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reading found matching title 'II Corinthians 5:11-21' with ID: 310520
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Scripture citation(s): Isaiah 66:7-14; II Corinthians 5:11-21
A Sermon by
Fr. Spurlock
on
Isaiah 66:7-14; II Corinthians 5:11-21
✛
Like a Mother Tending Her Children
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In the last chapter of his book, the prophet Isaiah paints a beautiful picture. God is likened to a mother tending her children. Jerusalem is likened to a mother nursing her young, bearing them on her hip, dandling them upon her knee: a loving mother delighting in her children and the children thriving at the breast of their mother. Is Isaiah a dreamer or a liar?
For how can the prophet say the things that he says? The words must ring false in the ears of the children of Jerusalem. For in the time in which Isaiah paints such a lovely image, Jerusalem stands a ruin; God’s house a heap of rubble. The best and brightest of the once great city have been deported to a foreign and pagan land; only the weak, sickly and poor inhabit the city’s tumbled ruins.
Israel, the particular chosen nation, favored by God was promised, land, children, and prosperity. God himself had traveled with them in their long journeying from their captivity in Egypt, through their wanderings in the desert, to their crossing over into that promised land. They thrived there, growing in strength, wealth and numbers. In the reign of their second king whose name was David, they built a great city in the land, a magnificent capital: Jerusalem. And God promised David that a son of his would reign forever and his kingdom would never end. In the reign of their third king, they built a house for God and at its dedication God’s glory filled the house so that it could be said by the people of Jerusalem that God was with us. And if God is with us, then who can stand against us?
For one, the Assyrians stood against Israel. They eradicated the population of northern Israel. The Babylonians then conquered the south, destroyed Jerusalem, and after the glory of God departed from the temple, the Babylonians tore it down to the ground and carried the people away into exile. It appeared that God was not with them after all and would not keep his promises.
It is from the midst of this bleak, humiliating, soul-crushing situation that Isaiah has the gall to preach to the people about God’s love for them. The faithless and discouraged among the exiles must have said, “Oh, shut up.” But the hopeful and faithful among them must have seen the truth of what he was saying. To them, God was more than the collection of dumb idols that pagans (both then and now) bow down to. To follow pagan mindedness in which gods are nothing more than personifications of cosmic forces like the sun or water, fertility or even life, is to say that God is sun, water fertility, life. If God is any one or a collection of these forces then he has no power over them.
What Isaiah preached then and what Christians preach now is that God is not sun, water, fertility or life; he is far beyond all those forces. Rather he is the source of sun and water, the source of fertility, the source of all life, all things visible and invisible. Can God start the process of birth and not bring it to completion? The world may say that Jerusalem is barren, and even if pregnant, too weak to give birth. But God says that grass may wither, the flower may fade but my word shall stand forever. (Isa 40.8) [It] will accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Isa 55.11) Thus if the Lord says that he will make Jerusalem to bring forth children; if God says he will not shut her womb, we know that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature” (Rom 8.38-39) can prevent that promise from being realized.
Within ten years of Isaiah preaching hope to children in exile, they would be freed. They would return to Jerusalem and be given the wherewithal to rebuild the city. Powers and principalities would try to prevent the work they were doing, but every obstacle would be swept aside. They would lay a new foundation for the temple, and when that last foundation stone was laid, “many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice; and many shouted aloud for joy: so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people.” (Ezra 3.12-13) And the glory of the Lord once again filled the house of God. He was with them. So it seems that Isaiah was neither dreamer nor liar, but rather a clear-eyed truth-teller.
At times, it seems that things are rarely as we wish them to be. We get nervous and despair at everything from the strength and stability of foreign nations, to the strength and stability of our own. Our cities pass through times of prosperity and blight. Institutions rise and fall. There are times when our very own temples burn to the ground, and we must rebuild. Some of us have an abundance of shelter, clothing and food and work. And some of us have nothing, neither strength, nor health, nor sustenance.
In the face of all circumstances, Christians preach a gospel of God’s love for his people. The hopeless and faithless are all the time telling us to shut up. But the hopeful and faithful among us lean in close for they long to hear a word of love and peace and promise. And in his great mercy and loving-kindness which is for all people in all ages, God has given us a perspective through which to view all circumstances. When we look back, we see ourselves as a people held captive to sin and death. We see ourselves exiled from our true home, exiled from the very source of our life. We live in the midst of the tumbled down ruins of broken relationships, marriages, selves. And then we see God, sending his Word into the world. The word becomes flesh and dwells among us. A son of David comes to establish a kingdom that has no end. He restores us to one another in the familial bonds of fellowship and love, restoring mother to child, brother to sister, husband to wife, restoring our selves to wholeness and strength. We look back and see his cross and passion set between our old lives and new life in Jesus Christ. Jesus rides out ahead of us, a pioneer and perfecter of our faith in him, descending to depths to defeat our mortal foes of sin and death and ascending to the heights to reconcile us and our natures to the source of our very lives, which in him, have no end.
Jesus Christ is God’s word sent into the world to reconcile the children to their Father in heaven. And it is because of Jesus Christ that priests and prophets have the gall to preach to you that God is with you and that he loves you and that nothing, no circumstance in your life, not even death can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
