Isaiah 64:1-9 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence 2 as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! 3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 4 From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. 5 You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed. 6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7 There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. 8 Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9 Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people. 1
11.30.2014 Feat of Clay In the middle school that I attended it was a rite of passage in art class to have a project in which we made something out of clay. Usually that meant making an ash tray. That seems odd now, looking back on it 13- and 14-year-olds making ash trays for their parents, but smoking was much more common back in the 80s when I was in middle school than it is now. All of my older siblings and I am the youngest of five children went through this rite of passage of making a clay ash tray or similar container; for nonsmokers perhaps you could call it a candy dish. That means my mother, because she saved all of our art projects, had to decide what to do with the five of them, which could not have been easy because no one in my family smoked and we didn t eat that much candy. Actually, I think two of them were not ash trays or candy dishes but small pitchers. My sister made an enormous pitcher with a tiny handle. I can still see it, it was bright orange. So out of proportion was the handle to the body that it looked like if you picked the pitcher up by the handle it might snap right off. My brother s was the opposite. He made a giant handle with a tiny pitcher attached to it. If only we could have somehow switched the handles. As for me, I tried to get clever with mine. I made two, actually, one in seventh grade and one in eighth grade. In addition to function, I went for creativity. I made one in the shape of an elephant s head, but when the trunk proved difficult to make I transformed the elephant s head into that of a mouse. The other started out as a sailboat, but the sail proved as difficult to make as the elephant s trunk, so I transformed the sailboat into an iron, with the handle of the iron serving as the handle of the lid. As I mentioned, my mother saved all of our art projects, so all of our clay masterpieces went up on the mantel above the fireplace with various other trinkets 2
that the family collected over the years. Every so often I would pick one up and look at it, which would bring back memories of the time that I made it. Each art project started out as nothing more than a lump of clay, without form or function. What it would become was entirely up to me. I would give it form. I would give it function. I would give it color and, yes, even personality. To some extent, it would become an extension of me because it bore my handiwork. My fingerprints were literally all over it. This image of the potter and the clay is one taken up by Isaiah in today s text. The power of the image lies in the intimate connection between the potter as creator and the clay as created thing, or in the case of humanity, not created thing but created being. This image of God forming humanity is as old as Genesis [SLIDE]. Genesis 2 tells of God forming the first human being from adamah, which literally means the ground. As if to remind him of his origin, the man s name comes from the same root, adam. In Hebrew, the name adam, or as we would say in English, Adam, means simply man or humankind. So we are of the ground, of the earth, and formed by God. This is what Isaiah reminds God of in verse 8. He feels the need to remind God of this because God seems to have hidden his face. As Isaiah writes in verse 7, you have hidden your face from us. With God being hidden, the people are left to themselves, which only magnifies the effect of their sin. They have lost their standard for what is good. Unable to see God, they are unable to see themselves or one another as formed in God s image. They have forgotten who they are. Isaiah says of God in verse 7, you have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. In other words, the people have been left to themselves and are suffering the effects of their own sins. If we look at the structure of this passage, a clear pattern emerges [SLIDE]. Verses 1 to 5 are a plea for God to intervene in the life of the people. O that you would tear open the heavens and come down (Isa. 64:1). Isaiah recalls God s awesome deeds 3
that the people did not expect. He extols, or praises, God as utterly unique and alone in power and might. God comes to those who gladly do right (Isa. 64:4). All of this is Isaiah s way of saying, You have been our God and we have been your people. We remember the way you would come to us in our need. We have a history together. Remember? But in the middle of verse 5 the tone suddenly shifts. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed (Isa. 64:5b). The second half of verses 5 to verse 7 are a confession of sin. So corrupt are the people that even their righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth (Isa. 64:6b). Like the leaves falling off the trees in the park across the street, the people too fade like a leaf, and like the autumn wind they are swept away by their own sin (Isa. 64:6b). They are swept away because they have no foundation, nothing to hold them steady. They have forgotten the name of the Lord. Isaiah writes, There is no one who calls on your name (Isa. 64:7a). So first praise, and then confession, and then in verse 8 we see another shift in tone, this time toward hope. Here Isaiah calls on God to remember God s relationship to the people. Yet, O Lord, you are our Father (Isa. 64:8). God is not merely creator but the father of creation and the father of the people. What s more, the people are clay and God is the potter. They are God s handiwork. They bear God s fingerprints. They have been formed in God s image. We are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand (Isa. 64:8). Verse 9 shows a movement from confession to contrition. It is an expression of sorrow on the part of the people for having nearly ruined their relationship to their God. It is a verse filled with hope, hope that the relationship will continue despite the self-inflicted damaging effects of sin. That hope lies in God s mercy, God s willingness to forget past sins, and in God s considering, in the words of Isaiah, that we are all your people (Isa. 64:9b). 4
