The LCA provides this sermon edited for lay-reading, with thanks to the original author.
Lent 3C
Isaiah 55:6-9
In our text today we have a picture of people living with their backs to God. Three times in verse 7 there is the invitation to turn around and face the other way! People living with their backs to God can look out at our planet and see the wonders of God’s handiwork. They can see the miracles of God’s handiwork in nature and they see millions of other people. But they do not see God. Nor do they praise or thank God for his marvellous creation.
Instead, they hunger to get more and more of God’s handiwork for themselves. Some people look out at all the plenty in the world, and it becomes their god and they hunger to get more and more of it. They might also become their own god. We could say they have lots of gods. The things of this world become like a drug to them. They look for excitement, and kicks. They want to live on a high provided by their gods. The more they feast on their drugs, the greater their thirst to get more.
To get ahead in life, they might use other people. They might manipulate them, suck up to them, and then push them aside. Some take short cuts in business and use their cunning to cover up the evidence. One can’t ever be satisfied! One can never get enough and the race is on to get more wealth, more sex, more power and more things to boost one’s ego. If there is a God, then this God is some power or force that should see that they get more and more of everything.
We can recognise these people in the world around us and we might even recognise the evil within ourselves. We too are tempted to live life with our backs to God. To all the people living with their backs to God, Isaiah says:
“Let the people turn from their wicked deeds. Let them banish from their minds the very thought of doing wrong. Let them turn to the Lord.”
When we turn around and face God, we stop seeing the things that we want but don’t satisfy us, and instead we see God as a person- Jesus. We see a helpless baby lying in a manger. Or a teenage boy in the huge and magnificent temple, with learned people asking him questions and being amazed by his knowledge. Not the picture of God we might have expected!
When they see Jesus, people see the One from God who seems to pick out the weak, the ones with mental problems, the sick and dying: the hopeless cases. These are not the people one uses to get ahead. There are the women who have been sexually abused and used to satisfy lusts. Jesus takes time to minister to them in a caring way. The strict religious people of the day are embarrassed when they see the people Jesus chooses to spend time with. Some of the religious experts claim that Jesus can’t be from God if he spends time on such people. Others even suggest Jesus is working for the other side and has come from Satan. Jesus isn’t the one they expected from God at all.
Jesus seemed weak. He wasn’t using the power of God to force people to change. He didn’t push people around and force them into line, or suffer the consequences! We might be tempted to do that at times, but Jesus doesn’t use that method. Jesus wins people with his love. When we turn and see Jesus, we see the love of God reaching out to sinners like us!
It is a costly love. We see Jesus suffering injustice and hate, being whipped and flogged, carrying his own cross until physically too weak to continue, so helpless that someone else has to carry his cross. We see a person dying, being blamed for the worst people have ever done to others, including serving useless and false gods.
The Scripture says in verses 8 and 9:
“My thoughts are completely different from yours,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”
It was an odd experience to see God at work in Jesus. Jesus could speak the Word – like when God spoke the word and universes were created, with stars and suns and moons. Jesus could speak the Word, and a sick and dying person was healed on the spot. Jesus speaks the Word and a dying person is 100% fit in less than a second. In the case of Lazarus a body that has been dead for days returns to life and walks and talks, 100% well again. What power! But Jesus won’t use the power of God to help himself, or take any short cuts to honour and glory.
Some people give up on Jesus but these people are not his enemies. They never give up. Instead it is his closest friends who give up on Jesus. The ones who had spent months and years face to face with him! They turned their backs on him, and went home and back to their fishing. They gave up on the God who had come to them as a person in Jesus.
When they had given up all hope the most unlikely thing of all happened. Jesus came back to them from the tomb as a living person. He came with the scars on his hands, and they could touch him. They were scared at first. But he wasn’t a ghost who had come to spook them. The living Jesus came to them, not as some phantom, but as the real Jesus they knew – and the one who had died. They couldn’t believe their eyes! The one who was crucified is now the living God.
When we turn away from lusting after the things of this world, we meet up with the God who was crucified for all of our evil, like our lack of faith, lack of praise and thanks, for cheating on life and for using other people. When we turn our back on sin, we experience the amazing grace of God:
“Let them turn to the Lord that he may have mercy on them. Yes, turn to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”
When we turn to God, as we did earlier in this service when we confessed our sins, we experience again the undeserved and free grace of God. Now when we look out at the world, we recognise it as the ingenious work of God: an undeserved gift, to care for, and share with other people.
Our planet is a place of wonder: a place where people need care and help, especially those with mental illnesses, the people who have been abused, physically, mentally and sexually. And those who suffer the sicknesses of old age that include forgetfulness and lots of personal health problems. The success of our God isn’t measured in how much one can get for one’s self, or the number of good times one has, or even the excitement of seeing God face to face, but it is measured in our ministry to those on the edge. True religion can include stooping to wash other people’s feet, giving the hungry person a feed, or even a glass of water.
To be a spiritual person is to keep turning to God, to meet Jesus and his undying love for us. True religion is to keep on turning our backs on our selfishness, and in turning around, to experience the grace of God, day after day. It is to live in the deep and forgiving love of God. Amen.
And the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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