Scripture
Psalm 36:5-10
HOLY ONE, throughout the very heavens is your faithful love,
your faithfulness beyond the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the eternal mountains;
your judgments are like the mighty deep;
you save humankind and animalkind alike, FAITHFUL ONE.
How precious is your faithful love, O God!
All the woman-born take shelter in the shadow of your wings.
They feast on the abundance of your house,
and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light we see light.
Extend your faithful love to those who know you
and your justice to the upright of heart!
Isaiah 9:2-7
The people—women, children, and men—who walked in bleakness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in the land of shadow of death—
on them light has shined.
You have multiplied the nation;
you have magnified its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as people—women, children, and men—exult when dividing plunder.
For the yoke of their burden
and the staff on their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
For all the boots of the trampling warriors
and all the garments rolled in blood
shall be burned as fuel for the fire.
For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders,
and his name shall be called
a Wonder, a Counselor, a Mighty God,
Perpetual Parent, Prince of Peace.
His authority shall grow continually
and there shall be peace without end,
for the throne of David and his monarchy.
God will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time onward and forevermore.
The zeal of God, COMMANDER of heaven’s vanguard, will do this.
Sermon “Shadow and Light”
We have two beautiful, hopeful readings this morning—passages that emphasize the goodness and graciousness of God, God’s healing and saving mercy. Both these passages—beacons of God’s light—take place in the context of a time of bleakness, a time when the people know intimately what scripture calls “the shadow of death.”
We have a portion of Psalm 36 that emphasizes God’s faithful love three separate times. It emphasizes God as a refuge for us—that we can “hide beneath the shadow of God’s wings.” Unlike the shadow of death, protection takes place under God’s proverbial wings, a place of holy darkness. It reminds us that in God is all justice, all righteousness. With God’s presence, darkness is not a place of fear. But these beautiful, hopeful words follow a chilling description of evil. In the earlier verses of this psalm, we read,
Transgression speaks to the wicked
deep in their hearts;
there is no fear of God
before their eyes.
For they flatter themselves in their own eyes
that their iniquity cannot be found out and hated.
The words of their mouths are mischief and deceit;
they have ceased to act wisely and do good.
They plot mischief while on their beds;
they are set on a way that is not good;
they do not reject evil. ~Psalm 36:1-4
Then, the portion we read together this morning bursts upon the scene. It tells of God’s goodness as something they are experiencing now, even though the last two verses read:
Do not let the foot of the arrogant tread on me
or the hand of the wicked drive me away.
There the evildoers lie prostrate;
they are thrust down, unable to rise. ~Psalm 36:11-12
This is a plea to God to protect them from this wickedness in which God’s salvation and goodness are already present. This is a feature of Old Testament scripture, both psalms and prophecy: in the midst of devastation and evil, the writer speaks or sings of God’s saving work as already here, already accomplished.
We see this powerfully in our passage from Isaiah chapter 9. For the most part, the first 39 chapters of Isaiah consists of warnings—warnings to the leadership and warnings to the people—that God’s justice is coming. There is no justice in Judah under their current leaders. Last week’s passage from Isaiah 2 and this passage are the exceptions. In both these passages, Isaiah speaks of the saving acts of God as if it were already here, even though the context tells us the people are suffering under a terrible regime.
In chapter 8, Isaiah is bemoaning King Ahaz, who is complicit with the terrible king of Assyria. The details are all in 2 Kings 16.
Ahaz bows to the gods the Assyrians worship, including offering his sons as burnt sacrifices. In addition, he offers sacrifices in places other than the Temple in Jerusalem—these are called the “high places,” where offerings are made to pagan gods.
He loots the Temple and the royal palace of all their gold appointments, melts them down, and offers them to the Assyrian king as a pledge of his allegiance.
Then, when he travels to meet the Assyrian king, Ahaz is smitten with the altar he finds there. He decides it’s better than the current altar in the Temple—Solomon’s altar—and he sends a model of it home to the high priest in Jerusalem, telling him to replace Solomon’s bronze altar with a replica of this one. Home again, he offers sacrifices on this, what he now calls the “Great Altar,” and commands the high priest to only use this altar for sacrifices.
In the words of the ancient historian, “He did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord his God.”
This is the background for our reading, which begins,
The people—women, children, and men—who walked in bleakness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in the land of the shadow of death—
on them light has shined. ~Isaiah 9:2
Light is dispelling the bleakness, shining into all the hidden corners of the shadow of death. All the people can see it. And it has not even happened yet.
Just as Mary the mother of Jesus sang in her Magnificat, all the things God will do are described as already done:
You have multiplied the nation;
you have magnified its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as people—women, children, and men—exult when dividing plunder.
