Isaiah 63:7-9
Christmas 2
January 1, 2023
I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of
the Lord,
because of all that the Lord has
done for us, and the great favor to the house of Israel that he has shown them
according to his mercy, according to the abundance of his steadfast love. For
he said, “Surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely”; and
he became their savior in all their distress. It was no messenger or angel
but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
I am glad you’re here. The morning after New Year’s Eve, I’m glad anybody is here. The crowd resembles Christmas Day a week ago, which for us Presbyterians is always a low attendance Sunday. In our church circles, we prefer to celebrate Christmas at night, not in the morning. As for New Year’s, I can only presume a few reasons for the sparse attendance.
To tell you the truth, I’m embarrassed to have you here. I should have paid more attention to the scripture text for this morning. It was a full week for us, as it was for you: all our kids were in, we visited my mom and that side of the family, we had a funeral on my wife’s side of the family, there was dinner and a concert with a good friend, and a couple of days to relax and go to seed. Yet excuses won’t do. I should have read the text.
We’ve heard it before. It’s a brief burst of praise, selected by the ecumenical church for the readings on the Sunday after Christmas. In previous years, one of our liturgists put it into the air, and then we followed by singing, “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” If there was a sermon on that day, it might have been based on that ghastly story from the Gospel of Matthew. When an unhinged national leader discovers he will be replaced, he gives his blessing to an act of violence. The Bible says that’s the kind of world we live in.
I have preached on that story about King Herod a half dozen times. I thought, “This year, I will give them a reprieve. Let’s go with Isaiah 63, verses 7 to 9. It’s pleasant enough.” And now I say to you I should have actually read the text. The whole text: verses 1 to 6 and verses 10 to 19.
Our three verses are in the middle of a very painful poetic section in Isaiah’s book. To isolate them from their context would violate everything that I was taught about preaching from the Bible. We must hear the whole book, not merely the gold nuggets that sparkle. As another preacher has said so well,
“These three verses are airlifted out of a chapter thick with divine wrath and human despair. In the verse preceding today’s (text), God declares, ‘I trampled down peoples in my anger’ (v. 6). In the verse following, God is the enemy of those who have grieved God’s holy spirit and ‘fought against them’ (v. 10).”[1]
Oy vey! Not much Christmas cheer there. Not a lot of festive celebration. The chapter is part of a larger conversation between God and the people, as heard in the faithful imagination of the prophet Isaiah. Neither God nor the people are happy with one another.
For the people’s part, they have returned from a seventy-year exile in Babylon. They had such high hopes for returning home. They dreamed of returning to the hills and valleys that their parents told them about; but the land has been desecrated and the economy demolished by violent. They had been on memories of praying in the Jerusalem temple, lifting their prayers, and keeping the sacrifices that connected them to their Maker; but that temple had been demolished, torn down stone by stone.
No doubt, some grumbled, wondering, “Why did we ever leave Babylon? Even there we had regular meals and a place to lay our heads at night.” Same old complaint from centuries before, after God released the people from bondage in Egypt. It’s far easier to stay with the old slaveries than to venture into the new freedom. So they were bitter. Glad to be home, but bitter about what they found.
And God wasn’t happy, either. After centuries of disobedience, if you sent your children off for seventy years of punishment, you might think they would have learned a lesson or two. But few lessons had been learned. God is worn out, discouraged, and disillusioned with his people. He gives them everything – and they either blow it at the roulette wheel or chase after a hundred substitutes for grace, mercy, and steadfast love. It happens repeatedly. Still goes on. I mean, look around – Christmas was just last week. Where did everybody go?
And yet … And yet … the grace, mercy, and steadfast love continue. God’s love is still here. And for those who know where to look, some God’s children are living in that love and passing it around. These three little verses offer the evidence that grace continues even when the world is a mess. When the dust settles and the wreckage is cleared away, God speaks words of hope and assurance. His people respond with hymns of praise.
Twenty-two years ago, December 31 was a Friday night. The Doomsayers were predicting a global catastrophe on the brink of the year 2000. There would be apocalyptic solar flares, widescale flooding, earthquakes, and global famines, all because the Roman calendar was flipping over to a new page.
Most of the hype was easily dismissed, but some had reason for legitimate concern. Our friends across town at the Met Life computer facility were on high alert well past midnight, fearful that the actuarial tables could spin out of control and send the insurance business into a tailspin. Midnight came and went. Months of preparation and programming assuaged the fears. Sunday morning came, and the Christmas carols continued.
This is a metaphor for our experience, over and over again. Life is full of disruptions. Terrible things happen. People we love are snatched away. Institutions we have trusted are shaken. Yet God is still here. Christ has been born into our midst. And as the poet Isaiah, wisely observes, “The Lord became their savior in all their distress. It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them.” His presence. The Divine Presence. Or as Jesus would be named, “God-with-us.”
On this first day of the new year, we gather around his Table
to claim that Presence for ourselves and for the world. The broken bread and
poured-out cup are signs of God’s continuing grace, shown to us in the death
and resurrection of Jesus. And no matter what lies ahead, we are a people of
hope and praise, praise and hope. For God has come in Jesus Christ. He continues
with us. We live in the abundance of God’s steadfast love.
[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Homiletical
Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, p. 147.
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