January 17, 2010
 
Scripture:         Isaiah 62:1-5
 
Sermon:           “Words to Live By”
 
            Turning our hearts and minds now to the word of God, let us read together the scripture lesson for the day.  Turn with me to the prophet Isaiah, chapter 62, where we will read together verses 1 through 5.  You can find that easily on page 810 of the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures in the pew Bible.
            I want to try to set the stage a little bit here.  We’re about to read some words together that are lofty descriptions of the city of Jerusalem.  And that’s all well and good.  It’s a good thing to love the place where you are from.  But, if you don’t know the situation that they were written or spoken, they just sound like a guy who has a very high opinion of his hometown.  And frankly to read them several thousand years later on the other side of the world would leave us thinking so what?
            If you don’t know what’s going on when Isaiah spoke these words, they might as well be the lyrics to New York, New York—you know that Frank Sinatra song?  Start spreading the news.  I’m leaving today.  I want to be a part of it.  New York, New York.  That’s what these lofty words about Jerusalem might sound like to us.  And, frankly, so what?
            So, I want you to think about the city of New Orleans somewhere around November of 2005.  That’s when the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina had finally been drained out of the city and people could start going back to their homes to assess all the damage.  Just put yourself there in the middle of a street with all of that devastation and take a look around.  It’s a desolate mess with garbage and debris and flooded out cars everywhere.  Houses, you know, that are mostly standing where they were built but completely corroded on the inside with waterlogged furniture and mold.  And this scene stretches out for miles.
            Now you’re standing in the middle of the Jerusalem that Isaiah was talking about.  Keep those images of New Orleans in your mind as your hear these words about Jerusalem.  Because what the prophet is talking about here are the ruins of a city that was devastated years ago by a powerful army.  The temple and many, many buildings were left burned to the ground.  The people had been driven away and it was just a wasteland as far as the eye could see.
            Now, let us listen to the word of the Lord…
 
            For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch.  The nations shall see your vindication, and all the kings your glory; and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give.  You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.  You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and you land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married.  For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.
 
