Community Church Sermons
Year A
August 21 2011
Pentecost 10
Look to the Rock
Isaiah
51:1-6
Rev. Rhonda
Abbott Blevins
Imagine this
scene. Your nation falls under siege. A foreign superpower defeats your
military. They kill your generals and they execute your senators, your
congressmen, your cabinet, your vice-president. Leading citizens are slaughtered.
Your capital is ablaze—buildings and monuments left for ash and rubble. Your
president is captured—forced to watch as his children are murdered before his
very eyes. He is tortured and killed. Then they come for you. They defile your
body, they burn your home, they take your land. They force you to march over
500 miles into captivity. Many of your friends and family members don’t make it.
You now are as a prisoner in a foreign land. That’s the scene.
This isn’t the
makings of a futuristic sci-fi movie; rather it’s the real world experience of
the people who first heard the prophet’s words from Isaiah that were just read.
This has been their somber reality for
more than a generation. The hearers of today’s scripture lesson are living in
Babylon (modern day Iraq), forced there after their hometown Jerusalem fell to
Babylonian conquerors in 587 BC. Much like how the images from 9/11 still haunt
us, in their collective memory they hold images of Jerusalem burning, the
slaughter of their elite, the disgraceful torture and execution of their king.
Like the Trail of Tears in the memory of the Cherokee Nation, the 547 mile march
of disgrace to Babylon defined a people.
We hear their lament over and over again in the Old Testament, like this verse
from Psalm 137:1: “By the waters of Babylon—there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.” A generation
into their captivity, “all they could hear was the sound of their own sadness.”1
Were you hoping
for a happy sermon today? Be patient—we’ll get there. But first let’s look in
the mirror together for a moment.
Is it just me, or
does anyone else notice that our nation seems to be depressed? I think one of
the most troubling, most critical problems out nation faces right now is our soaring
national fret. People are anxious and
downright scared. Pessimism and hopelessness are rampant. As a nation, it seems
we’ve lost faith that we have what it takes to emerge victorious from our
recent trials. If you’re like me, it’s hard to watch the news without getting
sucked into the narrative of doubt, defeat, and despair. It seems like all we
can hear is the sound of our own sadness. A constant, clanging, catastrophizing
cacophony!
Into that noise,
God says “Listen to ME!” It’s time for a little perspective!
Times may be
trying, but we are far from living as captives in Babylon. Sometimes when I’m
in need of a little perspective, I remember a poster I saw a few years ago.
It’s a graphic representation of several statistics that I offer to you:
·
If you woke up
this morning with more health than illness, you are more fortunate than the one
million people who will not survive this week. Perspective.
·
If you have food
in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to
sleep, you are richer than 75% of the world. Perspective.
·
If you can attend
a church or political meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or
death, then you are more blessed than three billion in the world. Perspective.
·
If you have money
in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in your pocket, then you are
among the top 8% of the world's wealthy. Perspective.
·
If you read the
newspaper, a novel, or the stock market report this week, you’re better off
that the two million people in the world who can’t read at all. Perspective2
Sometimes, when
all we can hear is the sound of our own sadness, a little perspective is just
what the doctor ordered. And that’s what the prophet offered to those captives
in Babylon. It’s what the prophet offers us today.
“Listen to ME!”
sayeth the Lord. “Look to the Rock from which you were cut!” You’re listening
to the wrong voices, God is saying. You’re looking at the wrong landmarks.
Look to the Rock!
Look to Abraham and Sarah. When they gave into their barrenness, God opened her
womb to new life, planting in her the future of a nation. Look to the Rock! God
is in our barrenness, holding us close until the future is borne in us. Look to
the Rock! We are God’s people! We don’t act like this. We don’t give up. We
stay in the game and we fight until the bitter end. That’s who we are. That’s
our birthright.
