God’s grace, peace
and mercy be with you. My sermon today is entitled Day and Place, and my
focus is our reading from Isaiah (2:1-5). Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the
psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of
the Lord.’” Now that we are within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As
we listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love
deeply as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.
Day. I can use the
word day in many different ways. As a greeting, I can say, “Good day.” As a
question, I ask, “What day is it?” I can sing, “Day by Day.” I can refer to a
specific day – September 11, 2001; July 4, 1776; or our anniversary – August 7,
2010. Day can also refer to a span of time, such as the good old days, or an
indefinite period of time, like endless days of work or school. The word’s
origin is Germanic, and is pronounced tag. When we were in Germany this
past summer, I certainly felt confident when I greeted someone with the phrase Guten
tag.
All of this talk
about day stems from both our Gospel (Matthew 24:36-44) and our first reading
(Isaiah 2:1-5). In the Gospel, Jesus speaks apocalyptically to his disciples
following his departure from the Temple about the end of the age and the coming
of the Son of Man. He concludes his lesson with the words, “Therefore you
also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”
In Isaiah, the
backdrop is the relationship between the Assyrian Empire and Judah, the
southern kingdom. That looming threat is important to keep in mind when reading
Isaiah. It is similar to reading literature out of Eastern Europe during the
days of the Soviet occupation. The threat of annihilation colored everything
said or done. Yet, even with that threat, Isaiah was not deterred about
prophesying many things including the vision of “the latter or last days,” or
“the day of the Lord.”
The Day of the Lord
is the undated future, neither necessarily near nor far. The Day of the Lord,
according to the prophets, is when God would bring judgment and a victory that would
lead to peace. Hosea saw this day as the consummation and enjoyment of God’s
rule (Hosea 3:5), and all the other prophets insisted on the certainty of what
God would do and present the necessity of being ready.
Later, Isaiah
would describe this day as terror, the pit and the snare (24:17-23). Joel
described it as a day of warnings with the sun darked and the moon turned into
blood (2:30-32). Malachi, as we heard two weeks ago, predicted that Elijah
would come before this day (4:5-6). Such predictions of this day shaped the
image of what Jesus said in chapter 24.
There have been
many predictions when this day would occur, and all of them have one thing in
common. They have all been wrong. That leads me to wonder why Jesus in his
divinity withheld this date from his disciples. An ancient theologian answered this
by comparing it to not knowing the date of your death writing that God
withholds this so that I might always do good since I can expect to die at any
moment. “The date of Christ’s second advent is withheld from the world
for the same reason, namely, so that every generation might live in the
expectation of Christ’s return.”[1] I will return to day
later, but for now place.
Place. The word is
used as a verb and a noun. Used as a verb, I can place items in different
spots, such as my furniture or books. As a noun, I can refer to place as an
indefinite or a particular spot. Pittsburgh can be an indefinite place for
southwestern Pennsylvania. I don’t live in Pittsburgh, but when travelling, I
use it to refer to where I live. The Danube River was the indefinite place
where we vacationed this summer. I did not stay only in one spot on the Danube,
but use it to refer to the many sites I visited this past year.
When I use the
word place to refer to a particular spot, I can say that I stand in a
particular place – the pulpit – when I preach. The pulpit is a very small place
compared to Pittsburgh geographically, but spiritually greater. Place comes to
us from the Latin words, placea meaning place or spot, and platea
meaning courtyard broad way or avenue. The When you travel to Europe it’s good
to know that Italians use the word piazza; the Spaniards, plaza;
and the Germans platz.
Buildings are
places used for different purposes and after time repurposed. St. John the
Baptist Catholic Church in Lawrenceville (Pittsburgh) once served as a place of
worship, but now is a place to eat and drink. A nearby synagogue now serves as
a dialysis clinic. A gas station in Ambridge has been transformed into a coffee
shop and café. Many schools have been converted into apartment buildings. The
place Isaiah speaks of in chapter two is a fascinating place.
In what places
were Isaiah and Jesus? We understand from the opening verses of Isaiah 1, that
the prophet is in Jerusalem, specifically on Mount Zion. When Mount Zion is referenced,
think of a neighborhood, like Capitol Hill in Washington, or College Hill in
Beaver Falls. His prophecy is about the mountain of the house of the Lord.
Mountains were homes of the gods, and while Zion was not the highest, it is
still the mountain where the one true God was to be found. This is the place
where God revealed his ways to humans. Here, people came to learn how to live.
The outcome of coming to learn this is that nations will live in harmony.
As I said a moment
ago, you need to keep in mind the backdrop of the Assyrian Empire and Judah. In
this place, Mount Zion, Isaiah proclaimed this poem. The interesting fact about
this poem (vv 2-5) is that it is the same poem found in the Prophet Micah (4:1-4),
meaning that it was a popular poem known throughout Judah and Israel. It was
written as a challenge to the people to face up to what they were singing: If
others are to say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,” Judah must
heed the call to “walk in the light of the Lord.”
