Sermon Title: Hope in Hard Times Text: Isaiah 65.17-25

Preached: November 15, 1998

This week, as Lynnette and I were sorting out our personal library of Sunday School resources, particularly those for Advent (which begins in two weeks!), I came upon a photograph that looked terribly familiar. I remember seeing a similar scene, in person, from a vantage point not too far from here. The picture showed a few trees, devoid of leaves and twigs, and the thicker branches which remained were charred an ashy black. Among them stood staggered lonely chimneys, rising from the ground like beckoning fingers. And in the foreground of the picture, a young California couple stood holding one another for consolation as they peered from a brick sidewalk at the wreckage that once was a home.

The scene, of course, was the devastation following the Oakland firestorm of not too many years ago, when the hillsides were simply too dry, the Santa Ana winds were exactly wrong, and the spark happened where it couldn't have been worse. And the fire rolled down the hillside like a liquid evil, a terrifying glow which poured like water and engulf everything in its path.

In the Sunday School curriculum, the photograph, the picture of desolation, accompanies a Biblical text. It is not, however, a text of desolation. It accompanies a passage from Isaiah -- a passage of hope. And right next to picture, juxtaposed against skepticism and despair, is a joyful, thankful, hopeful poem by e.e.cummings:

"i thank You God for most this amazing day

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes..."

The placement of the picture, the text and the poem is done with deliberate intention. The person who gathered them all there understood exactly what she was doing. For to understand the most profound meanings of the prophet Isaiah, we need to be ready to enter the worldview of despairing and oppressed, yet also ready to claim the hopeful possibilities of a rejoicing poet.

Today, we hear a text of hope, a song of rejoicing, a text to rival the happiness of cummings. God through Isaiah says things like: "I am about to create new heavens and a new earth...be glad and rejoice in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight...no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress..."

Yet, today, I wish to begin by emphasizing something we don't normally look at when we read a passage like Isaiah 65. Before jumping into the e.e.cummings poem part of the passage, I want to spend a little bit of time living within the Oakland Fire photograph part of the passage. For the Oakland Fire picture part of the passage is there when we stop to look for evidence. Although the promises of the passage are hopeful, it is clear that the prophet is living in a time of distress.

By saying that will no more weeping, he tells us that there is weeping now. By saying that no more children will die after a few days, he tells us that children are dying too young right then and there. By telling us that people will live in the houses they build, and eat the fruit of the vines they tend, he tells us that there is too much slavery, poverty and oppression. Some who are poor, must work for others -- must tend their fields, build their homes -- who reap the benefits of others' poverty. And, though this is not a surprise, when he tells us that the wolf and the lamb will feed together, he implies that his social world if filled with people who are wolves and lambs; and the lambs eat the fodder that little lambs eat, and the wolves eat up the lambs.

The prophet is talking to a people who are like the lambs. They are obviously poor, socially oppressed, and subject to the conditions that build high infant mortality and pre-mature death. The prophet is speaking from a bad place at a bad time -- by all indications from a worse place at a worse time than most of us have ever known.

And yet, from that bad time, that bad place, we do not hear words of depression, of desolation, of ruin, or even words of blame. Our society's current round of false prophets might righteously announce over talk show airwaves that the people to whom Isaiah speaks are only getting what they deserve -- they wouldn't be poor if they worked hard enough. But Isaiah brings a true message from God. And it is not shame, and it is not blame, but it carries vindication, and it speaks of hope; and more than anything, it performs a rhetorical miracle -- for it re-focuses the people on something more important than their current distress: it re-focuses their attention and their efforts on the coming future.

The people are told of a new creation: new heavens and a new earth. A place where they will find joy and delight; and all those former things, that distress and poverty and oppression shall be forgotten. Children shall live and become the future. And those who are older shall live well. And everyone will be free to work for their own benefit, gaining the fruits of their own labors. And then, in that time, no will hurt, oppress, or exploit anyone else on all of God's holy mountain. Praise God.

Then this morning, 2500 years later, do we have some distress? Surely we are not in as bad shape as those exploited exiles addressed by Isaiah; yet we have our own concerns, and we have our own trials, problems, and we have our own bad times behind us, our own difficult memories, our own barriers before us and challenges to face. And we have a lot of things on which we could focus. We could stand like that couple hugging tight amidst the wreckage of a life, looking out at the empty spaces between the chimneys, looking for the house that is no longer there.

Or we could read Isaiah. For Isaiah chooses to focus on the goodness which is coming, on the future which will be built. It's not that Isaiah is trying to ignore the real world; indeed, the pictures shown by Isaiah in this passage demonstrate an honest appraisal of a terrifying situation. But Isaiah wants us to realize and acknowledge that God continues to hold hope for a better future with justice and peace.

The power of the message is in its focus on the social difficulties which confound the people. He talks of those who do not own the homes they work so hard to build, those who cannot eat the crops they labor so hard to cultivate. And he talks of babies who are born for calamity, who do not grow to even be children. Sometimes I wonder what it might mean for us if we focused more on the needs for mission around us, and in our midst, than the illusory emptiness of our pews. I sometimes wonder what might happen if we focused more on our need to build a mission than on the sins of whoever it was that let the past slip away. I sometimes wonder what it might mean for us if we began to seek, indeed to claim a better future, than worry about a present travail.

"I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered..."

We don't know what future God has for us. We don't know what road we will head forward upon. And we will need to look carefully around us to know what missions we must develop, what needs we must address. Yet we do know that God does have a future for us. For our God... our God is a God of hopes, dreams, visions, promises... Our God is a God who parts waters, and breaks down fortress walls, and levels mountains, and waters deserts... Our God is a God who releases captives, makes the blind to see, sets free the oppressed, who brings good news to the poor. And our God is a God who takes our need seriously enough to visit with us, and bring a promise of resurrection.

We are not there. We are surrounded by distress and difficulty. We know hard times. But we hold this promise: "I am about to create a new thing." Believe it. And hope...