Isaiah 64:1–9

December 4 2013 Advent Midweek 1

Grace, mercy, and peace from God our heavenly Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The text is the Old Testament Reading:

¹Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence— ²as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence! ³When you did awesome things that we did not look for, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. ⁴From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him. ⁵You meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways. Behold, you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved? ⁶We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. ⁷There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities. ⁸But now, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. ⁹Be not so terribly angry, O LORD, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people. (Isa 64:1 ESV)

This is the Word of God.

Advent is not only the hope that Christ is coming, "as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 1:7–8). Advent is not only the faith that he comes to us here and now in the Gospel and the Sacraments. Advent is a fact of history. He has come already. We call that the incarnation: God in human flesh. Without the incarnation, "there [would be] no one who calls on [God's] name, who stirs himself up to take hold of [him]" (Is 64:7, author's translation). No salvation, no resurrection, no Holy Communion—without the incarnation. So it is truly "good, right, and salutary" that we contemplate God in his incarnation this Advent.

Without the incarnation, the prophet Isaiah could not pray this prayer. The prayer collapses unless it's a prophecy. But that's nothing unique in Isaiah. Consider some of his prophecies that you probably know by heart. "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor" (Is 61:1). "But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities" (Is 53:5).

Even concerning the incarnation, you know Isaiah's prophecies: "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (Is 7:14). "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined" (Is 9:2). "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" (Is 9:6).

But today's Advent text isn't as familiar, because it looks like only a prayer. And a suicide prayer at that!

Let's hear part of it again: We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities. (Is 64:6–7)

We can pray that, and mean it, because it's truer than we know: "we are like one who is unclean. Our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment." But having prayed that, how can we possibly afford to pray, "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down! Oh, that the mountains might shake before your face!" (v 1, author's translation). In other words, we are negligent, delinquent, filthy sinners who haven't cared, so we pray for a full-blown personal visit from God with guns blazing? Suicide.

And it's an arrogant prayer as well. "But now, O Lord, you are our Father" (v 8). How is that possible? How can the Lord who hates sin be true Father to the polluted? To listen to the world, you'd think it was automatic, no matter how you live, what you believe, whether you worship, or whom you worship: "God is a god of love; of course, he's your Father! You are the potter; God is the clay." Arrogant, and dangerous.

Sure, we can pray the first part: "our deeds are like a polluted garment," but the only one who has the right to pray, "But now, O Lord, you are our Father," is Jesus.

And the only one who doesn't need to pray, "We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away" (v 6), is holy Jesus.

Sinners can pray only their own part of this prayer.

The holy Son of God from heaven can pray only his own part of this prayer.

Is There Anyone who Can Pray All of This Prayer? Only One Way: if Sinner and Father's Child Are One and the Same.

But we have no spark of the divine inside us that can be fanned into flame. The only thing we have that can be fanned into flame is "brushwood. . . . And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away" (vv 2, 6).

How can sinner and Father's child be one and the same? "God of God, Light of Light, . . . being of one substance with the Father" (Nicene Creed), from eternity, in the heavens—that "Word [that] was with God, . . . the Word [that] was God" (Jn 1:1), in the beginning did "rend the heavens and come down" (Is 64:1). All the way down, true man, of the nature of his mother.

And for the first time ever, human being and Father's child were one and the same.

No wonder the blessed Virgin Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord" (Lk 1:46)! Because the Lord Almighty, who created man in his image, was now a microscopic carbon-based life form inside her! But in no way did he cease being God, the Creator and sustainer of the universe. St. Athanasius likened the mystery of the holy God taking on flesh from our polluted race to a portrait on a panel becoming obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and the likeness is redrawn on the same material. God painted God on Mary's canvas.

"He has looked on the humble estate of his servant" (Lk 1:48) by painting his image on her material, sharing her "humble estate" himself while, at the same time, as the Word, he was sustaining the life of the universe, and as Son he was in constant union with the Father.

He did "rend the heavens and come down," but quietly, so still and softly, to a maiden. We didn't see him "rend the heavens and come down" until God the Son was already low in the manger. Only then "the glory of the Lord shone around them" (Lk 2:9), and the heavenly host sang what we sang: "Glory to God in the highest" (Lk 2:14).

We didn't see the triune God "rend the heavens" and open to us like a flower until Jesus was already in the Jordan, standing in our sins "like one who is unclean, . . . a polluted garment" (Is 64:6), baptized into our iniquities.

We didn't see him "rend the heavens" and Jesus transfigured and shining like the sun until the Law and the Prophets were already witness to his exodus on the cross. He rent the heavens and came down. All the way down to Mary's womb—human, true man. All the way down into the Jordan—the sin-bearer. All the way down from Bethany on the colt and up into Jerusalem to die. All the way down onto a cross as sinner, lifted up as sin itself, like a polluted garment. This Christ poured himself out, making himself nothing (Phil 2:7), like clay for the potter.

The child of the father and the sinner are one and the same: crucified!

The Dayspring from on high faded like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, took him away (Is 64:6). Because the Father hid his face from Jesus—"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mt 27:46)—and made him melt in the hand of our iniquities.

Jesus yielded up his Spirit, to rend the temple veil in two from top to bottom, and to quake the earth and rend the rocks, that the mountains might shake before his tortured face. Jesus, the true child of the Father, prayed all the "sinner" parts of Isaiah's prayer, so that you could pray the "child of the Father" part of Isaiah's prayer!

Because the child of the Father and the sinner are one and the same: justified!

He is God with us: Immanuel. "To us a son is given" (Is 9:6), who can call the Lord Father for us all. The Word made flesh still wears our flesh and calls on us to pray, "Our Father." Jesus' body is God's body. Jesus' blood is God's blood ever since God's body and blood was conceived inside her.

Now it's time for you to say yes, because the One who came to Mary's womb comes to your mouth in Holy Communion.

Say, "Now, O Lord, you are our Father."

Say, "Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, now, for me."

Say, "His mercy is for those who fear him. . . . He has filled the hungry with good things" (Lk 1:50, 53). Amen.