Reflection for Advent 1 (Isaiah 64: 1-5)
by Jennifer Henry
“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence…”
Isaiah 64:1
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence —as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.
You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.
We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.
Yet, O LORD, you are our Mother/Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.
Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.
Isaiah 64:1-9
More than a few times in the challenging work of justice-making, a similar thought has crossed my mind. Whether it be the seemingly intractable conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or the unbearably slow reaction of developed countries to the climate change catastrophe, there are moments when, beyond sense, I have willed some kind of mythic power to “come down” and make the nations “tremble” (64:2). My mutterings lacked the poetic language of the writer of Isaiah, but they came from a similar place—a place of utter frustration and deep despair. These were desperate, senseless pleas that emerged when our actions seemed hopeless, when a path forward seemed unknowable.
Consistently, in each of these moments, faith has nudged me forward. Sober second thought reminded me, as it also seemed to remind the writer of Isaiah, that the notion of God’s anger unleashed against your enemies is a double-edged sword. Should an angry God be unfurled on the climate crisis, we the oil-addicted in the industrialized North might be caught in that web ourselves. And is this the image of God we want to call to mind? Or might it be, as it might also have been to ancient Israel, a fantasy of retribution that comes more from our own pain than what we might know with confidence to be God’s nature? “Yet, O YHWH, you are our Father/Mother; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand” (Isaiah 64: 8). Sense returns, and so does sensibility — the sensibility of hope.
Advent holds us in a continuum from lament to possibility. In this reading for the 1St Sunday, we are more than reminded that in ancient times, as in our own time, our world cries out for divine intervention. Injustice —exile, war, ecological devastation— pleads for God’s dramatic action then, as now. Even as we anticipate the Christmas act, we know that what will “come down” will astonish —a fragile baby, born to a poor young girl, under a fierce occupation. No divine warrior of anger to fulfill our fantasies of retribution, but a divine child of love to ignite our own hope.
The answer to our yearnings comes in the Holy child whose very vulnerability ensures our role. Just as a baby invites us to cradle her, so we are invited to cradle the hope this Child represents. God-incarnate promises divine presence in our hope and in the justice and peace of our own hands. Palestinian Christian Rev. Mitri Raheb of Bethlehem —now, as then, a place of suffering— reminds us of this call:
At times when we feel as if the world must be coming to an end tomorrow, our call is not to wait, not to cry, nor to surrender. Rather, our only hopeful vision is to go out today in our garden, into our society, and plant olive trees. If we don’t plant any trees today, there will be nothing tomorrow. But if we plant a tree today, there will be shade for the children to play in, there will be oil to heal the wounds, and there will be olive branches to wave when peace comes. (from Bethlehem Besieged: Stories of Hope in Times of Trouble)
From the heart of struggle, Rev. Raheb affirms that there is never a situation too desperate nor a time too late to put our faith into action. Whatever our concern —Indigenous rights, ecological justice, ending poverty— advent hope can ignite our passion and commitment to fulfill God’s dream of justice.
In the name of the God, who came down in vulnerability to be our hope, do not wait, do not cry, but go out and be the loving justice you seek. Amen