It reminds me of
all the beautiful hymns we treasure, and the confidence we must have when we
sing “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” particularly the words at the ends of the
stanzas. We sing, God’s only Son, adored. He holds the field victorious.
God’s judgment must prevail! One little word subdues him. They cannot win the
day. The Kingdom’s ours forever! When I sing those words, I feel there is
no opponent of God that I will ever fear. Kudos to Martin Luther for writing words
that inspire us 500 years later.
Isaiah’s poem is
also reminiscent of Psalm 122, which I reference whenever I open my sermon.
That a stream of people would flow to the highest point is against the laws of
nature, but the point is that the highest point has a supernatural magnetism.
The peoples, that is, people from all races, nations, cultures and ways of
life, will come voluntarily to acknowledge the God of Jacob as the God of all
nations. People will adopt the Law of Israel’s God.
Verse 4 tells us
that the reduction of arms is a hopeful cause of peace. For Isaiah this is a
divine reordering of the world which will happen as a consequence of all people
recognizing the one true God and forsaking nationalism. The choice of turning
weapons of violence and war into agricultural instruments is reflective of Eden.
Our return to Eden means that people will be right with God again. The curse
removed, and the serpent defeated means that we will have the ideal environment,
the ideal place.
In a word,
Israel’s mission from God was to walk in the light of His ways so that even the
Gentiles seek out the one true God. With the coming of Jesus Christ and the
preaching of the Apostles, Gentiles sought the one true God and His ways, His
Law and His Gospel. So, having accepted the Gospel, what must we do? As we
begin this Season of Advent, how are we prepared to meet Christ in His second
coming?
Today, we lit the
first candle on the Advent wreath. Over the next three Sundays, the light
coming from that wreath will grow stronger as one more candle is lit. It will
be more attractive, and will draw us more deeply to it, but the wreath is a
symbol unlike the Primary Symbol that is Christ the Lord God, to whom we ae
attracted even more strongly.
The whole point of
Isaiah’s prophesying is to draw people closer to God. The whole point of Jesus’
ministry is to draw people closer to the Father. The whole point of our
existence is to know, love and serve God our Father through His Son as His
Church, His people. For that to happen, our hearts must be touched. With that,
let me tell you a story.
On Thursday, November 10, 2022, Scott
Rodenbeck and I attended the 35th Annual Night for Life Benefit
Banquet benefitting Choices Pregnancy Services.[2] The Guest Speaker was Dr.
Anthony Levatino. There is a link to Dr. Levatino’s story in the footnotes, and
I encourage you to read it and others.[3]
Dr. Levatino spoke
of his story from providing 1,200 abortions to why doctors perform them to how
the medical establishment views the prolife community, and how he was viewed by
his colleagues once he embraced the community. I won’t go into all the details
of how doctors perform abortions. That too is in the link. What struck me was
his story of how the prayers of one of his patients, Susan, impacted his life.
His comment that when a person says to you that has a message from God that
Jesus loves you very much and he wants you to stop performing abortions, and
that she has been praying for you every day, you tend to think that person is
looney.
Friends, today in
this place I ask you to consider yourself looney. Respectable people have worse
opinions about me, so being looney doesn’t hurt. Today, Dr. Levatino tells
Christians to find out who is providing abortions – the names of the doctors, administrators,
nurses and others who perform abortions, and pray for them and their family
members every day as Susan did for Dr. Levatino. Why? Because Jesus loves them
and wants them to stop taking the lives of the little children Jesus welcomed.
Dr. Levatino told
us that doctors who provide abortions do it for two reasons; they have been
convinced by everyone that they are serving the woman, the patient before them,
which every doctor does. The other is because performing abortions is lucrative.
Abortion allows doctors to buy a lot of nice things when they accept the money
of a patient who tells them to take the life of their son or daughter. These
people need prayers on their hearts. They need your prayers so that the loving
and merciful power of God can transform their hearts.
Today in this
place, and every day in whatever place you find yourself, the power of prayer
transforms hearts. Some hearts are conflicted while others are hardened. So, it
may take you longer than seven years to see someone’s heart and life
transformed, but remember: It’s not what you do, it is the power of God at work
through you. Friends, God needs you and me to be his agents, his angels, his
messengers, his witnesses. When we open ourselves to what God wants, we
experience the peace of God which is beyond all understanding keeping our
hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
[1] “Incomplete
Work on Matthew,” Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament Ib, Matthew 14-28. Edited by
Manlio Simonetti; General Editor, Thomas C. Oden. Downers Grove IL:
InterVarsity Press (2002), p. 210.
[2]
See the website: https://pregnancychoice.org/
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