As I read our readings from Isaiah and Mark for today, I was struck by the fact that the authors of both were addressing grieving communities. Both passages of Scripture were written to people who were living through a time of great chaos, social upheaval, and pain. Both were written to communities who were experiencing great loss and were trying to make sense of it all.
Let’s take a look at Isaiah first. Our reading for this morning is from a section of Isaiah that was written during the time when the Jewish people were living in exile in Babylon. They were a conquered people. They had lost their homes, their land, and most importantly their Temple. For the Jewish people, the Temple was the center of their identity. It was the place where they were promised that God would be present. It was the place where heaven and earth touched and they could know God. The Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures) spends a great deal of time talking about the Temple—how it should be built, how God should be worshipped there. Without their land, the land promised to them by God, and their Temple who were they? How would they maintain their identity? How would they remain a people? Were they even God’s people anymore?
The people are groaning under the weight of their pain and grief. Some are crying out, as the author of this section of Isaiah cried out:
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence–
as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil–
to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence! (Isaiah 64:1)
Others have given up, numb and apathetic:
There is no one who calls on your name,
or attempts to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. (Isaiah 64:8)
The Gospel of Mark was written 600 years after our reading from Isaiah was written, and yet the context of the readers of this Gospel was not all that different. Around 70 AD the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed for the third time in Jewish history. The author of the Gospel of Mark wrote for a community that was deeply affected by the failure of the Jewish revolt against Rome and the destruction of the Temple. They too lived in a time of great upheaval, violence, and tumult: Jesus said, “In those days, after that suffering, 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.” (Mark 13:24)
Both the community listening to our passage from Isaiah and the community listening to our passage from Mark were living in unpleasant times in which their future was uncertain and day-to-day living was hard.
Not so different from our lives today is it? Well, our day to day living is probably not as hard, but the world is certainly in chaos. We are living in extremely challenging times. We made it through several years of pandemic, but not without being changed and not without loss. Our country is deeply divided and there seems to be no end in sight to this division. The war in Ukraine drags on. Hundreds of Israelis were kidnapped by Hamas and now Israel and Hamas are pounding each other at the cost of 20,000 lives and the upheaval of millions. We wonder if we are on the edge of World War III and know that the consequences of such a war would be far greater than the last two.
We are beginning to tangibly feel the effects of climate change as the planet warms, entire species are dying out and the world is becoming a less hospitable place in which to live, and we seem incapable of making the decisions we need to make to stop this change. The world is in upheaval and changing at a rate that is impossible to comprehend. We are tired. We are scared. We are angry. We cry out:
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence–
as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil–
to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
God, make yourself known! Help us! Show us that you are with us! Fix things! Make all these troubles go away!
Or we have become numb and apathetic. “Well, there is nothing we can do to stop these various calamities, so let’s numb ourselves anyway we can.” “I’m too tired to fight anymore, whatever will be will be.” Or, even worse, “None of these problems are real. They are just propaganda from political opportunists.”
But we are followers of Christ. At the root of our faith is the knowledge that God is with us always and that nothing, absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God. God, in Jesus, was crucified on a cross and died because of us and because God loves us, and this horrible hate-filled outcome was not the final word. Resurrection. Life. Love. These were the final words. This is true for us as well today.
But what are we to do during this painful time, this time when everything is still so very uncertain, and pain and suffering seem to be triumphing? Well, we are to wait, for
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who works for those who wait for him (Isaiah 64:3)
God’s time is not our time. God’s ways are not our ways.
And this waiting is not just any kind of waiting. It is not passive. It is not apathetic.
It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake. (Mark 13:36-37)
As we wait, we live as if the kingdom of God has already come. Within our own families, communities and nations we do whatever we can to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, comfort the grieving, free the captive, and care for and bring justice to any living on the margins of the world, just as Jesus did. And we gather together to support each other and to worship God during this difficult time.
And we pray as the author of our Psalm for today prayed:
In the presence of Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh, *
stir up your strength and come to help us.
3 Restore us, O God of hosts; *
show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.
4 O Lord God of hosts, *
how long will you be angered
despite the prayers of your people?
5 You have fed them with the bread of tears; *
you have given them bowls of tears to drink.
6 You have made us the derision of our neighbors, *
and our enemies laugh us to scorn.
7 Restore us, O God of hosts; *
show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved. (Psalm 80:2-7)
Amen.
