shall be well.

 

‘I cannot tell how he will win the nations or how all the lands shall worship…

But this I know, all flesh shall see his glory and the skies will thrill with rapture, when…

At last the Saviour, Saviour of the world, is King’.