All Dressed Up And Somewhere to Go!
Sermon
LIGHT IN THE LAND OF SHADOWS
Sermons For Advent, Christmas And Epiphany, Cycle B
In Tennessee Williams' play Sweet Bird of Youth, the heckler says to Miss Lucy, "I believe that the silence of God, the absolute speechlessness of God, is a long, long and awful thing...." The late Carlyle Marney retired from his church in Charlotte and went to Wolf Pen Mountain. There he waited for God to say something. He confessed that he had figured if he could get some time completely free from his preaching, his church work, and his worldly obligations that God would really jabber. After five years of waiting, hiking, hoeing, splitting wood, sleeping, praying and studying, he finally reasoned that God had had ample time. But the inscrutable silence simply pushed him back on resources, memories, and ideals he already had. With great certainty he said, "It's as if God has said all God intends to say."1
Indeed, sometimes the speechlessness of God can be a long and awful thing. Such silence creates a kind of skepticism in communities about whether God has any coming salvation or not. The historical backdrop for today's text is similar. It helps us understand the wellspring of hope embodied in the promise of Isaiah. God will finally break God's silence, dress God's people, and give them somewhere to go.
Jerusalem had been leveled to the ground in 587 B.C. by the armies of Babylon. Much of the population had been marched off to the Tigris and Euphrates river valley areas. There they had lived in exile for the next fifty to seventy years. Not until the rise of Cyrus of Persia, the Abraham Lincoln of the ancient Middle East, were they freed to return to their homeland.
As the Hebrew people returned to their homeland with great optimism, the mood changed. Life became very bleak. Their optimism was abruptly challenged by tremendous economic difficulties. With few financial resources, meager food supplies, and harsh weather conditions, the people found the task of rebuilding their once proud homeland next to impossible. They had come home to a forsaken and abandoned city in ruins.
God seemed silent. God had made promises and the people had believed in them, but what had been promised had not materialized. God had, indeed, brought them back home. But their new life fell far short of what the exilic prophets had promised. To this disappointment the prophet Isaiah spoke God's word. Israel appeared to be a poorly-dressed people with no place to go, believing in a God who was apparently neglectful, indifferent, and silent.
Israel had nothing to wear, no word from God, and nowhere to go. Other nations had apparently noticed. They concluded that God was both impotent and indifferent.
The scripture, like the season of Christmas, heralds a remarkable transformation. God breaks the silence, dresses the people for the occasion like a bride on her wedding day, and elegantly proclaims a salvation through a most unlikely vehicle. Everything changes. The watching nations see God's awesome sovereignty. Something unexpected, wondrous, and irresistible fires out of history. The God who "loves justice" alters the circumstances of the oppressed and the brokenhearted. There has been no divorce between God and God's people. To the contrary, there has been a grand and glorious wedding. The prophet hammers home the reality with powerful imagery.
When you are going to be wed, it's only proper to expect some special clothes for the occasion. God plays both father of the groom and mother of the bride. Israel is decked out in a tuxedo of salvation and a wedding dress of righteousness. The needed garments are provided. Israel has been turned into a crown of beauty. Her smelly rags and humble surroundings have become the dignity and glory of the whole world. God, the divine tailor, is at work again! A new wellspring of hope is rising from the ruins and remains of defeat.
The divine tailor always weaves a fabric of glory out of the shame of human history. When Adam and Eve are thrown out of the garden of Eden, naked, sinful, and vulnerable, the divine tailor makes garments of skin and clothes them. They can rise unashamedly only in the clothing which God provides. Those clothes are woven by God's goodness. Out of nakedness and dirt, God's salvation and righteousness clothes Adam and Eve in new-birth-every-day attire and gives them somewhere to go. There is no need to hide or to be ashamed.
The divine tailor takes beaten, drab, defeated Israel, coming home to a wasteland at the end of exile, and fashions a wedding dress of salvation and righteousness. From her history comes a marriage that produces a child enabling all to rise unashamedly only in the clothing of righteousness. This new-birth-every-day attire gives them somewhere to go. There is no need to hide or be ashamed.
The divine tailor takes the smelly rags of shepherds and the swaddling clothes of a child in Bethlehem and fashions a wedding dress of salvation and righteousness for humankind. A world naked, vulnerable, and offensive has no need to hide or to be ashamed. Through the unlikely vehicle of a tiny Jewish babe, God's goodness fashions a wedding garment of salvation and righteousness.
The teachings of the divine tailor are clear. From the garden of Eden to the parable of a lost son who returns in rags from a pig sty only to have a father remove the filthy clothing and dress him in fine garments, God covers God's people for the occasions of celebration.
We are, indeed, all dressed up. Yet God's purpose is much larger than a lesson in haberdashery. There are few statements sadder than "all dressed up and nowhere to go."
So we've been clothed. So we've been made beautiful. So the rest of the world can see in our Christmas lights, candles, cantatas, and presents that we have been redeemed. What next? What does it mean to wear the clothes fashioned by God for us?
