Epiphany 2 Isaiah 49:1-7 & John 1:29-42
Andrew Linn – Sunday 15.01.2023
Whilst the world seems to move on from Christmas by New Year, the season of Epiphany means that we continue to consider the great Christmas themes into January. We keep exploring the questions Who is this one whose coming we celebrated? What is it that he came to do?
Today our lectionary passages explore the theme of waiting and fulfilment. Psalm 40, which we did not read, famously starts “I waited patiently for the Lord”. David recalling a time in his life of being in the “slimy pit”; a low point, where things seemed to all be going wrong, perhaps the time when he was on the run for his life.
Yet the Psalm is his testimony to God rescuing him, lifting him up, putting him on the rock. from the mire to firm ground. So, David can sing of all God has done.
Our passage from Isaiah, one of the servant songs, is spoken into the experience of exile. A disaster for the nation of Israel, as the last two tribes are conquered and taken into captivity. But more than the physical disaster, is the reality that they have abandoned God and he has not come to rescue them. Captivity a result of their sin and disobedience.
Yet there are promises of a future time when God will once again restore Israel. The servant of the Lord, the true Israel, one who represents all Israel should have been, will come. As we read, the servant will bring God’s people back to him, restore the relationship which had been broken.
But more than that. The problem of estrangement from God is not limited to Israel. They had been chosen by God to be his special people and to show the world what it means to live in relationship to God; to be a light to the nations.
This true Israel, the servant of God, Isaiah tells us, will fulfil that mission to be the light to the Gentiles. Through him “salvation [will] reach to the ends of the earth”. Further, the servant who was despised and abhorred by all will become ruler of all. Kings, who were the ones who sat while all others stood, will stand when the servant comes. Princes will bow in his presence because he is the chosen one of God.
Of course, the question that comes from this is - when? When will there be restoration? When will the servant come?” Hence, we have that great Christmas theme of waiting and fulfilment. Israel waiting for the servant, the anointed one, the messiah. The world waiting for a saviour.
Until, at the time prophesied, a man called John, who we know as John the Baptist as opposed to the apostle who wrote the gospel, comes saying that the time is close. The one who was prophesied about is nearby. More than that, as John relates, one day this chosen one comes to be baptised. There is nothing physically which marked him out but when John baptised Jesus he saw the Spirit of God come down on him and this was a sign that Jesus was the one. Waiting was over – the one in whom promises were to be fulfilled had come.
This is what the two disciples of John found when John pointed them on to Jesus. This is the message that Andrew brought to his brother Peter after an afternoon with Jesus “We have found the Messiah”. Jesus is the one who would enable Israel to be back in relationship with God
Yet we see as we follow the story on the servant song in Isaiah is fulfilled. Jesus was despised and rejected by the rulers of Israel. He was crushed by those in power, falsely accused and executed. The hope of those disciples seemed to be misplaced. Perhaps Jesus was not the one to come. Perhaps there was another.
But on the third day Jesus rose again. Death could not hold him. The way was open for all to come back to God, not just Israel but the whole world, the gentiles too.
As Paul quotes from an early song in Philippians “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.”
Fulfilling that prophecy at the end of the servant song of those in authority coming under Jesus. This is why it is one of the great themes of Christmas.
But where does this all have to say to us in the cold, damp days of January, so far distant from these events?
On the one hand the wait for us is over too. Jesus has come; salvation is available. We can come to God now, through Jesus. We receive the gift of the Spirit when we put our trust in him. We have many of the blessings of that relationship now. We become children of God; we are part of the kingdom of God, the universal church of God down through the ages. We do not have to wait for these things to be revealed, all is available to us through faith.
Yet on the other hand we still experience waiting.
On the big scale the world is not yet as it one day will be. We still live in a world of pain and suffering; a world which can seem as if God is not in control. We have something of the future reality in relationship with God, but it is not the fullness of what will come. We still await the return of Jesus and the new heaven and new earth.
This is the now and not yet, the in-between time. Promises are fulfilled but not fully realised. As we live, we feel that tension. We feel it as we hear or read the news and all that happens in the world. We feel it as we experience the troubles of life, we go through pain and suffering. We feel it when we struggle to live as we would want to for our saviour, when sin gets the better of us and we have to come and say sorry again.
Then there are specific times of waiting. When we come in prayer for something to God and get the answer “not yet”. When we are waiting for some event or change or whatever. As a whole community of God’s people, you at St Marks have been in a period of waiting for some time.
No doubt because of this, because of the circumstances of our lives or the world around us, whatever is causing that feeling that things are not as they should be. We want to cry out “how long O Lord?”
Yet if we think back to that opening line from Psalm 40, the example David gives us is “patient waiting”. This patient waiting is not crossing our fingers and hoping or having some vague hope. No waiting is grounded in the work and promises of God.
David looked back on the many wonders God had done in the past. More than any person could ever recount. We can turn to our bibles and see all that God has done for his people. We can read the stories of the church and all God has done through the ages. We can tell each other the stories of God’s work in our lives.
Then there are the promises such as those in Isaiah, which, when the time was right, God fulfilled in Jesus. We see God is a God who keeps his promises. When Jesus says he will be with us to the end of the age, that we will one day be with him, that there will be a time when sorrow and pain are no more, we know he will keep those promises.
As Paul says in Romans
“What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
We are not left abandoned.
That Christmas theme of waiting and fulfilment ring true for us today as it did then. As the hymn says “God is working his purposes out as year succeeds to year” and so we too wait patiently on him.
