Isaiah 64:1-9

Isaiah 64:1-9 NRSV 

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
    so that the mountains would quake at your presence—
²  as when fire kindles brushwood
    and the fire causes water to boil—
to make your name known to your adversaries,
    so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
³ When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,
    you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
⁴ From ages past no one has heard,
    no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
    who works for those who wait for him.
⁵ You meet those who gladly do right,
    those who remember you in your ways.
But you were angry, and we sinned;
    because you hid yourself we transgressed.
⁶ We have all become like one who is unclean,
    and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.
We all fade like a leaf,
    and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
⁷ There is no one who calls on your name,
    or attempts to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
    and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.
⁸ Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
    we are the clay, and you are our potter;
    we are all the work of your hand.
⁹ Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord,
    and do not remember iniquity for ever.
    Now consider, we are all your people.

           Isaiah 64:1-9 is part of a larger psalm of communal lamentation that extends from Isaiah 63:7 to 64:11. It continues the lament in the form of an appeal for help. People at the end of their rope and feel as if they have reached bottom, if they appeal to God at all, will do so with a sense of urgency. They want God and they want God now. I sometimes wish God were always obviously present, like the blinding flash of light or an unmistakable voice from above. However, it seems as if God more often whispers. The eyes and ears of faith will get the message. We need to be leaning toward God to hear what God is saying to us. God may be present but standing in the shadows. This text is for the powerless of all times and all places. ¹O that you would tear open the heavens and come down. The absence of the Lord has been more than the lack of a deliverer; it is the removal of that guardian power that has allowed Israel, throughout its history, to cleave to paths of justice and righteousness. Beseeching or begging the Lord in this way is for the sake of allowing Israel to return to its partnership with its God. It represents a longing for the Lord to show up in an obvious way. This appearance of the Lord will have accompanying natural affects, so that the mountains would quake at your presence, the Lord doing this at the exodus, bringing deliverance, and at Sinai in bringing the Torah, ² as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil. Such visible signs have a purpose: to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! Further, ³ When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. The prophet draws on the very ancient imagery of the theophany at Sinai, found in Judges 5:5 (“The mountains quaked before the LORD, the One of Sinai”), Exodus 19:18 (“Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the LORD had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently”), and earlier in the book of Isaiah itself (5:25, “Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against his people, and he stretched out his hand against them and struck them; the mountains quaked, and their corpses were like refuse in the streets”). (See also Psalm 68:7-8; Habakkuk 3:2-15.) Isaiah is drawing on the ancient tradition of the salvific presence of the Lord in the midst of Israel but is developing it here to include the subduing of the enemies of the Lord and Israel. The violent presence of the Lord at Sinai, in the earliest layers of the tradition, had been exclusively for Israel’s benefit and witnessed exclusively by Israel; here in Isaiah, the request for that same divine presence is made not only for Israel’s benefit, but also for the shock and awe of those who have brought Israel to its current grievous condition (cf. Psalm 79:5-13). The prayer is for a theophany. Paul will loosely use these images in I Corinthians 2:9. ⁴ From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, in a rare affirmation of monotheism in the Old Testament, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. The Lord is the only God.

Have you ever been at the end of your rope with God? I get it. Our perception of time and circumstances suggest immediate action in a certain direction. Yet, the Lord works on a different schedule than we do. Good timing in the mind of the Lord is not the same as our sense of good timing. If we are patient, we will grow through times of waiting in our lives. We will grow through the difficulties we must face, even if it seems like we struggle without help from the Lord. The Lord will reward our patience. In our waiting, we must have some care for the soul. Our frustration with waiting will weaken our ability to resist temptation. Christians pray that the Lord would not lead them into temptation in the Lord’s Prayer. As one person quipped, I can find it fine on my own. 

 

