Richard Davenport

August 24, 2025 – Proper 16

Isaiah 66:18-23

            If you read the book of Isaiah from start to finish, you’ll find you’re in for a wild ride.  The Israelites are in a pretty bad place.  Their situation has been going steadily downhill for a while now.  You might be tempted to feel bad for them, but in this case their situation is entirely deserved.  They’ve been failing in their duty for many generations now. They had promised to be loyal followers of God, but they were choosing not to.  They were doing just about everything they could think of to not follow God.  They were importing foreign gods from everywhere, even going so far as to worship those gods in the Temple Solomon built.   They don’t really have any excuses to offer here.  God continues to offer them the chance to turn things around and reaffirm the promise they made.  If they do, God will also restore the blessings he promised them for their obedience. 

            As we students of the Bible know, they do not mend their ways.  They drive full speed for the edge of the cliff and they don’t even bother trying to slow down.  The couple of kings who have their heads on straight end up being little more than speed bumps.  The whole nation flies off the cliff screaming all the way down to land in a fiery heap.  The last days of Israel as a sovereign nation end in starvation and misery. Nebuchadnezzar has no trouble at all crushing their defenses.  He has no reason to rush his conquest, so he simply surrounds Jerusalem and waits for them to give up.  God warns the people one final time that they must follow Nebuchadnezzar as he leads them back to Babylon.  Any who refuse will die alone.

            It is in these next few decades that some of those who have gone into exile seem to figure out why things when so wrong. It’s in this time that the book of Lamentations is written.  It expresses the remorse of the faithful who are now living in a foreign land, away from their inheritance, away from their homes, away from God.  It expresses how undeserving the people are, especially after all they have done to rouse God’s righteous indignation.

            God still loves his people, but they have an important lesson to learn.  He is always willing to receive his people back if they are willing to return.  At the appointed time, he brings them back to the land.  They have lost the privilege of operating as an independent, sovereign nation, but that was never truly necessary for them to live as God’s people anyway.

            There was a lot to do when they came back.  The temple was in ruins.  The rebuilding efforts took time and resources.  The rebuilt temple didn’t measure up to the original, but it was God’s house all the same.  It wasn’t as majestic or as spacious, but it was no less significant. It wasn’t the design or the ornamentation that made the space important.  It was important because of who lived there.  God’s glory was not diminished because he lived in a smaller house.

            Despite all of the changes and upsets, the people rejoiced to have the opportunity to worship in God’s house once again.  The return is bittersweet, since they know they have no right to be here and that the only reason they were allowed to return was because God had mercy on them.  Yet still, here they are in God’s house.  God’s family gathered together once again in God’s house.  The Father’s wayward children have returned and things are finally back to what they were meant to be. 

            It’s a touching scene.  All is right in Israel, at least for the current generation of Israelites.  Things will drift off track again and God will transition from Israel to the church as his people.  God will no longer be in the temple, but in the person of Christ.  God’s people will gather, not in the temple in Jerusalem, because it wasn’t the building itself that was important.  It was always important because of who lived there. Now we find Christ wherever his word is preached and his sacraments are offered.  He has promised to be in his house and his house is wherever he is found.

            The joy felt by the Israelites as they returned doesn’t always translate to our lives today.  We can understand why they would be so excited, but we don’t really share the same emotion.  Going to church often feels more like a chore than anything else.  It means getting up in the morning and spending time here instead of the thousand other things you could be doing on a weekend. 

            Some churches will try and liven it up a bit, peppier music, lighting effects, videos, and so forth.  We don’t do that here though.  Everything is a bit mundane with none of the stuff that might entertain you elsewhere.  But even if there was some entertaining stuff going on here, you can probably think of a dozen other places you’d rather be, a dozen other things you’d rather be doing. Even doing nothing at all might be preferrable to going to church.

            Intellectually, it seems a little strange that we might think other things are more important.  After all, we say this is God’s house and that grace and forgiveness are found here.  We say these things are important, even the most important things you can receive. In practice, we don’t treat it that way. We find a hundred different excuses to not make the effort.

            In the days of Israel before the exile, foreign religions were practiced in every town.  Idols to foreign gods were on every street corner.  They even worshipped foreign gods in the temple itself. It was a given that the people were going to do something, the question was: what?  Most of them chose to worship creation in some fashion, rather than the Creator and so the privilege they had of worshipping in his house was taken away.

