Advent 1b.05     November 27, 2005

“Oh that you would tear open the heavens
       and come down.”
Isaiah’s prayer is poignant, painful in its longing,
       ardent in its desire.
“Oh that” is an expression like “if only”

       – but so much stronger.
Isaiah wants God to come now.
We need God now.

Advent is the season of this prayer.
It is the time when we face our experience
       of God’s absence and our desire.
“Oh that” is a cry of raw desire.

Who is this God Isaiah longs for
       and what do we hope God will do?
From First Isaiah, all we can tell is that
       it has to do with power.

But by 2nd and 3rd Isaiah, the hope is clearly
       for a consummation of love.
Still power remains part of it.
In our Gospel lesson, Jesus prophesies the day
       when he will return in power.

We hope for a marriage of love and power.
Most of the pain we endure is because
       we have been graced with the capacity to love
       but so often love has not the power
               to achieve its purpose.
Most of Robert Browning’s poetry was about his hope
       that someday our love will be given the power
       to overcome evil and all that hurts us
                and diminishes our lives.

Hugh Martin, in his book, The Faith of Robert Browning,
       writes, “The pity and love which make (people) revolt
               against suffering and evil is implanted in them
               by their creator . . . .
               The evil in the world is there to be overcome,
               and it can be overcome.
               Love is active in the world and who put it there?
               One day love will have the irresistible power
                        that it deserves to have.”

Christians talk a lot about loving.

         “Love the Lord. Love your neighbor.
                Love your enemy.”
It’s our universal prescription for every ill.
We talk about it, pray about it, sing about it.
But do we actually believe in it? Does it work?

We do love each other.
Love happens as we care for friends and family.
It happens in Church.
Love is at work when we try to reconcile differences
        across barriers of race and religion.

We try to love the addicted into sobriety,
        the sad into joy, the broken into wholeness.
Love is the impetus for all our efforts to make peace.
Which of us has not tried to heal our own hurting
        or someone else’s hurting with enough love?
And sometimes it works.
Sometimes love flourishes and heals and gives life.

But over against the times love wins,
        there are those other times

        – the ones W. H. Auden called,

                 “all the failed caresses.”

There have been so many efforts to reconcile
        the races here in America,
        so many efforts to bring peace to the Middle East,
        so many addicts we could not set free,
        so many families we could not save,
        so many broken people we could not heal.

We know what it is to pour our love onto the world
        like water over a rock.
It isn’t their fault.
The world just does not value itself enough to accept our love.
The world, and its people are mired in shame,
        deaf to our song, blind to the mirror we hold up to it,
        impervious to our compassion and our delight.

Love’s failures are so frequent and so full of sorrow,
        that the wonder is we persist in it.
The wonder is we do not despair of caring for each other
        and withdraw into ourselves.
In fact, some people do just that.
But, by and large, we persist in love
        whether it works or not.

We persist because we were made for this,
        and we must live this way
        or our living will be no true life at all.

As Browning said, “love is victory, the prize itself.”
And he said in many ways
        what William Blake said more concisely,

        “We are put on this earth a little space
        that we might learn to bear the beams of love.”

Our life’s purpose is to delight in and care for each other,
        whether or not our love is ever returned,
        whether or not it heals and reconciles as we intend,
        whether or not the world we cherish
                 is willing to flourish as it could.

So we pray with Isaiah,

        “Oh that you would tear open the heavens
                and come down.
        Oh that you would invest our love
                with ‘the irresistible power
                that it deserves to have.’
        Oh that our love would be returned,
                that it would heal and nourish,
                reconcile and restore.”

I used to wonder whether I really wanted God,
         whether I really desired God.
But God is the power that makes our love
         as fruitful as it is,
         and that promises one day to answer
                 our Advent prayer.
         I desire that alright. We all desire that.

Once we know God as the fulfillment of all
         our longing for each other and each other's good,
         we can readily love the Lord our God
                  with all our heart, with all our mind
                          and all our strength.

And we can invest our lives in this wild hope
         that the God who is love will someday,
         once again, tear open the heavens
                  and come down.

                                            Amen.