Nicole E. Partin

11-18-07

Isaiah 65:17-25

 

Around the country menu’s are being finalized and divided up amongst those who will gather together, table linens are being ironed, and tables are almost ready to be set. Stories, old and new, will be told. There will be some debate about who sits at the kids table and at what point you get to graduate to the real table. We will be intentional about naming those things for which we are most thankful; the blessings we have received. Great strides are taken to fulfill our own families’ version of the Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving.

 

Yet, Thanksgiving Day isn’t all warm and fuzzy. There will be empty chairs around many tables: college students are exercising their independence by making other plans this year, sons and daughters are off at war and some are about to be sent, family systems have changed because of marriages and divorce, loved ones have died. For some of us this Thanksgiving meal will be a bittersweet reminder of a far more abundant and glorious time. Although the table may look the same it will be dim in comparison to the meals before the divorce, before the lay-off, before the illness, before the death of our parent and spouse.   

 

For the men and women in Jerusalem around the time the Isaiah text was written they were looking at the past wistfully. It had been two generations since their ancestors had joyfully set out from Babylon to repopulate the city of David. There had been prophets in those days who had proclaimed how YHWH would lead the people home from exile and there were visions of a glorious new Temple set within a sparkling city. That had been a half century earlier; their families had returned and yet life in Jerusalem was not what had been promised. Sure there was a restored temple but when compared to the glorious structure built by Solomon it was nothing to rejoice about. The city walls had not yet been rebuilt and many of the homes and markets that had at one time been well cared for and overflowing with activity were heaps of empty rubble. This later generation began to doubt in the promises made to the previous generations.

 

Voices of hope began to rise up amidst the cries of anger and anguish and despair. At first it seemed to be nothing more than a whisper but these lone voices grew louder as they proclaimed the old songs of joy and hope sung by the previous generations, but with a twist. The ancient promises which were being doubted were indeed true but in a way that exceeded anyone’s wildest imagination. The people were bound by their own limited sight in their vision of the new Jerusalem…their thinking was too small and concrete thinking about the actual bricks and mortar their ancestors had inhabited since the days of David. But these new voices began to share a new understanding. The New Jerusalem that YHWH promised transcended the new Jerusalem that the people had returned to and were rebuilding. Yes, Jerusalem had been restored to a certain extent but the promise of God was much larger than anything that could be accomplished with bricks and mortar. 

 

YHWH’s plan for humankind was larger than a restored city. God’s promise entailed nothing less than the creation of “new heavens” and a “new earth”. This new creation will be one of joy, peace, and tranquility for God’s people. There will be no memory of the former things. In the former life there is suffering and hurt; crying and weeping; there is infant mortality and old people who don’t fully live out their days. In the former life it is possible that you spend your days toiling the ground and yet by the night you have nothing to eat. In this former life it is possible that you spend your days building and yet by the night you have no shelter to return to. No more – in this new creation. These tragedies will not be possible in the “new heaven” and “new earth” of God’s creation.

 

The prophet is able to share with joy and in hope the truth that God’s purposes will be fulfilled. God is in control and all things will fulfill God’s providence. There is a restored Jerusalem that the first hearer’s of these words from Isaiah are living in, but it is not the NEW Jerusalem that fulfills God’s ultimate vision for God’s people. There is still hurt and suffering, as there is today. God’s providence is a peaceable kingdom in which “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent – its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.”

 

 

We are reminded of the prophet’s vision just as we are about to enter into Advent. The advent season is one of hoping and waiting and preparing. As God’s people we are ever mindful that the world we are living in does not live up to the peaceable kingdom in which justice and mercy reign. There is hunger in our world; there is war in our world; there are disasters that wreck havoc on whole communities; even within our own country we have been unable to care for the needs of our children and the elderly. Tonight in Tampa there will be children who sleep in the street or in a car or in an abandoned building. So in hope we prepare and wait for the inbreaking of God’s kingdom. Advent gives us the time to reflect on just how much our world waits with eager longing for the coming of the Messiah. As we gather on the Sundays in December, we are stepping toward the darkest days and longest nights of winter. Amid this gathering darkness, we hear the prophet Jeremiah cry out, “In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land” (Jer. 33:15); and Malachi cry, “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” (Mal. 3:2). Only when we encounter the world’s ache for salvation will we be able to celebrate with joy the birth of the Savior.

    

Although Thanksgiving is a civic holiday, it is also an exercise in Christian discipleship. Acknowledging and returning thanks for the blessings God has given to us, even amidst the tragedies and sufferings, is an exercise in Christian discipleship. In Luke’s gospel we hear Jesus’ words proclaiming that there is no permanence in the temple building, the political order, or even nature. Only God is trustworthy. 

 

This Thanksgiving whether we are overwhelmed by the blessings in our lives which this year at least are abundant, or whether we sorrowfully long for Thanksgivings of the past we can exercise the Christian discipline of giving thanks. Give thanks to God who is God of all times: past, future, and present.  Give thanks for the God of the past who helped our ancestors, both the people who desired to rebuild Jerusalem and those who built the land we now call home. Give thanks to the God of the past who heard the people’s cries and who brought Light into the darkness of the world in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.