For the yoke of their burden
and the staff on their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian. ~Isaiah 9:3-4
The people not only experience exuberant, magnified joy, they have a delicious sense of victory. Everyone can taste it. God has broken the implements of war, and disarmed the oppressor. And it hasn’t even happened yet.
Then, just the smallest moment of recognizing one thing that has not yet happened, but will:
For all the boots of the trampling warriors
and all the garments rolled in blood
shall be burned as fuel for the fire. ~Isaiah 9:5
The real pain of war is acknowledged, even as this declaration tells us: We will burn all reminders of what has been lost.
Then, what is probably the most familiar portion of this passage thanks to Handel’s Messiah, but with Dr. Gafney’s translation, it takes on a different tone.
A child has been born. For the Judeans of the era, this is the child who was prophesied a few chapters earlier, when a young woman would conceive and give birth. We Christians have seen here a foreshadowing of the birth of Jesus. Both are true.
For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders,
and his name shall be called
a Wonder, a Counselor, a Mighty God,
Perpetual Parent, Prince of Peace. ~Isaiah 9:6
This king who is to come will be a Wonder. He will be a Counselor. He will be a Mighty God—even the ancient Israelites sometimes applied this description to their kings, highlighting the nature of their rule.
He will be a Perpetual Parent, which somehow makes the king’s role as a kind of father to his people more real, more intimate.
He will be the Prince of Peace. And all this, all these titles, showing this coming monarch in such sharp relief to the pandering Ahaz, betraying his God, his people, and even his children.
And none of this has happened yet.
The passage ends with words highlighting, not only the king’s authority, but also, his goodness. His righteousness, poured out as a gift of God. How well his government will function, in sharp contrast to the dumpster fire presided over by Ahaz. All this, because “The zeal of God, COMMANDER of heaven’s vanguard”—think, “Angel armies”—"will do this.”
All this… all this… is prayer. The people are not yet living in this time of true safety. They are not yet free of this terrible leader. They are watching as he throws away, not only the treasures of God’s Temple, but also everything they have been taught about their faith and what it means to live it out.
So they pray. They pray as if the things they are pleading for have already been accomplished—because God can do this. They pray the reality they long for into being. They pray with joy and confidence because they know that God is far more trustworthy than Ahaz, who can’t even be trusted to take care of his own children.
As many of you know I was in New York City on September 11, 2001. I was beginning my second year at Union theological Seminary, and I was late to the news of the destruction of the Twin Towers. I was sleeping in because my first class was at 2 PM that day I woke up. I went into the common room where my roommate and her daughter were watching TV. My roommate Hope told me that airplanes had just crashed into both Twin Towers and they have fallen. I blinked, and then said, I’m dreaming. This is a dream. Hope said, I wish it were.
There were no classes that week. Students streamed to hospitals to give blood, and downtown to help the survivors and the first responders—firefighters, police officers who would be there 24-7 for weeks.
The following Monday I went to my first class of the semester. It was with Professor Ann Ulanov, a psychoanalyst and scholar known for her work on Jung and on prayer. That first week back after 9-11, all the professors, apparently, had been told to give their students space to reflect on the past week. It was a trauma situation, of course, and, among other things, they were trying to ascertain if we were all OK. Professor Ulanov said something I will never forget. She said I know one of the features of trauma is a sense helplessness. We are all experiencing that. But we are a praying people, and our understanding of God is that God exists beyond time and space. To God all things are present—past, present, and future. At all times, God sees. This means that we can pray into the past. We can think of the people on those airplanes, and their fear, and we can pray for them to be surrounded with the love of God as their lives end.
By this, I understand that we can also, like the psalmist, like the prophets, pray into a future we are confident God will provide. Our faith teaches us that if all things are not well, then it is not the end.
This is a model of prayer for us. When we see what needs to be changed, who needs to be saved, what in our world horrifies us, what breaks our hearts and causes us to cry out in pain…let us pray the reality we long for into being. Let us pray with joy and confidence, even when we are experiencing the shadow of death, because God can do this. God is trustworthy. God is all goodness. God is all mercy. God is filled with steadfast love for God’s people. In fact, that is a prayer in itself—"God, you are filled with steadfast love for your people. You have shown us your steadfast love.”
Like the psalmist, like the prophets, let us trust that the light will indeed return. Like the prophets, let us pray the reality we long for into being. Let us pray with confidence for that which I know God has promised. Like the psalmists, let us pray God’s saving power into action. Like Isaiah, let us name the harm, and pray God right into the middle of it, God who is a Wonder, a Counselor, a Mighty God, Perpetual Parent, Prince of Peace.
Thanks be to God. Amen.