Isaiah 64:1-9 (NIV)
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!
2 As when fire sets twigs ablaze
and causes water to boil,
come down to make your name known to your enemies
and cause the nations to quake before you!
3 For when you did awesome things that we did not expect,
you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.
4 Since ancient times no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right,
who remember your ways.
But when we continued to sin against them,
you were angry.
How then can we be saved?
6 All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
7 No one calls on your name
or strives to lay hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us
and made us waste away because of our sins.
8 Yet, O Lord, you are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
9 Do not be angry beyond measure, O Lord;
do not remember our sins forever.
Kathleen Norris writes in her book, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith:
“I am a sinner, and the Presbyterian church offers me a weekly chance to come clean, and to pray, along with others, what is termed a prayer of confession. But pastors can be so reluctant to use the word ‘sin’ that in church we end up confessing nothing except our highly developed capacity for denial. One week, for example, the confession began, ‘Our communication with Jesus tends to be too infrequent to experience the transformation in our lives You want us to have,’ which seems less a prayer than a memo from one professional to another. At times, I picture God as a wily writing teacher who leans across a table and says, not at all gently, ‘Could you possibly be troubled to say what you mean?’ It would be refreshing to answer, simply, ‘I have sinned.’”[i]
What is abundantly clear is that this chapter from Isaiah—assigned for the First Sunday in Advent— is a cry of repentance. And it stands as a reminder that in the tradition of the Church, Advent was not just a season of anticipation but also one of deep penitence as well. In recent times, however, churches have altered their Advent traditions, replacing the liturgical color of purple with blue to stand not for Lent-like penitence but Advent preparation and anticipation of the arrival of the Christ. In the congregation I serve, we sort of mix it up. We use both purple and blue. The repentance called for in the assigned readings prepares us to receive the anticipated Christ. I suppose this practice softens the harshness of the reality of our sinfulness and need for repentance in such a warm & fuzzy secular season of “Pre-Christmas.”
Today, it seems, we are in the market for a kinder, gentler God. We want God to be just another Facebook friend, through the ups and downs of life. Many people shrink from descriptions of any God who would “rend the heavens,” confront his “enemies,” and just generally cause people to quake in holy fear of an impending condemnation. And let’s not even talk about people seeing themselves as unclean sinners whose virtues are likened to stinky laundry!
And yet . . . we know that in Christ we are forgiven, that we do shine like righteous stars, and that the God we face is our friend and not a harsh judge, even so we cannot ignore passages like Isaiah 64, especially in a season such as Advent.
Plainly and simply, we confess…
I have sinned. Forgive me. Thank you. Amen.
We would never be able to extricate ourselves from this predicament if it were not for the grace of God in Jesus—the one whom we prepare to receive— with great anticipation.
The Rev. Jane Baker – FaithEvangelicalLutheranChurch,Roseburg
[i] Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998, p.165):
