November 18, 2002

BaptistWay Bible Study for Texas lesson for Dec. 1

Silence can lead to a time of profound discovery

__Isaiah 64:1-9 ___1 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! 2 As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you! 3 For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you. 4 Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. 5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved? 6 All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. 7 No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins. ___8 Yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9 Do not be angry beyond measure, O Lord; do not remember our sins forever. Oh, look upon us, we pray, for we are all your people.

____By Brent Beasley
___The Christian year does not begin on January 1 as it does on the secular calendar. The Christian year begins four Sundays before Christmas with the season of Advent (from the Latin word meaning "coming"). This year, the first Sunday of Advent is Dec. 1. Advent is a season of expectant waiting and preparing for the coming of Christ, God's own Son.
___Isaiah 64 exemplifies just such an attitude of expectant waiting and preparation as the people of Israel lament the seeming absence of God and seek the merciful advent of God back into the life of their nation, back into their lives as individuals.
___Most scholars believe the book of Isaiah was compiled over a period of several generations during a most difficult period in the history of Israel. The threats of the Assyrian king to the welfare of Jerusalem and its temple form a background to the collection of prophecies in Isaiah 1-39. The Babylonian exile and the hope of rebuilding the temple after its destruction by the armies of Babylon in 587 B.C. provide the historical grounding for chapters 40-55. The renewed conflicts that surrounded the rebuilding of the temple in the years 520-516 B.C. color the mixture of threats and warnings found in the final chapters of Isaiah, 56-66.
___Thus, when we come to Isaiah 64, the period of judgment spoken of earlier in Isaiah (especially chapter 6) has happened. Defeated by enemies, their temple in Jerusalem destroyed, driven out of their homeland to live in exile in foreign lands, the people of Israel are now beginning to come back home, back to Jerusalem. This is now the period of the first generations concerned with the restoration of Jerusalem and the temple. This is an uncertain time, a time of transition, but also a time of hope.
___The prayer to God found in Isaiah 64:1-9 exhibits two main features of genuine Advent hope: On the one hand, there is a sense of desperation about a situation that seems out of control. On the other hand, there is a bold and confident trust in God--that he can bring calm to circumstances whirling out of control.
___In Isaiah 64, the people of Israel are waiting for the advent of God. They are waiting in fear, but also in the hope that God will come and transform the world. They are waiting for the coming of God, but they are waiting in what seems to them to be an unnerving silence on the part of God. They are waiting to see his face, hear his voice.
___Uncomfortable silence
___The silence of God truly is unnerving. Silence is especially hard for us to accept because it is so rare in our culture. In fact, silence is an endangered species. Many people even have to have a television or radio on in order to sleep; for some, noise has become calming.
___In her book "When God is Silent," Barbara Brown Taylor reflects on how uncomfortable we are with silence. She says communication has higher value for us than contemplation. Information is in greater demand than reflection. She points out there was a time when only doctors wore pagers, and the only person who carried a telephone around with him was the president of the United States, in case of nuclear attack. Now we all are that important. "Can you hear me now?" is more than an advertising catch phrase; it has become some people's badge of individual significance.
___Taylor tells about someone who lodged a complaint with the National Park Service about the use of cellular phones in the wilderness. It seems his long-awaited trek to a landmark peak was ruined for him when a fellow hiker to the top whipped out his cell phone and began describing the view to his children who were apparently reluctant to be torn away from the TV show they were watching at home.
___As Taylor points out, it's more and more difficult for us to choose silence when communication is always possible. To let the telephone ring, to leave the e-mail unread--this is hard, if not almost impossible, to do.
___Even when we are all alone, our bodies are not silent. Taylor tells about the composer John Cage who visited Harvard and spent some time in an anechoic chamber--a room without echoes. Inside this room, his well-trained musical ear picked up two sounds--one high and one low. When he described these sounds to the engineer in charge, he was told the high sound was his nervous system in operation, and the low sound was his blood in circulation.
___No wonder silence makes us uncomfortable. Silence means nobody's talking to us; nobody is listening to what we have to say. It means things are not happening. It means we're all alone. Total silence means death.
___Does God hide?
___No wonder we are really disturbed when it seems even God is silent. Isaiah 64:1-9 is a part of a prayer to God by a people with a sense of desperation because it seems God is silent--absent from them. The one who can give order to their chaotic lives is nowhere to be found. "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down," they pray, "so that the mountains would quake at your presence" (v. 1). "You have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity" (v. 7).
