{"id":254,"date":"2021-12-23T17:44:56","date_gmt":"2021-12-23T22:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/?p=254"},"modified":"2021-12-24T10:33:49","modified_gmt":"2021-12-24T15:33:49","slug":"christmas-eve-ii-isaiah-62-6-12-luke-2-1-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/2021\/12\/23\/christmas-eve-ii-isaiah-62-6-12-luke-2-1-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Eve (II) – Isaiah 62: 6-12; Luke 2: 1-20"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cThe Lord has proclaimed to the end of the earth: Say to daughter Zion: See your salvation comes; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him\u201d They shall be called \u201cThe Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord\u201d and you shall be called \u201cSought Out, A City Not Forsaken\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of all the prophets, the prophet Isaiah is the most well known to Christians, the most quoted one in all of the New Testament. I should actually talk about \u201cthe scroll of Isiah\u201d rather than about the prophet Isaiah, since most scholars believe that the book of Isaiah was written over two hundreds centuries, by at least three different authors. I am not sharing these facts to teach a class about the prophets, as I am pretty sure that on Christmas Eve we\u2019re not that interested in doing Bible History. What I think is important for us to know though, is that the scroll of Isaiah has been written over a very difficult time for the people of Israel. During those two hundreds years, the people of Judah had seen their kingdom falling apart, Jerusalem been besieged and attacked and fell at the hands of their enemies, the elite of the people being sent into Exile in Babylon where they lived as servants \u2013 until seventy years later they were finally allowed to come back – and although that day when they returned must have felt like a wonderful day, they still had to find the whole city in ruins and the Temple to be rebuilt from scratch. Difficult times indeed. And yet, covering the whole period, we have the Book of Isaiah \u2013 the prophet, or should I say the prophets and all the other prophets we\u2019ve been talking about since the beginning of this season, the prophets being with the people all along, warning them, nudging them, comforting them \u2013 and in the voices of the prophets \u2013 the presence of God being manifested through them, in spite of it all, in the midst of it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I find it helpful in difficult times to be reminded of the difficult times people had before us, and especially I guess, for us as Christians, to be reminded of the difficult times of the people of God. Through adversity, sorrow and loss, their voices today can still be heard and they show us how they have struggled, doubted, lost their faith and then found it again \u2013 how they have managed to keep the hope alive and remained faithful through the messiness, the loss and the pain – and mostly, I find it helpful to see how God remained faithful to God\u2019s people, in spite of all the suffering they had endured from the hands of others and in spite of the hurt they had inflicted on God, on themselves and on one another. In our passage today, after seventy years in Exile, the people are back to Jerusalem, after such a long time of repentance, a time so long that the scroll of Isaiah tells us that Jerusalem had now paid \u201ctwice for her sin\u201d, seventy years reflecting and praying about how things went so wrong for the promised city, their kings and all the people and now they’re ready to start anew and God is ready to start anew with them, picking up where they left off for something better, rebuilding together their life and their story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seventy years of Exile. Let\u2019s think about it for a moment. The people had been for seventy years away from their Temple, for seventy years they had been away from their city, for seventy years they had been away from their land, and for some of them, for seventy years they had been away from their family \u2013 that is, for the few ones who survived for such a long period. We\u2019ve been two years in this pandemic \u2013 two years – and we are already at the stage where we feel that we cannot take it anymore, not for another minute. I am not going to tell you: \u201cSee, what are we complaining about?\u201d, because one thing I have noticed over time is that it\u2019s never useful when we suffer to be reminded that others have or had it worst. Generally, it just drags us down a little bit more, adding guilt to sorrow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as I have just mentioned, there are two things I find useful:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first thing that may help us is to understand how God can use those times of Exile \u2013 whatever the Exile might be – to bring us to a deeper level of spirituality, a deeper level of wisdom and maturity, and this is certainly what God did with Israel. Maybe you remember how the prophet Malachi calls the Exile a time of purification \u2013 and yes, it can happen sometimes that trough suffering we become better people. We learn what really matters, we take care of each other. That happens sometimes. We also have to acknowledge that sometimes also suffering does not bring the best in ourselves: we get impatient, we fight, we try to survive at the expense of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the second thing I noticed to be really useful \u2013 and really beautiful- is to see how God remains faithful to us \u2013 no matter what we do to ourselves, no matter what others do to us. God still comes to find us, to redeem us and to bring us back to life. This is indeed what we see in this passage of Isaiah: God ready to start it all over again with his people when the people thought it was all over, God ready to pick up where they left off, yet transformed and renewed, and God ready to rebuild Jerusalem, and to bring back joy, strength and abundance – wine and bread to all, reads the text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this is the story of the Bible you see: God finding a way for God\u2019s people. God finding a way to God\u2019s people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is to me the story of Christmas. We so often hear messages like that at church: \u201cHave you found God?\u201d or \u201cHave you found faith?”, but in the end we know how unable we are to find God, or to find faith and sometimes to find any hope or joy at all in the world \u2013 in the end, it\u2019s never us finding God, it\u2019s God finding us, like the angels found the shepherds in the night, on that night we remember this night. I mentioned last week how Luke\u2019s Gospel is the Gospel of the poor and the humble, and we can certainly see that in the way Christ came to us. Christ came to us in the darkest and longest night, in exhaustion, isolation and rejection. Joseph and Mary were away from their home, their family, their land, they had been pushed away by the people of Bethlehem and little did they know that they wouldn\u2019t be back in Nazareth for several years because the king would want to murder their child. And yet, this is in this reality that God chose to visit them and to be with them and to start over with the people, and God will visit them and be with them in a way that God\u2019s people have never experienced before \u2013 God will be with them in the flesh of a newborn. And of course for us as Christians we know how, throughout in life, Jesus will continue to visit humble people, people plagued with poverty, disease or handicap, people scorned by other people, people cursed by their own wrong doings, hurting themselves, hurting others, feeling lost and forsaken. Jesus came to all, had a message for all, had compassion on all and was ready to start it all over again with each one of them, as God was ready to start it all over again after the Exile in Jerusalem and on this Holy night where God made God present in the flesh of an infant. What Christmas tells us is that there is no situation that God cannot visit, assume and redeem \u2013 What Christmas tells us is that nothing is lost when God is present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so it is for us I guess. The example of our ancestors in faith shows us that however difficult the times, God will still find a way for us, will find a way to us, and even, maybe, be with us in ways God has never been before. It makes no difference to God the situation we are in, no matter how bad it seems to us, no matter the darkness, God promises God will find us, and will bring back to us joy, hope and abundance – bread and wine – as God did in the ruins of Jerusalem, as God will do once again in the upper room on Jesus\u2019s last supper we will celebrate in a few minutes. The prophets remind us that through it all we are not forsaken, but rather sought after. That\u2019s the story of the Bible, and it can be our story too. So maybe like the shepherds in the fields, the only thing we have to do is to allow God to find us in the depth of this night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wish you all a very blessed Christmas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Lord has proclaimed to the end of the earth: Say to daughter Zion: See your salvation comes; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him\u201d They shall be called \u201cThe Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord\u201d and you shall be called \u201cSought Out, A City Not Forsaken\u201d. Of all the prophets, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Christmas Eve (II) – Isaiah 62: 6-12; Luke 2: 1-20”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259,"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions\/259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sermons-stm.belanger.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}