Sermons

The Old Words Come To Us

John Wilkinson                               Third Presbyterian Church  December 12, 2004                             Isaiah 35:1-10

A week ago yesterday, we were privileged to attend the wedding of Bonny’s sister, Jennifer, in Clearwater, Florida. I am glad to report that there was no snow on the ground! It was a lovely event, the gathering of family and friends, the joining together of two fine people.

At the same time, we could not help but recognize that just twelve days earlier many of that same company had gathered for a funeral service for Bonny’s father. We all had hoped that he would join his wife in walking their daughter down the aisle; that he did not was sad, to be sure, and bittersweet, although as you know how these things happen, his presence was surely felt as well as his absence, for which we were grateful.

Each event had similar markings: too much food, not enough sleep, tears and laughter and tender embraces, a Yankee interloper repeatedly asking who certain people were and how they were related to certain other people, children frolicking.

And this: when it was all over, the benedictions pronounced, the meals complete, the flowers delivered, there we were, sitting at the kitchen table telling stories.

It is what we do, is it not? It is sentimental and nostalgic, to be sure. But it is more than that. It is the hope of memory and the power of imagination.

We had busy lives, and we seem to accelerate to overdrives in the weeks leading up to December 25. Who has time to stop and consider? Who has time to remember? Who has time to hope? Perhaps you would resonate with a New Yorker cartoon, one frantic shopper passing a friend on the sidewalk. “We’ve decided to cut back and have Christmas every other year.”

Who has time? And yet there we were, gathered around the kitchen table, telling stories, sometimes on each other, sometimes on the dearly departed, the truly dearly departed. Those of us partnered into the family sat at the periphery and kind of listened to it all, the hope of memory and the power of imagination.

And so imagine a people, eight centuries or so before the event we will mark in thirteen days. You are a people who have gathered around a story, around a relationship, a people once lost and now found, a people once wandering but now at home, a people once rootless but now covenanted, covenanted to a God known for justice and righteousness. Imagine all the stories you have gathered over centuries, Abraham and Isaac, Rachel and Sarah and Rebekah, stories of battle and redemption, stories of progeny and fulfillment.

But something has happened to the story. It is getting lost in the midst of other stories. The people seem to be forgetting the story, and even more importantly, seem to be forgetting the core element of the story, this covenantal relationship with a God whose business is justice and righteousness.

And so rather than remembering that relationship and imagining its power, the people neglect those in need. They forget acts of loving-kindness and mercy. They neglect the justice mandate. The focus of their religion becomes religion itself. They worship worship, rather than the God who forged their identity from chaos and nothingness. They lose their memory—literally and figuratively—and they don’t’ tell the old stories anymore. And so they are headed for disaster. Exile from the land. They will be sent away, and they don’t really know that it’s coming.

But thank God, thank God, that God calls some people to remember in special ways, and to tell the story. Prophets, we call them. They do not have an easy job. They are not particularly liked because they have the difficult task of telling the truth. They engage in the old cliché of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.

And so it was that in that eighth century moment, such a prophet named Isaiah took it upon himself, or rather answered God’s call, to tell the people that they had wandered, drifted, forgotten, and that they would be sent away for a while. It is not an easy word to say, nor is it an easy word to hear. And yet we pause for a moment to listen, and by so doing, jump-start the process of remembering, and put back on the table the holy activity of telling the story after we convinced ourselves it was not so necessary.

You will go away for awhile, Isaiah says, but you will come back. And that promise is extended to us, as is the call to remember and the mandate to tell the story. You will go away for awhile, but you will come back, and here is what it will look like when you return.

· The wilderness shall be glad.
· The desert shall blossom.
· Weak hands and feeble knees will be made strong.
· Whatever fear is in our hearts will disappear.
· Blind eyes will see.
· Deaf ears will hear.
· Silent voices will speak.
· Lame bodies shall leap for joy.
· And there will be a travelers’ way, a highway. We will travel on it and not be threatened and never get lost.
· And we shall return.
· We will go away for a while, yet we shall return, and be glad.
· And sorrow at sighing shall flee away.
· And sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Remember. Remember and tell. Gather at the kitchen tables of our hearts, the kitchen tables of our churches and communities and families. Gather and remember and tell the story.

Poet Robert Bridges imagined an old man remembering the story we remember this season. Composer Gerald Finzi set text to tune. “The old words come to me by the riches of time.” The riches of time. The hope of memory. The power of imagination.

One time, in a season not unlike this one, I visited a church member. We spent the requisite time in chit-chat. The latest doctor’s visit. Living arrangements. How are things at church? And then, for an instant, there was a holy transition, and the stories and memories poured forth, across the decades, the riches of time. Childhood. College. Courtship. A beloved spouse no longer present. Children and grandchildren, now sadly, no longer present as well.

The old words came to her, and by grace, to me. At the end we looked at pictures as if to confirm those words, to put flesh and blood on the stories that needed no flesh and blood because they had been incarnated by their very remembering. And then we prayed.

May we do so now? O God, help us to remember, and when words fail, when music fades away, give us dreams, help us to imagine, allow us to hear the prophet’s voice, that the wilderness shall be glad, we shall leap like a dear, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. Amen.