I recently read
about an historic church in Charleston, South Carolina. Founded by Charles
Towne’s original settlers in 1681, the church is one of the oldest continuously
worshiping congregations in the South. Their history is rich, rife with trial
and triumph. In 1713, a violent hurricane ripped through Charles Towne,
destroying the earliest historical documents from the church. Then near the end
of the Revolutionary War, a British cannonball burst in the church graveyard in
the middle of a Sunday morning service. When the British captured Charleston,
38 men from the church were forced into exile, first to St. Augustine (in
Spanish territory) and later to Philadelphia. “Their families were left
destitute in an occupied city.” Their Meeting House, vacant since the
cannonball episode, was used as a British hospital and left a shell.” The
congregation proved its resiliency, however, in that the same week the British
evacuated the city, the members of the church began to rebuild. And remarkably,
within five years they had to build a second meeting house simply to accommodate
their growth! Trial and triumph. Things were going well for the church until
the Great Fire of 1861, when a third of the city burned to the ground, leveling
the historic church ash and rubble. That’s how it remained throughout the
devastating years of the Civil War. Black members of the congregation withdrew
to form their own church. For a generation, they lived out the narrative of
doubt, defeat, and despair. Finally, 29 years after the Great Fire, members
from a humbled and much reduced congregation gathered upon the ruins—the rubble
left behind from years before. Weeds and thicket now covered the site. The dug
through the rubble together, digging bricks out one by one. Every brick told
the story of their life together. Every rock a testament of trial and triumph
and God’s providence through it all. They took those bricks, those rocks
representing their history, and used them as the cornerstone of a glorious new
church building which holds a growing, thriving congregation to this day.3
When we Look to the
Rock—when we dig the bricks of our history out of the rubble—we are reminded
that trials come and trials go, but God’s faithfulness endures forever. This
present suffering, no matter how severe it seems to us right now, is but a blip
on the screen of eternity. It’s just a pebble at the foot of That Great Rock.
And speaking of
trials, they are a given. How we emerge from hardship defines us as
individuals. Some of us emerge from the crucible stronger, galvanized for a
bright future reality. Some of us lose our way.
I received my new
Time magazine yesterday, and on the
front cover is a picture of five men and women—veterans of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The title: “The New Greatest Generation.” Really? It seems like most
of the time, when we hear about these young men and women, it’s about
post-traumatic stress, suicide, joblessness, and domestic violence. But on the
cover of Time is a picture of five
young veterans who emerged from the crucible of war stronger. I saw an interview
this week with one of the young men featured on the cover. He agreed that
perhaps these veterans indeed are the new greatest generation. He talked about
the stresses of war, and suggested that the daily stresses of life back
home—the stresses of jobs and family and such—those daily stresses are
negligible by comparison. The stresses back in America are . . . well . . .
like pebbles at the foot of a Great Rock.
This article highlights those who came out of the crucible of war
stronger, galvanized for a bright future reality.
That’s what the
prophet hopes his displaced, disheartened, and despondent hearers will
remember. Sure, your story seems tragic right now. Look to the Rock! Look to
Abraham and Sarah. When they gave into their barrenness, God opened her womb to
new life, planting in her the future of a nation. Look to the Rock! God is in
our barrenness, holding us close until the future is borne in us. Look to the
Rock! We are God’s people! We don’t act like this. We don’t give up. We stay in
the game and we fight until the bitter end. That’s who we are. That’s our
birthright. Because we know from history that . . .
The LORD will surely comfort Zion
and will look with compassion on
all her ruins;
he will make her deserts like Eden,
her wastelands like the garden
of the LORD.
Joy and gladness will be found in her,
thanksgiving and the sound of
singing. (v. 3)
Then the prophet inserts something that seems a little out of
place into this message of hope:
Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
look at the earth beneath;
the heavens will vanish like smoke,
the earth will wear out like a
garment
and its inhabitants die like
flies. (v.6a)
Long before the words “global warming” were ever uttered, the
prophet predicted the end of the world as we know it. Why such a dark,
nihilistic picture to close out this beautiful message of hope? Here’s my
thought: he’s painting the absolute worst case scenario. “Things may be bad for
you right now, captive in a foreign land. But even if they get worse—in the
darkest imaginable circumstance, God still reigns!”
But my salvation will last forever,
my righteousness will never
fail. (v. 6b)
It’s all about perspective. It’s remembering the big picture.
“Look at the Rock!” God reminds us. “It’s not all about you.”
Listen to ME, sayeth the Lord!
Listen to ME!
Stop listening to the pessimists,
the alarmists,
the antagonists.
Pay no heed to the haters,
the doubters,
the fearmongers.
Ignore those who with rhetoric incite,
who yearn for American blight (just to
prove they’re right),
who get paid per sound bite.
No!
Look instead to the Author of Right!
The creator of light!
Who formed day from night!
Listen to ME, sayeth the Lord!
Listen to ME!
1Ronald E. Peters, “Isaiah 51:1-6: Pastoral Perspective.” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 3. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, 364. Much of this sermon was inspired by this commentary.
2This string of statistics is ubiquitous on the internet. I could not find the original source. While the numbers are likely not exact, I strongly suspect that they fairly represent the truth of the world as we know it.
3 From http://www.circularchurch.org/content.cfm?id=2002.
(Accessed 19 Aug 2011).