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Rejoice, Rejoice Believers

            When someone asks you how your family celebrates Christmas, do you typically reply, “It’s a secret.  I’m not telling you.”  No!  That would be odd, wouldn’t it?  The person who asked might think you’re some kind of nut.  When we’re asked about family Christmas traditions we are usually more than happy to share.  “In our family we have the tradition of attending a service on Christmas Eve, after which gifts are opened, and no matter how late it gets, we have a special meal as a family.  Then we go to church on Christmas Day and eat a mid-afternoon big dinner with as many relatives as are in town;” or “In our family we attend a Christmas Eve service and get the kids to bed.  Then on Christmas morning the kids wake up early and open presents.  After that, it’s off to church for the Christmas Day festival worship;” or “In our family we have the tradition of trading off every other year going to my folks or the in-laws on Christmas Day for a potluck feast.  But if we’re at the in-laws, you better prepare the dish assigned to you according to the family recipe, or you’ll be relegated to the card table to eat with the little kids;” or “Since we are recently married, we’re starting our own traditions different from the way the two of us grew up.”  The point – we are more than happy to tell whoever asks how we celebrate Christmas.

            But are we just as eager to tell someone why we celebrate Christmas?  Ouch!  I just poked my own conscience.  Did I hit yours?  How about getting rid of the hurt from that and the guilt of not keeping the reason for the season front and center?  How about getting a boost in courage to proclaim why we celebrate Christmas and do so with ever-growing joy?  To do that, we turn our attention to another message from the prophet Isaiah, as is our pattern for these midweek Advent services, this time from Isaiah chapter forty-two.  Once again the Lord’s call to us is captured in a phrase from a great Advent hymn, which we will sing at the end of this service, Rejoice, Rejoice Believers, Go forth … with alleluias clear – Proclaim.

What to proclaim

            Not many Israelites paid attention to Isaiah’s sermons when he was alive, which is kind of a bummer for any preacher.  But a hundred years later, lots of folks unrolled his scroll and started paying attention.  They had nowhere else to turn.  They were no longer living in the land God had promised to their forefathers and to them.  They were in Babylon, and they knew why.  They had stuck their tongues out at God and told him, “We don’t need you.”  So, God allowed the Babylonian army to march in.  In these passages Isaiah is using battle imagery, and the people who paid attention to him new all about war.  They weren’t any good at it, but they know all about it.  When the Assyrian army had attacked Jerusalem, the Bible tells that there were one hundred eighty-five thousand bad guys surrounding the city.  I’m guessing that the Babylonians had at least that many when they laid siege to the city.  Some of the older folks had seen the Babylonians march in, wipe out their capital city, the temple, and their homes.  They were the ones dragged off far from Israel and far from each other.  The Israelites in Babylon also knew about Babylonian pride.  The city of Babylon was about eighty-one square miles in area and surrounded by a brick wall.  Eight gates into the city were dedicated to eight Chaldean gods.  Babylon not only had a royal residence for King Nebuchadnezzar along the Euphrates, but sophisticated, multi-story housing, paved streets, huge temples, and architectural marvels, such as the Hanging Gardens.

            The younger Israelites saw another mighty army on the rise, the Persians who moved in, swallowed up the Babylonian Empire, and expanded theirs much farther in all directions.  They had a standing national army of one hundred twenty to one hundred fifty thousand troops, plus tens of thousands conscripted from allies to form a fighting force of archers, foot soldiers, and cavalry of more than a million, sweeping over land and sea in huge waves.  Very scary!  Imagine a modern battleground with high tech weapons, warplanes, and the loud wump-wump of helicopters zooming overhead and moving in on you!

            As fearsome, foreboding, and threatening as any well-equipped, well-trained army may be, there’s a worse enemy we have to face, and it’s not far away.  In our hearts lurks sinful pride that can build itself up higher than a Nebuchadnezzar ziggurat, and it is allied to a demonic force led by General Satan that comes in waves larger than the Persian army.  You and I might begin to think, “We’re Christians.  The devil can’t tempt us.  We’re immune to his tricks.”  Really?  Then why do Christians like us end up hurting someone’s feelings for no apparent reason other than to make sure we smell like a rose and they don’t, demanding someone’s attention just to satisfy our neediness, hoarding money that really belongs to God in the first place, lying to ourselves and others that we’re doing OK on our own when we’re not?  The answer is that, if Satan can send demonic spirits to possess a man’s soul so that he cries out when asked by Jesus, “My name is Legion” (Mark 5:9), meaning he was possessed by six thousands demons, who’s to say Satan couldn’t unleash a demonic force just as large to tempt us?

            Israelites, overwhelmed by Babylonian-like pride in their hearts and by Persian-like temptations around them had no where to go, no where to hide, until they paid attention to the Lord’s message through Isaiah, “The LORD will march out like a mighty man, like a warrior he will stir up his zeal; with a shout he will raise the battle cry and will triumph over his enemies”.  A warrior was going to stir up his zeal, meaning he would be alert at every moment and not get sleepy.  He was watching and biding his time, ready to come through with rescue at the right time.  Just who is the mighty warrior who comes marching out to battle his enemies?   The most unlikely hero.  He didn’t look like a warrior.  There were no Huey helicopters hovering over Bethlehem.  There were no goose-stepping soldiers behind him. There was no cavalry charging up Calvary.  We look at this warrior, and we see him as a babe in arms and later bleeding on a tree.  We see him dependent on mommy and later dying on a cross.  What kind of a warrior is that?  Is he marching down the streets of Jerusalem?  No, he’s stumbling and jeered.  Is he whipping his foes with sword and spear?  No, he being whipped by his foes and poked with a spear.  Who would select such a warrior in the National Warrior League draft?  If you had a warrior on your side who had the power of God, would you expect him to keep that power under wraps as he heads into his biggest battle?  Wouldn’t you expect him to rip off his humility cape and reveal his real identity to fight his enemies?