            The same choice confronts us today.  What are your priorities?  What are you worshipping?  When the opportunity arises for you to be in God’s house, where will you be?  It’s a given you’ll be doing something, even if it’s just sleeping.  It’s a given that you’ll worship something, even if whatever you’re worshipping cares nothing about you and won’t add even a minute to your life.  Despite the cultural pressure that surrounds us, there isn’t a lot of danger to being in church, not like there is in many places in Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia.  In those places, there is no doubt that worshipping in God’s house is a privilege, but we grow complacent here.  As with many things, if we get the idea that we can do something whenever we want, we often never bother actually doing it.  There’s always something else popping up that calls us and distracts us.

            Sleeping, camping, sports, television, yard work, none of them will save you.  None of them care about you.  None of them love you.  None of them will die for you.  Even your family or friends can’t do anything to help you beyond this mortal life. Nothing else in this world will pay the debt your sins incur.  Nothing else in this world will give you life that transcends death.  Nothing else in this world will teach you and lead you in the ways of righteousness so that you can live in the world as you were meant to.

            On June 6, 1944, the Allied Forces finally carried out an operation that they had been planning for months.  A little after midnight, on the morning of the 6th, a combined aerial and amphibious assault landed on the coast of northern France.  The fighting was brutal, with Allied casualties numbering several thousand men, their blood covering the wet sand.  The men were under fire from gun emplacements that rained bullets down on them as they worked their way up the sandy beaches that were covered with barbed wire, barricades, and mines. 

            As terrible and costly as the operation was, the victory was a necessary one for eventual ending of the war.  Europe had been engulfed in a darkness that it could not escape.  The darkness had a stranglehold over the land, and many people were actively working in service of that darkness.   

            There were some who longed to be free from that darkness, but they didn’t have the strength to do it themselves.  They were trapped and powerless against the darkness that sought to crush them down and destroy them.  If they were going to be free, they would need outside help.  They would need someone that could take on the darkness for them, drive it back, and finally purge it away entirely.

            The Allied troops established a beachhead.  It was a small space, but it was purged of the darkness. From this beachhead, they would move inland, pushing back the darkness a bit at a time until it was finally all gone.

            The ancient Israelites knew darkness.  They knew what it meant to be trapped by it.  They knew it wasn’t just them.  Their lesson in darkness was to teach them about the world as a whole.  The darkness isn’t just in Egypt.  It’s everywhere and everyone is trapped by it.  There is no escaping the darkness in this world.

            It’s for this reason that God establishes a beachhead, a holy space where the darkness has been pushed away and can’t encroach. This was the only place in the world where the evil could not go.  The Israelites weren’t better than anyone else.  They were simply the first place God invaded.

            The invasion continues.  Christ comes into the world, the commander of the Lord’s armies, the 5 star general, and the darkness cannot stand against him.  Even when Satan carries out his master plan and sin takes its shot, the world sees that Jesus was a step ahead, using Satan’s plan to strike from behind enemy lines, taking out the enemy’s power from within. 

            The invasion continues.  Jesus has returned home from the front lines to oversee the continued operation and planning for the end of the war.  The light continues to shine in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.  God establishes new bases all over the world, places where the darkness is pushed back because the light of Christ shines there.  That is what we find here today.  Not just hymns, not just time with friends or family, not just something to get you out of bed on a lazy Sunday morning.  No, here is where God reigns.  Here is where the darkness of sin and death is driven out.  Here is where Satan has no power. 

            Satan will do everything in his power to distract you from being here, where God is.  Sin will tempt you in every direction away from here, but it is only in the presence of God that you are safe from everything the world will throw at you. 

            Here God’s grace is found in abundance.  It is freely given to you, not because you earned it, but because Christ paid for it with his own blood, poured out over the ground in the warzone.  His blood bought your freedom.  His death gives you life.  Church isn’t an activity.  It isn’t an item on your to-do list.  It is the center of your life.  It is where you were set free.  It is the place God calls you back to, as you live out in the darkness, so that you can return and be forgiven again, washed clean of the evil that clings to you. This is where you were made a child of God.  This is where you were forgiven and given eternal life.  This is where shows you his love and gives you the grace and healing you need.

            Nothing else can give you what you find here, because it is only here, in God’s house, that you find the God who was willing to shed his own blood, give his own life, to rescue you out of darkness and bring you into eternal light.