The structure of this passage, then, is divided into three parts: praise of God for God s goodness and power; confession of sin on the part of the people for having violated God s trust; and a plea to God for mercy, which the people hope for with longing and expectation. Today, of course, marks the first Sunday of Advent. From today until Christmas Eve we will be in a season of expectation, a season of waiting for the Lord to appear. It is quite convenient for us to know that we will mark the occasion of Christ s first coming on a particular day, December 25. We know the day and the hour that will mark his arrival. That day will come as it does every year, right when we expect it. In fact, there will be no shortage of reminders that there are only x number of shopping days left until Christmas. This kind of waiting for God to appear, i.e., for Christmas, is easy, unless, perhaps, you are a young child waiting for that certain Christmas gift. But there is another type of waiting. This type is much harder to withstand. In this waiting we are like Isaiah, who prays that the Lord would tear open the heavens and come down already. What s taking so long, God? Why are you waiting to act? These are the thoughts that run through our minds as we wait for God to act in our lives or in the world but God seems to be delayed. God does not seem to be heeding our sense of urgency. We want God to come down now and fix the situation, whether it be personal or political. I m living paycheck to paycheck. I need money. Lord, come now! My loved one is in the hospital and needs healing! Lord, come now! Christians in Iraq are being driven from their homes! Lord, come now! West Africans are dying every day from Ebola! Lord, come now! Ferguson, Missouri, is burning! Lord, come now! O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence (Isa. 64:1). We want God to hurry up because it seems like all we re doing is waiting. And that s the problem all we re doing is waiting. Hurry up and come to us God! We will wait for you over here. Just let us know when you re here. Shake the mountains or start a fire or 5
something. Hurry up and wait. That s not much of a plan of action but that is often exactly what we do. Yes, this is a season of waiting, but not only of waiting, for it is also a season of preparation, of preparing ourselves for Christ s coming. That is why we have the Advent Bible reading plan that I mentioned during the announcements [SLIDE]. And while Isaiah does speak of waiting, saying, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him (Isa. 64:4b), that is not all he says. Note what he says next, You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember your ways (Isa. 64:5a). In other words, waiting is tied to doing. Waiting for God also means preparing for God s arrival. It doesn t mean sitting on our hands and doing nothing but waiting [SLIDE]. We need to ask ourselves, What is it that paralyzes us, that keeps us from doing what is right while we put all of the responsibility to act on God? Is it fear? What if I try to do what is right but fail? Is it guilt? I can never do enough that is right to make up for all the wrong I ve done. Is it laziness? I d like to do what is right, but how do I even know what is right? It takes too much effort. Is it anger? Why should I have to do what is right? Nobody else is. Is it cynicism? Even if I do what is right, it won t make a difference. In truth, it s probably all of these things and more that keep us from doing the good we know we ought to do, but to Isaiah it all boils down to one thing sin. All of our excuse making just covers the real issue, which is sin, or to use a fancier word, as our translation does, iniquity. For you have hidden your face from us, Isaiah says of God, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity (Isa. 64:7b). In other words, sin is its own punishment. Sin keeps us from seeing God. It s no surprise, then, that when we ve turned our backs from God we no longer see God. God is hidden. It s like turning away from a window and wondering why we can no longer see the sun. We need to face in the right direction. 6
I mentioned a few weeks ago that the Hebrew word for repentance literally means turning around to face the opposite direction. I m sure I will refer to that example in many more sermons, but it bears repeating, especially in light of what Isaiah says of God s hiddenness. It is not that God hides from us but that when we make no attempt to do what is right, when we don t call on God s name, it is then that God is hidden from us. We are delivered into the hand of our own iniquity. We are cut off from God. Our relationship with God suffers. But this is not cause for despair. If it were only up to us, perhaps, then we could, and should, despair. But thankfully, it s not up to us to repair this broken relationship. God has taken that task upon himself. Isaiah reminds us of this in verse 8 [SLIDE]. After the confession of sin in verses 6 and 7, and the stark realization that God is hidden from sight, Isaiah is bold enough to gently remind God, Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand (Isa. 64:8). It takes some audacity to remind God of God s relationship to us, but that is what Isaiah does. He reminds God that we are his creation. He has formed us and molded us as a potter forms and molds clay. Apart from God we would be like a formless lump of clay without shape and without purpose. We would be subject to being molded by all the things of the world that are not of God and to which we are still subject: unnecessary fears, jealousy, envy, greed, lust, pride the whole catalogue of sins. Yet while we are subject to sin because of our flesh, we have been formed by the master potter. Sometimes we need to be reminded of that. God has given us our identity. God has left his mark on us. That same flesh that is subject to sin also bears God s image. To remind us of this, God sent his Son Jesus Christ, himself the very image of God, into the world, in flesh and blood, to be with us and to show us the way to God. He himself is the way to God. And we are his. He calls us to walk with him toward God. When we turn aside, he calls us again to turn back to God. 7
I titled this sermon Feet of Clay [SLIDE]. That s feat with an a, not two e s. It s actually a play on words, because feet of clay is an idiom that means a fatal flaw. In fact, it comes from the Bible, the Book of Daniel to be precise. The Israelites had feet of clay, a fatal flaw even though they knew they were God s people, they continually turned from God. As Isaiah writes, There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you (Isa. 64:7). Perhaps they doubted, perhaps they took their status as God s elect for granted, or perhaps they abused it; whatever it was exactly, they could not escape their feet of clay. In this sense, we re no different. We, too, have feet of clay something that hinders us from living out God s purpose for our lives. We forget or we ignore or we refuse to accept that God has formed us to follow Christ. We lose sight of what an amazing feat that is that God has brought us into fellowship with himself through Christ. This is an amazing feat of clay, that s f-e-a-t, as in a great deed, a significant act. Its significance lies in the fact that this is God s great act of love. Through it God claims us as his own and gives us our identity. With all the busyness of modern life, it s easy to lose sight of our identity. Who are we? We are the clay, and God is our potter; we are all the work of God s hands. Now consider, we are all God s people. 8