Richard Davenport
December 3, 2023 – First Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 64:1-9
We always have to be careful whenever we compare any two periods of history that we be objective about it. There’s the tendency to think back to the “good ol’ days” and to recall them as being far better than the present, simply because the problems we face today weren’t the problems that arose in those days.
The ‘40’s and ‘50’s here had some major problems, and that’s even after the close of WWII. With the rise of the Cold War, McCarthyism, the Korean War, those who lived back then had plenty of their own troubles to deal with. There was a lot of fear to go around. Spies, Communism, nuclear war, all sorts of things that threatened to bring Western Civilization down around us. In some respects, there’s a lot about that period in history that should look familiar to us today.
For all of the similarities there may be between our present time and America of 70 or 80 years ago, there are also some important differences. One of the most prominent is how respectability has ceased to be something people care about. A veneer of respectability is usually as much as anyone bothers with. As long as someone can give the impression that he or she is vaguely respectable, that’s enough. A nice suit, an important job, that’s all it takes.
In times past, I feel like people who had a reputation for respectability, for honesty and integrity, were at least given the benefit of the doubt before any kind of accusations could seriously be entertained against them. Now that’s not the case anymore. Those who are honest and respectable are slandered and maligned, they’re shunned. Others actively seek them out to tear them down and destroy their reputations and their livelihood.
In contrast, those who are openly engaged in illicit, even outright illegal dealings, those who are actively destructive, entirely self-serving, entirely unconcerned with what goes on around them as long as they make a buck, those are the people seen as champions, as saviors, as the heroes of our society.
This sort of thing shouldn’t really be a surprise to any of us. Sin is a rotting, wasting disease within us that we find ourselves at war with on a daily basis. It should be no surprise that it consumes much of society as well. Anyone who isn’t being tended to by the Great Physician, anyone who doesn’t have the light and life of Christ within them is someone who isn’t even fighting against it. Rotten people will have rotten champions, rotten heroes.
Even with those people who don’t actually care about anyone else, there’s still that need to put on the show, to give at least an appearance of respectability. Even those people don’t want their reputations tarnished. They don’t want to be spoken ill of by anyone else. It seems kind of odd that someone who is doing whatever they’re doing for all of the money, the success, the luxury or whatever the case may be, would really be concerned about what others say about them.
It says something about how God created the world that even in the evilest of people there is often that distant longing for righteousness. There are very few people in the world can truly say they don’t care about being thought well of. Even those who are thought of as evil by everyone else, suicide bombers, school shooters, and so forth, tend to think of themselves as good. They often get there by labelling what is good as evil, and thus something that needs to be destroyed. Still, since in their own minds they are doing the right thing, they want others to see that they are doing the right thing and to be justified by their actions.
I saw an example of this in the pages of the manifesto of the Nashville shooter that were released a couple of weeks back. It shows the inner monologue of someone who thought Christians were evil because they didn’t support her new chosen identity. She was good and Christians were evil, so doing something that would normally be considered evil was good. She was justified in her own eyes.
Any group, any society that requires rules also has to have ways to enforce those rules. Punishment will always be a feature of our world as long as sin remains in it. We need ways of expressly stating that certain behaviors are unacceptable. Whether those punishments happen in the home or on a community level, they are necessary to maintain order and stability in our world.
Still, for as bad as many punishments may be, few can deliver as devastating a blow as plain, old fashioned disappointment. To have someone you look up to, someone you admire, someone whose respect you crave, see you for the disreputable, disrespectful person you are. You couldn’t keep it up anymore. You let your base nature get the better of you and now the one person you wanted to impress has discovered what a fraud you are.
We’re wired to want it, to need it. As children we crave the approval of our parents. That never really stops being true, but as time goes on there are others that get added to the list. A teacher who really engages your imagination, a track coach who shows she really cares about you as in individual and not just what you can contribute to the team, a boss who sits and listens when you’re having personal problems because he actually wants to know, the friends you’ve grown up with and who have been with you through thick and thin, any of them might be on your list, people you want to see you as respectable, people you don’t want to disappoint.
“Behold, you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved? There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities.” How do you know people are disappointed with you? How do you know people have lost respect for you? They turn their faces away. They don’t even want to see you.