Just as God breaks the silence of indifference and neglect after he clothes his people, so does he expect his people to break their indifference and their neglect. Isaiah hammers home the message. God redeems not for the sake of Jerusalem alone. The ones clothed in garments woven from God's love are to become the human agents of God's transformation of God's world. God's people are not only all dressed up. They have somewhere to go.
God's people are not to stand quietly on the church's walls, dressed in royal garments, and remain silent while friends die of cancer and AIDS and the world tears apart through war and hunger. We are called to break our silence so all may come through the great tragedies in life with a spirit of hope. We are to break the silence and indifference of our privileged positions so others may be able to recover from the pain and suffering of their past events.
Ten years ago an African-American woman called a North Carolina pastor. She told him that she had moved to the state two years earlier from Georgia. Her sole purpose for the move had been her little boy. He played the viola. She enrolled him in the North Carolina School for the Arts and took odd jobs to enable the two of them to survive financially.
His mother explained to the pastor that she had picked church phone numbers out of the yellow pages and had been calling all morning. No church had been able to help her. Her son had never played before a live audience. She wondered if the pastor would help her by letting the boy perform a concert in the church. He had to go to Washington, D.C., the following week and audition for a scholarship. She stated, "We're here with very little besides a dream for him. We moved the whole family and spent all our money for that dream."
The time was hastily arranged for him to play in the church. Around sixty people turned out to create an audience and help the boy in his quest. As the well-dressed citizens sat in the fashionable church on Country Club Drive, the boy and his mother walked in. He was 13 years old. He wore tennis shoes and an old felt jacket, much too short for his arms. He had never owned a suit. He was tall, thin, and awkward looking. His shyness was almost reclusive. But he could play the viola. His talent was something special.
After his concert, one of the men in the church came up to the pastor. He said, "Some of us have been talking. We can't sit here in our nice clothes and let that boy go to an audition in Washington in tennis shoes and a felt jacket. He'll be competing against well-heeled people from elite backgrounds. We must at least dress him."
Several of the people collected a sizeable sum of money and called the mother. Early the next week the mother and son went to a department store and purchased the first two suits and new pair of shoes the boy had owned. A church member later commented to the pastor: "You might as well kiss that money good-bye. You'll never see any return on that. What a waste. Whoever heard of a black viola player, anyway?"
Seven years later the pastor received an envelope in the mail. Enclosed was a newspaper article clipped from the feature section of The Winston-Salem Journal. The headline of the half-page article read "Winston-Salem Musician Is Chosen to Play at Carnegie Hall." Underneath the picture of the tuxedo-clad young man was a hand-written sentence: "A dream that has come true."
Christ is born. We stand dressed in God's salvation and righteousness. Christ is born and the party has begun. We've been clothed, protected, and made beautiful. We've been set free and forgiven. We're all dressed up. But let us never forget that we have somewhere to go.
____________
1. Carlyle Marney, "Our Present Higher God," in To God Be The Glory, edited by Theodore Gill (Nashville: Abingdon, 1973), pp. 52-61.
Indeed, sometimes the speechlessness of God can be a long and awful thing. Such silence creates a kind of skepticism in communities about whether God has any coming salvation or not. The historical backdrop for today's text is similar. It helps us understand the wellspring of hope embodied in the promise of Isaiah. God will finally break God's silence, dress God's people, and give them somewhere to go.
Jerusalem had been leveled to the ground in 587 B.C. by the armies of Babylon. Much of the population had been marched off to the Tigris and Euphrates river valley areas. There they had lived in exile for the next fifty to seventy years. Not until the rise of Cyrus of Persia, the Abraham Lincoln of the ancient Middle East, were they freed to return to their homeland.
As the Hebrew people returned to their homeland with great optimism, the mood changed. Life became very bleak. Their optimism was abruptly challenged by tremendous economic difficulties. With few financial resources, meager food supplies, and harsh weather conditions, the people found the task of rebuilding their once proud homeland next to impossible. They had come home to a forsaken and abandoned city in ruins.
God seemed silent. God had made promises and the people had believed in them, but what had been promised had not materialized. God had, indeed, brought them back home. But their new life fell far short of what the exilic prophets had promised. To this disappointment the prophet Isaiah spoke God's word. Israel appeared to be a poorly-dressed people with no place to go, believing in a God who was apparently neglectful, indifferent, and silent.
Israel had nothing to wear, no word from God, and nowhere to go. Other nations had apparently noticed. They concluded that God was both impotent and indifferent.
The scripture, like the season of Christmas, heralds a remarkable transformation. God breaks the silence, dresses the people for the occasion like a bride on her wedding day, and elegantly proclaims a salvation through a most unlikely vehicle. Everything changes. The watching nations see God's awesome sovereignty. Something unexpected, wondrous, and irresistible fires out of history. The God who "loves justice" alters the circumstances of the oppressed and the brokenhearted. There has been no divorce between God and God's people. To the contrary, there has been a grand and glorious wedding. The prophet hammers home the reality with powerful imagery.
