Sermon - Mission:Impossible?

Preached on November 17, 2013 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC

Scripture: Isaiah 65:17-25

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. 

I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. 

They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord— and their descendants as well. Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

Sermon

The prophet tells of God’s promise to make new heavens and a new earth on which there will be no more weeping or suffering or violence of any kind, and I wonder if it seemed to those who heard it an impossible mission. The people to whom this vision was first shared were the Israelites who had survived two generations of captivity after the empire of Babylon conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, laid waste to their fields and vineyards, and took the people away into Babylon where they handed down their grief from generation to generation. And now they returned to the words of this impossible vision given by the prophet from God. God is about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight, and no more will there be weeping. No more will people die before old age. No more will the homes they build or the vineyards they keep be taken by someone else. No more will they cry out to God and wonder whether God has even heard their cry because God will hear before they cry and answer while they are yet speaking.

And what’s more (as if all of this weren't enough already) God’s peace will be so complete that even the wolf will stop preying on the lambs, even the lion will change to a diet of straw, and eat side by side with the ox, and the serpent always biting at our heels, the very symbol of evil, will no longer be a threat to any breathing creature. It will get by eating the dirt as it crawls.

Can we believe this? Is someone putting us on?

It reminds me of one of those fake news stories passed around on April fool’s day: a story that begins with a somewhat believable idea, and sentence by sentence becomes more and more implausible and finally impossible so you know for sure that this is a fake article, just for fun.

God creating Jerusalem as a joy? Sure! 

God protecting our homes from violent conquest?  Great! 

God eliminating child mortality?  I hope so.

God getting the wolf and the lamb to lie down together? C'mon! This whole thing is impossible.

Because the vision seems as unlikely today as it did then. How can we speak of living to old age when we have attended too many funerals of dear ones much younger than us? How can we speak of building homes and keeping them when we read of refugees from war in Syria and Iraq; or when we remember the families who stay with Family Promise after losing their homes from lay-offs, medical crises, or just bad luck; or when we see the photos of the Philippines - the magnitude of which we can hardly imagine? How can we speak of peace when we know of attacks and violence not only around the world, but also in our neighborhoods, and even in our families?

We pray for these things all the time!

How can we speak of God hearing before we cry out and answering us while we yet speak?

We are no fools!

The beginning of this passage is a tricky translation. “For I am about to create.” Bará is the verb in the Hebrew language, and it’s the same word that begins the book of Genesis when God created (Bará) the heavens and the earth. Now we have the promise of God creating (Bará) new heavens and a new earth. It is a re-creating, a transforming promise. But the tricky thing about the translation is that the Hebrew language is hard to put into tense and time. Some English translations say “I create new heavens and a new earth.” Some say “I will create new heavens and a new earth.” Some say “I am creating” or “I am about to create.” The ambiguity about the timing give the sense that God’s creating, re-creating, transforming of us and our world is happening over time, on-the-go, in the midst of our lives and generations.

And if that is the case, then evidence of continued tragedy and violence and devastation does not necessarily mean that the whole promise is impossible, a big fake.

Let’s go back to those images of the wolf lying down the lamb and the lion eating straw with the ox, which I earlier said are the most implausible parts of this vision, and I still think that they are, because we know that this is just how the world works. You've seen these animal shows on television. You know how the bigger animals survive. I don’t watch a lot of them, but I was captivated a couple years ago by that miniseries called Planet Earth, which captured wildlife from all parts of land and sea in the most amazing ways. We were watching this series over the holidays one year with extended family and I wondered why my stepdad wasn't in the room with us. He loves animals! Well, it turns out that he has trouble watching those shows because he really is sensitive to these animals, especially the vulnerable ones, especially the ones who are tracked and preyed upon by the wolves and lions. He couldn't bear to watch. The rest of us watched those scenes and we thought, well, that’s just the way that the world is.

And maybe that’s why the prophet moves ultimately to those images of predator and prey living together in peace – it’s God’s way of breaking to pieces our expectations of “that’s just how the world is.”

For centuries, emperors and kings and lords ruled with violence over the vast majority of their human brothers and sisters, who lived in wretched poverty, prone to disease and hard, short lives, and with no hope of change to their position. That was “just the way the world is,” but it’s not the way it stayed. That kind of crushing subsistence poverty has been on a long retreat. Just to look at the last thirty years, the percentage of the global population who suffer from malnutrition went from 40 to 20 percent. Adult literacy is up from 53 to 80 percent. Polio is nearly eradicated; and smallpox, which claimed the lives of 500 million souls in the 19^th century, is gone.

When Betsy and I visited London a couple years ago, we saw the place in the tower of London where political enemies were brought for beheading, and the places on the tower walls and near the bridge over the river into the city where the heads of enemies would be displayed as a warning and a proclamation of violent power. That was just the way the world was, but is less and less so all the time.

In recent memory, we might have said that it was just the way the world is that one race enslaves another, that Germany was the perennial enemy of the allies, or that the cold war was the constant state of global politics. And the people who hoped for peace to bridge those chasms of animosity and oppression and violence seemed foolish at the time.

What are the hopes that seem foolish today?

Is it foolish to hope that the divided people of Iraq and Syria, Afghanistan or Israel and Palestine might live in peace?

Is it foolish to hope that the spread of HIV and AIDS might be arrested around the world and particularly in Africa?

Is it foolish to hope that the people whose lives are so vulnerable in the Philippines and Haiti, and coasts all over the world will one day live in greater safety from the storms and rising waters?

Is it foolish to hope that you could heal from the hurt that has been done to you, or be freed from the fear that you were taught to feel, or be forgiven for the things you have done?

And is it foolish to think that your contribution can make a difference, that your voice can affect someone’s life, that what you give can be the means of God’s peace in the world?

The apostle Paul wrote that we are fools for Christ, for we embrace that which seems foolish. Which is to say that we do not accept the world just the way it is.

God is creating new heavens and a new earth in which there is peace, and long life, and the causes for weeping are swept away. We might say that we are fools to believe it. We might say that we should be more realistic. But that kind of thinking leaves no room for love that casts out fear, or forgiveness of sin, or healing what was broken. It certainly leaves no room for the Christ who taught those things to do anything after he was crucified except stay in the tomb.

God doesn’t seem to worry too much about whether people think that the new heavens and new earth are a foolish hope or an impossible mission. God will create them. God is about to create them. God is creating them, and God is doing it with people who have just as much faith, courage, strength, and holy foolishness as you.