___The people of Israel are longing for God's presence; they are longing to see God's face which they believe God has hidden from them. They were painfully aware that their present unfortunate condition was the result of the sins of the present generation, which now came in penitent lamentation to confess their rebelliousness to God. They want to somehow have this separation from God, whom they love and desperately need, to end.
___To speak of God hiding his face would have been especially significant to those in the time of the book of Isaiah. In ancient court etiquette, a person was not allowed to look directly at the face of the king until the king indicated this was all right. This was out of respect for the king. So, if the king wanted to show his displeasure, he would simply never show his face to the person he was displeased with. To hide one's face was to show displeasure.
___Thus this painful cry to God by the people of Israel: "You have hidden your face from us!" (v. 7).
___Any of us is able to easily conjure up the image of children playing hide-and-seek. Everyone hides, and the one who is "it" seeks. Sometimes it seems as though we are playing hide-and-seek with God. Often it seems to be that we are hiding and God is seeking. But other times, and this is how the people of Israel seem to feel in Isaiah 64, it seems like we are seeking and God is hiding, and no matter how hard we look, he can't be found.
___That thought may seem kind of strange to us--God hiding and not being readily available. But the Bible says that sometimes God hides. In another place, the prophet Isaiah said, "Truly you are a God who hides himself."
___King Saul felt the absence of God. Before the battle with the Philistines in which he and his sons were killed, he tried to make contact with God. He tried to pray, but the heavens turned to iron. He said, "I'll lie down and have a dream, and God will speak to me," but he could not sleep. He sent for preachers. "Is there any word from God for me?" They had nothing. He finally broke down and went to a fortuneteller; he was so desperate for some word to break the silence. He felt the absence of God; he felt so very distant from God.
___And, of course, there are the psalms with their desperate pleas:
___"Lord, don't turn your back on us."
___"Don't hide your face from us."
___"Will you forget us forever?"
___"Don't leave us alone."
___Jesus must have even felt it too: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" he asked. No answer.
___Do you ever feel like God is absent from you? Do you feel like God ever withdraws from you, that God is not close to you? That you are playing a game of hide-and-seek that you simply cannot win, no matter how hard you pray?
___To say that you experience the absence of God is not necessarily to say that God is really absent; it is to experience God as absent. Perception is not always reality.
___Ready or not, here God comes
___Every now and then at my house, we play hide-and-seek. When we do play, we don't play it very well. My daughter, Ivy, is 3 years old, and she has this habit of going off excitedly to hide, getting herself carefully hidden under a chair or in a closet, and then yelling out, "Ready!"
___Of course, I will repeatedly review the point of the game--"You're supposed to hide, not give your position away. You're supposed to hide and be silent."
___But maybe I've missed the point. As Philip Yancey has pointed out, the joy comes in being found, after all. Who wants to be left alone, undiscovered? Meister Eckhart says God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away.
___And maybe it is only in the silence that it is finally quiet enough that we can hear the faint clearing of the throat that gives away the presence of God. Maybe even the moment of most profound silence can become the moment of the discovery of God's most profound presence.
___The Israelites in Isaiah's day knew something about living with the silence of God, as have many others ever since, including me. But we have faith that as we wait and prepare, God always comes.
___God did come to the Israelites in their distress. They were not left waiting indefinitely. And on a silent night in Bethlehem about 600 years later, God came as a lowly infant, tender and mild, bringing hope to all who wait.
___Brent Beasley is pastor of First Baptist Church in Eagle Lake

Questions for thought and discussion
___ Have you ever experienced the silence or hiddenness of God? If so, what were the circumstances? Have you found his presence again? Discuss the process that led to your re-discovery of God.
___ When God seems hidden, what keeps you looking for him? When you find yourself back in his presence, what emotions and thoughts are present?
___ Is there anything people can do to keep from having times when God is hard to find?
___ Part of our frustration with God's silence is having to wait. Waiting seems a waste of time. Right? Recall a time when in God's silence you waited. What was the result of your waiting? How does it compare to what Isaiah 64:4 says?
___ Why might God wait to come when we cry out to him? Is silence related to trust?
___ In Isaiah 64, the people of Israel seemed to recognize their desperate need for God. Do you agree that recognizing our need for God will help us toward a more genuine celebration of Christmas? How can we prepare ourselves to celebrate Christmas by recognizing our need for God?
___ Since God has sent his Son, is the present time different than it was for people in Isaiah's day? After all, God has given us the Holy Spirit; how can we escape feeling his presence?
___ Bumper sticker theology says, "If you feel far from God, guess who moved." Is that applicable to this lesson?

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