            If he did, he’d be battling not only Satan but also us.  He’d wipe us out with one stroke of the back of his hand and send us along with the devil to the place we deserve because – and here’s the catch – we were actually on Satan’s side and enemies of God.  We were the ones who deserved to be exiled.  We were the ones who deserved to be whipped and beaten.  We were the ones who should have been stumbling through the streets to face the wrath of God.  Why?  Because we were Israelite-like in our pride and in falling prey to temptation when we were supposed to be purer than the driven snow.  There was only one way out.  A warrior had to take our place and live purer than the driven snow for us and take the heat of punishment for us.  He did!  That warrior is Jesus, and that is the “what” of our proclaiming.  That is the new songwe sing in place of the old song about ourselves and our miserable attempts to please God on our own.  Rejoice, Rejoice Believers!  Go forth with alleluias clear, and proclaim the “what,” proclaim what Jesus has done for you.

To whom to proclaim

            Israelites, once rescued by their warrior God, had an additional problem.  They had become elitist.  That was their fault, not God’s.  God intended to use them and only them as ancestors of the Savior.  But that did not mean they were to keep the good news of his victory to themselves, that they were to proclaim it only to themselves.  God never said, “Stay home with alleluias dull.”  He said, “Go forth with alleluias clear.”  He made that clear through his man, Isaiah, “Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise from the ends of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all that is in it, you islands, and all who live in them.  Let the desert and its towns raise their voices; let the settlements where Kedar lives rejoice.  Let the people of Sela sing for joy; let them shout from the mountaintops.  Let them give glory to the LORD and proclaim his praise in the islands”.  This sounds like a geography lesson to us, but it made sense to the Israelites who paid attention to Isaiah.  God was answering the question, “To whom do we proclaim the good news about our warrior’s battle and victory?”  In a nutshell, the Lord was telling them, “Proclaim it to the ends of the earth so that many, many others can join you in singing the new song of the Savior’s victory.”

            This message from Isaiah uses geographic references as picture language to give us the answer to our question “to whom?”  Those who go down to the sea are not just fishermen along the Mediterranean coast or along Lake Michigan but everyone who goes fishing for answers to life’s big questions, “What’s my purpose in life, where am I going, how do I know I’m worth anything?”  Been there?  Know anybody who’s been there?  Our warrior Jesus gives meaning and purpose to our life now by allowing us to proclaim to all near and far that his victory is also for them. The islands and all who live in themare not just the inhabitants of Cyprus, Crete, and Corsica or the folks on Washington Island at the end of Door County but everyone who feels disconnected and all alone, wondering if the feelings of loneliness will ever go away.  Been there?  Know anybody who’s been there?  Our warrior Jesus connects us to God’s family through holy baptism.  The desert and its towns … the settlements where Kedar livesare not just the nomadic tribes of the Arabian Desert or those who motor along I-10 through the Mojave of California but everyone who thirsts for a little drop of relief from a guilty conscience because of years of wrong thinking and wrong behavior, which can really wear a person down.  Been there?  Know anybody who’s been there?  Our warrior Jesus drenches us with the water of life, his promises of mercy.    The people of Selaare not just those in the rocky crags of southern Palestine or folks who live west of Denver but everyone who has had a rocky time with the hard realities of job loss, injury, or illness.  Been there?  Know anybody who’s been there?  Our warrior Jesus does not promise to remove those stones immediately, but guarantees that the path to heaven has been cleared and has paved the way for our entrance through the pearly gates. 

            We do have a new song to sing.  The old song we were singing to ourselves was entitled either “I’m Number One” or “Woe Is Me,” neither of which gain much of an audience with other people or with God.  But when we sing the new song of our warrior’s victory, then we are at the same time proclaiming to others what he has done and praising God for what he has done.  For, what better praise can we offer to God than to sing, “Thanks for keeping your promise through Isaiah and all the other prophets!”

            Start humming that new tune in your own mind.  Sing it to yourself.  You and I need to hear it again and again.  Then proclaim it to someone near you who has also been fishing for meaning in life or on an island of loneliness or in the desert of guilt or is stumbling over the rocky ground of hard times.  Then lift your voice to join with hundreds, yes thousands, of fellow believers through your prayers and gifts to proclaim to the ends of the earth what God has done.  Rejoice, rejoice, believers.  Go forth with alleluias clear, and proclaim to yourself and to all what Jesus has done for you and for all.

            When someone asks you about the way your family celebrates Christmas, go ahead and tell your story.  But don’t forget to include the “why” of our celebrating in Advent, at Christmas, and all year through.  It’s Jesus!     Amen.

Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on December 10, 2008

Services

Sundays 7:45, 9:00 & 10:30 am

Mondays 6:30 pm

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1209 North Broadway Milwaukee, WI 53202 | (414) 271-3006

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