Thus, in verses 5-7 he then moves to a confession of sins. The poet admits ⁵ You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. He hints at the reason for sin and succumbing to temptation. When our desire has an orientation to what God wants in our lives and in the world, we will avoid succumbing to temptation. The temptation to move another direction is powerless unless my desire becomes disordered. When we gladly do what God wants, when we remember the ways of the Lord and gladly do them, we have rightly ordered desire. Our disordered desire gives power to temptation when it comes our way. This text reminds us that ethical concerns are never far from the Isaiah traditions. The Lord was preeminently a social (God of the ancestors) and ethical deity, where knowledge of the Lord is found in right behavior.  Proper conduct was defined by how closely one adhered to the “statutes and ordinances” given through the law and through prophetic revelation. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself, we transgressed, and thus the Lord was no longer present! As in 63:17, the poet offers a remarkable and daring assertion that the Lord must accept some responsibility for the sins of Judah. Their continuing hardships have worn away their hope. If the Lord would intervene more quickly on their behalf, they would have obvious reason to abandon their misdeeds and adopt a firm belief in the authority of the Lord. The response of the Lord to the sins of the nation has created a cycle, with crime leading to punishment, punishment to disbelief, disbelief to more crime. He admits that ⁶ We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. Such ritual uncleanness is a reminder of the ritual uncleanness of women during menstruation as we find in Leviticus 15, 19:24. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. He admits that ⁷ There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. This comes across as a mild rebuke of the Lord for not acting sooner in a saving way. Rather, the Lord has acted in judgment. It reminds me of the Woody Allen comment that if God exists, God is an underachiever. Something of this type of cynicism is behind such statements. We now see that the prophet wants to offer some assurance that the Lord will answer this prayer for divine activity. He affirms: ⁸ Yet, O Lord, you are our Father, a rare way to the address the Lord in the Old Testament,[1] occurring only some 15 times (Deuteronomy 32:6; Isaiah 63:16 (twice) and 64:7; Jeremiah 3:4, 19; 31:9; Malachi 1:6; 2:10 — all with reference to God as the Father of the nation of Israel; and 2 Samuel 7:14; 1 Chronicles 17:13; 22:10; 28:6; Psalm 68:5; 89:26 — with reference to God as an individual’s father. Such a caring relationship with Israel is the basis for the appeal to deliver them again. Setting aside the post-modern polemical turn to which such a discussion can often lead, it is common sense to remind ourselves that human fatherhood is not what it means that God is our Father. When Scripture calls God our Father it adopts an analogy only to transcend it at once.[2] In comparison with divine fatherhood, all human fatherhood pales. For this reason, it still retains its power even at a time when patriarchal forms decay and the role of the father within the family loses its distinctive contours. At that point, the fatherhood of God can truly become the epitome of the comprehensive care of God, the type of care that human fatherhood can long to offer.[3] Therefore, we are the clay, and you are our potter; we as a people are all the work of your hand, an image used in 45:9 as well. He has acknowledged that the Lord is angry. He finds this understandable. Yet, he considers the possibility that the anger of the Lord has overstepped its bounds. Thus, his prayer is: ⁹ Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity for ever. Now consider, we are all your people. He has already admitted that they have behaved like those whom the Lord does not rule (63:18). 

The full lament may be one of the powerful communal laments in the Bible. Here is an anguished lament of those returned from exile. They have returned to the ruins of the temple and the rubble of defeated national hope. It seems as if Israel is no longer belongs to God or that God no longer belongs to Israel. The prayer moves beyond tearful lament to a bold calling of God to account. It reminds the Almighty of divine deeds of deliverance in ages past. It must be a fearful thing for a people to arrive at a point in their history where they charge God with hidden the presence of God from them. The psalm admits the sinfulness of the people. Yet, they dare to believe that they are but clay, formed by the skilled divine potter. The hope, even as they are at the end of their collective rope, is for the coming of God who remembers them, even when they have forgotten God. This hope reforms them into people more worthy to bear the image of the divine. In good or ill, their lives show the thumbprints of the hands of an active God.[4]

Willa Cather has a Christmas story that portrays a young man who had moved away from his family back East and was in Chicago.  Without food for many days without friends, and with suicidal thoughts, he decides on Christmas Eve to steal some food from a house.  He had never stolen before but thinks he is owed some food at least on Christmas Eve.  When he breaks into the home, however, he finds that he has burglarized the house of his parents — who had moved to Chicago.  His mother catches him while stealing, and he confesses all to her and to his father.  He prepares to leave, but they say, “Stay.  We’ll make things right.”  He looks up at her questioningly, “I wonder if you know how much you must pardon?”  “O, my poor boy, much or little, what does it matter?  Have you wandered so far, paid such a bitter price for knowledge, and not yet learned that love has nothing to do with pardon or forgiveness, that it only loves, and loves, and loves.^[5]

Charles Wesley has a line in one of his hymns that goes like this:

 

Father, let our faithful mind

            Rest, on thee alone inclined;

            Every anxious thought repress,

            Keep our souls in perfect peace.

 

            An Amy Carmichael song goes like this:

 

            Thou art the Lord who slept upon the pillow,

            Thou art the Lord who soothed the furious sea.

            What matter beating wind and tossing billow

            If only we are in the boat with thee?

            Hold us in quiet through the age-long minute

            While thou art silent, and the wind is shrill:

            Can the boat sink while thou, dear Lord, art in it?

Can the heart faint that waiteth on thy will?

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[1] (Pannenberg, Systematic Theology 1998, 1991)Volume 1, 260.

[2] (Barth, Church Dogmatics 2004, 1932-67)I.1 [10.1] 389. 

[3] (Pannenberg, Systematic Theology 1998, 1991)Volume 1, 262. 

[4] The inspiration for these thoughts is Claus Westermann, although I have lost the reference.

^[5]Willa Cather, “The Burglar’s Christmas,” Christmas Tales: Celebrated Authors in the Magic of the Season.