When you are going to be wed, it's only proper to expect some special clothes for the occasion. God plays both father of the groom and mother of the bride. Israel is decked out in a tuxedo of salvation and a wedding dress of righteousness. The needed garments are provided. Israel has been turned into a crown of beauty. Her smelly rags and humble surroundings have become the dignity and glory of the whole world. God, the divine tailor, is at work again! A new wellspring of hope is rising from the ruins and remains of defeat.
The divine tailor always weaves a fabric of glory out of the shame of human history. When Adam and Eve are thrown out of the garden of Eden, naked, sinful, and vulnerable, the divine tailor makes garments of skin and clothes them. They can rise unashamedly only in the clothing which God provides. Those clothes are woven by God's goodness. Out of nakedness and dirt, God's salvation and righteousness clothes Adam and Eve in new-birth-every-day attire and gives them somewhere to go. There is no need to hide or to be ashamed.
The divine tailor takes beaten, drab, defeated Israel, coming home to a wasteland at the end of exile, and fashions a wedding dress of salvation and righteousness. From her history comes a marriage that produces a child enabling all to rise unashamedly only in the clothing of righteousness. This new-birth-every-day attire gives them somewhere to go. There is no need to hide or be ashamed.
The divine tailor takes the smelly rags of shepherds and the swaddling clothes of a child in Bethlehem and fashions a wedding dress of salvation and righteousness for humankind. A world naked, vulnerable, and offensive has no need to hide or to be ashamed. Through the unlikely vehicle of a tiny Jewish babe, God's goodness fashions a wedding garment of salvation and righteousness.
The teachings of the divine tailor are clear. From the garden of Eden to the parable of a lost son who returns in rags from a pig sty only to have a father remove the filthy clothing and dress him in fine garments, God covers God's people for the occasions of celebration.
We are, indeed, all dressed up. Yet God's purpose is much larger than a lesson in haberdashery. There are few statements sadder than "all dressed up and nowhere to go."
So we've been clothed. So we've been made beautiful. So the rest of the world can see in our Christmas lights, candles, cantatas, and presents that we have been redeemed. What next? What does it mean to wear the clothes fashioned by God for us?
Just as God breaks the silence of indifference and neglect after he clothes his people, so does he expect his people to break their indifference and their neglect. Isaiah hammers home the message. God redeems not for the sake of Jerusalem alone. The ones clothed in garments woven from God's love are to become the human agents of God's transformation of God's world. God's people are not only all dressed up. They have somewhere to go.
God's people are not to stand quietly on the church's walls, dressed in royal garments, and remain silent while friends die of cancer and AIDS and the world tears apart through war and hunger. We are called to break our silence so all may come through the great tragedies in life with a spirit of hope. We are to break the silence and indifference of our privileged positions so others may be able to recover from the pain and suffering of their past events.
Ten years ago an African-American woman called a North Carolina pastor. She told him that she had moved to the state two years earlier from Georgia. Her sole purpose for the move had been her little boy. He played the viola. She enrolled him in the North Carolina School for the Arts and took odd jobs to enable the two of them to survive financially.
His mother explained to the pastor that she had picked church phone numbers out of the yellow pages and had been calling all morning. No church had been able to help her. Her son had never played before a live audience. She wondered if the pastor would help her by letting the boy perform a concert in the church. He had to go to Washington, D.C., the following week and audition for a scholarship. She stated, "We're here with very little besides a dream for him. We moved the whole family and spent all our money for that dream."
The time was hastily arranged for him to play in the church. Around sixty people turned out to create an audience and help the boy in his quest. As the well-dressed citizens sat in the fashionable church on Country Club Drive, the boy and his mother walked in. He was 13 years old. He wore tennis shoes and an old felt jacket, much too short for his arms. He had never owned a suit. He was tall, thin, and awkward looking. His shyness was almost reclusive. But he could play the viola. His talent was something special.
After his concert, one of the men in the church came up to the pastor. He said, "Some of us have been talking. We can't sit here in our nice clothes and let that boy go to an audition in Washington in tennis shoes and a felt jacket. He'll be competing against well-heeled people from elite backgrounds. We must at least dress him."
Several of the people collected a sizeable sum of money and called the mother. Early the next week the mother and son went to a department store and purchased the first two suits and new pair of shoes the boy had owned. A church member later commented to the pastor: "You might as well kiss that money good-bye. You'll never see any return on that. What a waste. Whoever heard of a black viola player, anyway?"
Seven years later the pastor received an envelope in the mail. Enclosed was a newspaper article clipped from the feature section of The Winston-Salem Journal. The headline of the half-page article read "Winston-Salem Musician Is Chosen to Play at Carnegie Hall." Underneath the picture of the tuxedo-clad young man was a hand-written sentence: "A dream that has come true."
Christ is born. We stand dressed in God's salvation and righteousness. Christ is born and the party has begun. We've been clothed, protected, and made beautiful. We've been set free and forgiven. We're all dressed up. But let us never forget that we have somewhere to go.
____________
1. Carlyle Marney, "Our Present Higher God," in To God Be The Glory, edited by Theodore Gill (Nashville: Abingdon, 1973), pp. 52-61.