You did the bad thing. Your parents, your teacher, your track coach, saw you do the bad thing. You see the disappointment. You see the turning away. You know you did it. It was your fault it all happened. You revealed a bit of who you really are and others saw it and turned away in disappointment. Then there’s the guilt and the crushing knowledge that you have no one to blame but yourself.
After the dust settles, there are a number of options but none are guaranteed. You can try and right the wrong. You can try and rebuild your respectability, show yourself as honest and forthright. You can try and demonstrate that this one thing wasn’t normal; that, for as bad as it was, you aren’t like that all the time. Maybe you can convince some people, but “some people” aren’t what you’re after. You want to convince that one person whose respect means everything. But you can’t, at least not with any certainty. No matter what you do, no one is obligated to think of you as a respectable, honest, upright person. Your one act may have forever lost that and now that person hides his or her face from you, never wanting to see you again.
When God hides his face from you, what are you going to do about it? When the thing you’ve done is so dishonest, so despicable, so disgusting that no one wants to see you, why should God be any different? What are you going to do to change his mind? Everyone else might be fooled. That one time you slip and people see it is pretty bad, but God sees all of the other instances that you’ve managed to cover up. God knows who you really are. How can you convince someone who sees everything you do? Even trying to prove you’re a good person would end up just being a lie and will just compound the problem.
“Be not so terribly angry, O LORD, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people.” The cry of God’s people. Not a declaration that we have fixed the problem. Not a declaration that what we did was just a one time thing, never to happen again. Not a declaration that there were mitigating factors. It is an admission of guilt and a cry for mercy. You can’t fix it, so don’t pretend you can.
Nothing says God ever has to look our way again. That’s why the incarnation of Christ is a wonder beyond our ability to fully comprehend. God not only turns back to us, he comes to us personally, reaches out a hand and offers his forgiveness. Even people like Peter, who refused to even acknowledge he knew Jesus when his Lord was on trial, beaten and bloody. Jesus saw him and Peter knew his actions had been seen. Jesus never had to look at him again, not for that kind of betrayal. But Jesus does anyway. He finds Peter and forgives him.
What will make God look at you again? Can you earn back his respect? Can you demonstrate that it was never really as bad as it first seemed, that it was all a big mistake? Can you show everyone that you’re really the decent human being after all? No, God knows better. But God loves you anyway. That isn’t to say he approves of what you’ve done. You and he both know it isn’t something you should be doing. Your shame and guilt are natural, because you knew better and you did it anyway.
“Be not so terribly angry, O LORD, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people.” Don’t hide it. You can’t. You can’t hide what you’ve done. You can’t make up for it. You can’t put it back together again. All you can do is say, “I’m sorry, please forgive me.” Even knowing what God knows about you, he still wants to see you. He still loves you. He always will. He loves you in spite of what you’ve done. Jesus comes to earth, not to condemn you, but to be with you.
The season of Advent is the season that marks the time when God comes into the world. His purpose in coming is not to judge and condemn. His desire is to be reunited. He comes to his disgraceful, disreputable, dishonest people in order to reconcile them to himself. He takes the shame and guilt on himself in order to save his people. We cry out to him in words such as those of Isaiah, or those of the Psalmist, “I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and You forgave the iniquity of my sin.” Jesus comes into the world as a tiny baby, to grow, to live, to die, and to rise again all so that everything you have done will be wiped away and made clean. The past forgotten forever.
He continues to come here offering that same forgiveness and everyone who calls out to him receives it. That means you too, have been forgiven. The passage in Isaiah ends with a plea from God’s people, but the conversation he has with those who look to him for mercy doesn’t end there. He had already answered them, and he continues to give the same answer to his people throughout the ages.
Back in Leviticus, as God institutes the work of the priests in the tabernacle, he requires Aaron and his sons, as the first priests, to go through an period of ordination, where they are prepared and made ready to do the job they had been given. They were to be the first link in the chain connecting God to all of his faithful people throughout the world. They were the first ones responsible for telling everyone else how God responded to their pleas.
When the ordination period was complete, the people gave many sacrifices to God. Aaron and his sons prepared the sacrifices and then came out to the people. As Aaron raised his hands in blessing, fire came down from heaven to consume the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord, the blinding light that marked God’s presence, shown out of the tabernacle. God was here with his people, his sinful, disreputable, disrespectful people. He had forgiven them and had mercy on them. And the words that Aaron spoke in blessing:
“The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance, his loving face, to you, and give you peace."