            This place, this utterly demolished and filthy, barren place, Isaiah says, is going to be a glorious sight some day.  Take a look around at this awful mess.  Look at it.  Look at it because some day this town is going to rise up from the ashes like a phoenix and be the envy of the entire world.  That is, basically, what you and I just read together in the Bible.
Keep thinking about New Orleans after the flood.  Think about lower Manhattan in the days after September 11, 2001.  Recall the images you’ve seen of London after the bombings of World War II.  Just flattened, devastated places.  Maybe the images of what has happened in Port-au-Prince, Haiti this past week are burned into your conscience.
Jerusalem here in this part of the Bible is really all of those things.  And it is there and at that time that God sends the prophet Isaiah to start talking about a glorious future waiting to unfold.
So, these are incredible words.  These are the words of a God that takes a look around at the mess things are in and says, “I do believe we can turn all of this around.”
Would you be willing to believe that?  Would you be willing to stand there in the midst of the ruins and believe that it could all be rebuilt into something so beautiful?  Would you?  Because not too many people then could.  Do you see?  God had to send a prophet to speak these words because a whole lot of people couldn’t see a future in this pile of rubble they used to call Jerusalem.  They couldn’t see a future.
It is hard to believe.  It is hard to be hopeful.  It is hard to think positively when you’ve suffered through disappointment and heartbreak and devastation.  It is hard to dream again.
It seems to me that God is trying to put a vision before these defeated people.  These are words to live by.  These are words that say, “This current mess is not the way things are meant to be.  There is something bigger and brighter waiting.”  These are words to live by.  Without words like this, without a vision like this, without a hope like this, how could God’s people begin to put the pieces of their lives back together?  Words to live by if you’ll believe them.
There was a preacher down in Georgia several decades ago.  He was a little before my time.  But, being from Georgia myself, I’m quite familiar with the way things used to be down there.  I guess they weren’t all that good anywhere.  They’re not entirely right these days.  But, back then and down there it used to be a terrible thing the way folks with black skin, dark skin, were treated.  Legally, too.
You lived, you know, in places where your people lived.  You had jobs that were meant for your people.  You went to the schools where your people were made to go to school and folks said that things were separate but equal.  You drank from your people’s water fountains.  You got your meals from the back door of restaurants.  And you were intimidated by folks that would do just about anything to make sure that none of that stuff ever changed.
It all sounds awful, and I’m not really even telling half the story.
But, there was this preacher down in Georgia.  He’d lived through all of that.  And mostly, you know, he’d lived through it on the short end of things.  He was a black man in the Deep South.  You know they used to sing songs in black churches that said amazing things.  Remarkable things.  They sang songs like this:  Deep river.  My home is over Jordan.  And if you believe something like that, my home is over Jordan (my home is over Jordan no matter what the world around me thinks)…if you sing songs like that in church and you believe what they are saying, it’ll give you a much different understanding of yourself than what cruel people try to teach you your entire life.
Do you hear that?  When a black boy down in Georgia sings church songs in the 1940s that tell him that he’s got just as much place in God’s heaven that any white person does, he doesn’t have to accept that he’s somehow less of a human being.  He’s learned words to live by.
It’s amazing the power of words like that.  This preacher from Georgia?  He used to preach these powerful sermons.  Sometimes they were in churches.  Sometimes they were in other places.  This one time, however, he stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.  Just people as far as the eye could see had gathered to protest their government for the way things legally were.  And this preacher stood there and said things like:
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
Now, these are the words that Martin Luther King, Jr. used.  I have a dream.  A dream, he said.  Words to live by.  Words that say, “This current mess is not the way things are supposed to be.  There is something bigger and brighter waiting.”
I have a dream, he said, that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
And you see, then, that dreams, visions, words to live by—they have power for those who dare to believe them.
I want you to try this on for size.  You’ve heard me preach for any length of time then you know that there is this one verse in the Bible that just catches for me how radical, how wonderful this faith is that we have as Christians.  I think you should know this one by heart.  Romans 5:8.  Write that down.  Mark it in your Bible.  Memorize it.  Whatever it takes.  You should know this.  Romans 5:8
God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.
Still sinners!  Still.  That’s the condition God came into it.  Still sinners.  While we still were sinners Christ died for us.
It is as if God is standing right there in the middle of our own mess, our own brokenness, our own devastation, and then saying, “This is not the way things are supposed to be.  And this is not the way things have to be.  There is something bigger and brighter waiting.”
These are words to live by!
And they are your words.
(The following is optional depending on time.)
            We took a group of folks from here at Park the other night to Luther Luckett Correctional Complex over near LaGrange, Kentucky.  It’s a medium security prison for men.  Correctional Complex—it’s a prison.  And in that prison is a church congregation.  Our sister churches in Kentucky have started a new church made up of inmates at the prison, which is a different sort of thing to do.  There are only 14 such congregations in all of the nation.
            But, we went there the other night to worship with them.  They have folks from outside churches come about once a month to do this.  It gives them a sense of fellowship and normalcy for a brief time while they’re incarcerated.
            And don’t get me wrong.  These are inmates.  And they’ve committed crimes—many of them heinous crimes.  It is really something though, to sit with these men and worship God together with them.  It makes the gospel of Jesus Christ strangely more powerful to consider what words like forgiveness and grace really mean.
            One man spoke to me after the worship service on Friday night.  He said, “Brother, it’s a odd thing to consider that this place might actually be saving my life.  I mean prison.  I’ve been on one kind of drug or another since I was nine years old.  And being here just might be the thing that gets me off of that stuff.”
            Now, what kind of place is it that allows a nine year old to take drugs?  Or that gives a nine year old drugs?  Or doesn’t pay attention to a nine year old taking drugs?  That’s a place of devastation and destruction.  But, there in that place this young man has a glimpse of what his own life could like.  If he could just believe that vision, that vision God has given to him, it could carry him into a future he’s never been allowed to imagine.
            He said, “Somebody told me in here that if I can see it, I can be it.”
            That sounds an awful lot like the prophet Isaiah to me.  Sounds an awful lot like the Christ who would, while we still we sinners, die for us.  And you don’t have to be an inmate to be trying to put your life together in a better and brighter way.  These are for all of us words to live by.
           
Rev. David James Brown
Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)