“Keeping Watch, Keeping Hope” by the Rev. Don Wahlig, December 3, 2023, Year B / 25^th  Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 28) – Judges 4:1-7 and Psalm 123 • Isaiah 64:1-9 • Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19 • 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 • Mark 13:24-37

THEME:  Trusting God is with us, giving us hope and changing our hearts so that we will kindle hope in others and change their lives, too.  

Do you have a favorite Christmas movie? What is it? It’s a Wonderful Life has to be one. Maybe a Charlie Brown Christmas? How the Grinch Stole Christmas? How about more recent ones like Home Alone, or Elf, or The Santa Clause? I love all of those, but there is another one I like even more:  a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I’m sure you remember the plot. 

It is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a bitter old miser living in Victorian London. Ebenezer is a sorry excuse for a human being. He cares more for money than he does people, even his own family.  He exploits his employee Bob Cratchit, and mocks those who care for the poor. He even hates Christmas. On Christmas Eve Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future.  After their visits, Scrooge is a changed man.

 What I love most about this movie is the transformation that happens in dear old Ebenezer’s heart as the result of his encounter with the three ghosts of Christmas.  They not only change his life, but they lead him to change others’ lives, too. Most touching of all is the hope that Ebenezer’s unexpected generosity brings to Bob Cratchit and his family, especially his invalid son, Tiny Tim.  

It is a story of hope rising from despair. Something similar is happening in our text from Isaiah.   This passage is a lament, pure and simple. It is an emotional outcry of suffering and despair. Isaiah’s readers would immediately recognize this familiar expression of pain from the psalms that tell the story of Israel’s relationship with God.  Make no mistake. This is not an individual lament. This is a communal lament. It is the people’s perspective on their current circumstances and their cry for deliverance, a plea for God to do something to make things right.

But there is something odd about this lament. It comes from a time when the people should have been celebrating and rejoicing. After 70 years living in captivity in Babylon, the exiles have finally been released. They have returned home to Jerusalem.  But no sooner are they back in their homeland, than it becomes clear that the glorious homecoming they envisioned is anything but glorious.  The walls are still toppled, the temple is still a wreck, and the people are fighting among themselves over land, resources, and power. 

The vision of a restored Jerusalem and a rebuilt Temple was clearly not going to happen – at least not any time soon.  Lost in their disillusionment and infighting, the people have ignored God. Left to their own devices, they have reached a dead-end. Isn’t that always what happens when we follow our own way, instead of God’s way?

The people of post-exile Jerusalem know 3 things for sure.  First, God is not happy. God is angry with them. Second, even though they try to blame God’s absence for their troubles, they know that they themselves are really to blame.  Finally, they have realized that they cannot get out of this mess by themselves.  They need God. What they want more than anything else is for God to jump in and redeem them. Don’t we all feel like that sometimes? I don’t know about you, but I feel that way right now. We look around at our community, our country, and our world. We see so much that is broken. Conflict and war, poverty and pain, grieving and loss, misery and fear. It can seem overwhelming. I bet there are days when you feel that way, too. But as personal and intense as it feels for you and me, we need to remember something. We are by no means the first ones to despair at the state of the world. That’s how it was in Isaiah’s day. That’s how it was when Jesus was born, too. 

Poverty, disease, famine, and injury were every day realities. They could and often did cut lives short and tear families apart. Worst of all, there was nothing to be done about it. Roman occupation and political domination made it even worse. Oppression, injustice, and exploitation were realities of daily life for powerless people just like Jesus’ family and friends.

 We do what the people of Jerusalem did in Isaiah’s day, and what Jesus’ family and friends did in their day.  We plead for God to come intervene, to perform another awesome, unexpected deed of deliverance – to fix the mess we have gotten ourselves into.

Like they did, we draw inspiration from the history of God’s relationship with Israel. We recall his awesome deeds on behalf of his beleaguered people. Freeing Israel from Pharaoh’s grip, sustaining them in the wilderness, and delivering them to the Promised Land. Raising up David from the runt of the family to be Israel’s mighty king. Empowering Elijah to vanquish the prophets of Baal.  And the list goes on.  As Isaiah puts it, no other god has ever worked so mightily for those who wait for him.

These miracles give us hope. But the real source of our hope is not the mighty demonstrations of God’s power. It is the depth of God’s love. Isaiah knows that.

God is the potter, he says. We are the clay in his hands. God formed us to be his very own children. God’s love for us is the love of a parent, both a mother and a father.  It is a love that knows no boundary and no end. God’s love for you and me does not die – ever.  And never was that love so great and so clear as in Jesus Christ. God himself, incarnate – God’s love, made flesh.  In the midst of chaos and confusion, in the midst of our mess, God chooses to be with us. And the truly astonishing thing is that he is not just with us – he is one of us.

I think you all know these past few years I have been participating in a doctoral program at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. It has been a rich time of learning and growth, both personally and pastorally. Along the way, one of my professors made the claim that the incarnation – which is what we celebrate at Christmas - was not plan B. It was plan A.  In other words, even before creation itself, from the very beginning of time, God intended to become one of us in Jesus Christ. It was not a contingency plan in case we sinned and rebelled.  He did not just decide one day that, because we strayed from him, that he would have to come down and rescue us in Jesus. 

God always intended to be one of us. Now, I don’t know about you, but that rocks my world. It means that my understanding of God’s love for us – for humanity – has always been too shallow, too narrow, too limited. God is not far away from us.  He is not aloof, standing apart, watching us from a distance – and he never has been. “I am with you,” he says – time and time again, throughout scripture.  What that means is that the people to whom Isaiah was writing in Jerusalem were mistaken. God never left them. It may have seemed like it because they tried to walk away from him.  But even then, when they had strayed so far away that they reached a dead end, God was with them. God knew that he would become one of them one day. And that is exactly what happened on that very first Christmas in Bethlehem.

Friends, this is one of the central tenets of our faith.  God is with us – yesterday, today, tomorrow, and forever. He simply will not leave us alone. Through the power of his Spirit, God is even now working relentlessly to bring us all closer to him and to the Kingdom his son is ushering in. It's like those ghosts of Christmas who visit Ebenezer Scrooge. As much as Ebenezer would like to ignore the interruptions to his sleep, the ghosts will not let him rest. One after another, they keep seeking him out, waking him up, and working to change his heart so that he will change his life.

They don’t stop until he becomes the loving, generous, caring uncle and employer that his family and employee need him to be. By the time the ghosts of Christmas are through with Ebenezer, not only is his life transformed, but other lives are transformed through him.  Not least Bob Cratchit and his family, including tiny Tim. Bob and his family despaired at their circumstances. But now they have a new hope.

Friends, you and I have that same hope, too. In this Advent season, when it is so dark outside and so dark in our world, let’s remember. God is with us. And God is working on us. He is changing our hearts, so that we will change our lives. So, don’t be afraid to be a scrooge this Christmas. In fact, let’s all be like Scrooge. And make sure we kindle hope in others to change their lives, too.

May it be so.