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December 16, 2007 Isaiah 35:1-10 Rev. Steve Gehlert Years ago Walt Disney made a movie, The Living Desert. I saw it on TV when I was a child I don't remember too much about it. But as a midwesterner, it was my first look at the desert. I remember that vivid scene where, having observed the dry, dead desert for much of the movie, there was silence, a darkening sky, and first one, then another, then many drops of rain, lightening, thunder, a deluge. Then, as if by magic, little tufts of green appeared. Countless flowers carpeted the once dead desert floor. Seeds that had been waiting for years for life-giving water sprouted. The desert blossomed. It was beautiful, magic, miraculous. The desert is a good image for death. One reason why the Egyptians were obsessed with death, is that with their little strip of green beside the Nile, surrounded by an utterly barren desert, they were constantly reminded of the nearness of death. In preparation for hiking through Death Valley with my son a few years ago, I prepared myself by reading a book about the area and watching PBS special about it. Both were full of stories, and in every one, the main character was the desert, and what it did to make things difficult, cause suffering, or take the lives of those who tried to go through it. There was a family that took a wrong turn, headed in the wrong direction, and perished when their car broke down. There was a German tourist who left his car, went walking for an hour, got heat exhaustion, passed out and died. There was the body of a hiker, missing for two months, mummified by the dry heat. Then, when Nathan and did our hike, from the first day we experienced the danger - of the heat draining us, sapping our energy, not finding water where it was supposed to be, our water running out, and getting very scared and desperate. We got just as drained and sapped on the second day, as we made the mistake of turning off an old jeep road and trying to go cross country, and found our feet breaking through the crusty soil, into the soft sand below, and dropping our packs once we got to where we'd spend the night, eager to get water and a place in the shade. The desert is not friendly. The desert is threatening. The desert is deadly. The desert stands between the people of Judah and home. The armies of Babylon have come in, destroyed their cities, pillaged the land, and carted those who were left into exile, far from home. Now a vast, empty, deadly desert separated the exiled Jews from home. That distance, and the power of Babylon, meant that the people had no choice but to make the best of their new situation. That meant different things to different people. For some it meant doing their best to hold on to the faith and values that God had called them to, in spite of all the cost and dangers, from lack of chances to advance in education or employment, to ridicule, to outright persecution. Some were willing to pay that price, in order to remain true to the God whom they still loved and trusted. For others it meant something else. Impressed by the power and sophistication of Babylon, they were drawn to Babylonian ways, Babylonians values, Babylonian gods. "If Babylonian's gods can get them all this, why should I should I bother with old Yahweh? Even if he called Abraham and Sarah, set our ancestors free from Egyptian slavery, guided them in the wilderness, and gave them the promised land, what we had there never matched this! I just want to make it in Babylon!” Isaiah proclaims God's good news of the possibility of homecoming, through the desert, to both groups. Well, there are two problems with that amazing promise. The first is, "Can we believe it? Is it only poetry? Only wishful thinking? "The desert shall bloom! God will build a highway right through the desert, straight back home." Sure sounds like fantasy! But there's an answer to that problem. It comes from what looking at what God's done in the past, that shows whether or not God's promises can be trusted. If you do that, you've got to conclude that this isn't fantasy. It's faith, faith in a God who makes a way when there is no way. We can trust the promise because of our experience of God's faithfulness and goodness in the past. God made something out of nothing in Creation, light out of darkness, life out of death. God found set us free when we were slaves in Egypt. God reached out to us in exile, guided us through the desert, and brought us home. God came to us at a place named Bethlehem and delivered us through the birth of a baby. So, the solution to the first problem, (Can you trust the promise?) lies in remembering what God has done, which shows that God's promises can be trusted. The 2nd problem is, "Even if God can get me home, do I really want to go?" If I'm impressed with Babylon, have compromised with it's values, and am willing to serve it's gods in order to get ahead, why should I throw away all I've gotten by doing that? Why throw it away to go back to "home?" The answer, of course, depends on what you think of "home." The home to which Isaiah invited the exiles to return, was to a life lived in covenant with God and each other, built on trust in God's goodness and love, sharing that goodness and love with each other, practicing justice, thinking of what everyone needed for life, before your own desires for advancement. Home was the precious gift of community with God and others, a gift that called for high responsibilities of love and justice. So, those who heard Isaiah speak God's promise had to decide how to respond to it. For some, who treasured the home God had offered them, it was wonderful good news. For others, who were "on the make"in Babylon,"it held no attraction; no matter how safe God might make their way through the desert, they had no desire to go back. For still others, the choice was less clear, they like most of us, had tried to live their lives with their hearts and minds, both in Babylon and at "home" with God. They hadn't abandoned Yahweh completely, they'd kept most of the practices of the faith, as well as they could, without standing out too much, or doing anything to irritate the Babylonians, or jeopardize their chances to get along and maybe even get a little bit ahead. What would they do? What will we do? It depends, first of all, on whether we realize where we are, that we're in Babylon, that the way of life, the values, the faith, the gods, that are followed and trusted all around us, are not our true home. Then, it depends on how we feel about that. It depends on whether we want to truly go home, to a life focused on serving and trusting God by building community and doing justice - whether that is where our hearts long to be. Or whether we prefer to "be on the make,"getting ourselves ahead. That's what Babylon, whatever and wherever it's been, has always tempted it's captives to do. The question is whether that's what we want to be about, and whether that's where we want our hearts to be. The way home is not the only issue. The first issue is whether we even want to go. God's promise to take us home, doesn't just raise the question of whether we can really get there, it also raises the question of whether that's really where we want to be. Answering that question has a lot to do with understanding that the desert isn't the only deadly place. Babylon is deadly too! Babylon kills, kills your heart, your soul, and the world that God intends. On that hike from Death Valley to the Sierra Nevada mountains, we passed a place called Owens Dry Lake. It wasn't always dry. A little over a hundred years ago, it's shores were green and verdant, full of life. It was so big that paddle wheeled steamships crossed it carrying ore from the mountains. That's how it was until Los Angeles, hundreds of miles away, decided to tap it for water, and eventually drain it dry. If you look at a map of the foothills of the Sierras you'll see that it's only the largest of many dry lakes that Babylonian appetites and arrogance have created. Babylonian appetites and arrogance always create death, not just of lakes and streams, but of people, relationships, and communities, because they're always focused on a selfish pursuit of more, regardless of what it means for other people or for God's creation. Problem is, we can get so wrapped up in our own desire for more that we don't see that. Don't see what it means for our marriage, or our children, or our family, or for our church, our community, or God's creation. In sharing God's invitation to come home, and assuring us that God will help us get there, Isaiah is calling us to look at where we've been living, and decide whether we are willing to leave it, in order to journey to where we can really be at home with God, each other, and our true selves. The desert shall rejoice and blossom, and by implication, so shall our hearts, if we're willing to make that journey. How do you get started? Well, you begin by recognizing where you are, seeing what parts of your life, your heart and soul, belong to Babylon. Then, you have to decide that that's not where you really belong, that you want to be free of that, that, in other words, you want to go home. Finally, you've got to admit that you can't get there on your own, you've got to depend on God to take you there. Just that admission begins the journey, because so much of what's made us captive is the belief that we don't need a guide, that we can make it on our own. That's what brought Israel to Babylon; that's what takes us there, that's what makes us captive, too. So, what do you think? Are you ready to leave Babylon? Are you ready to go home? |
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