O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…
So, I have good news today: according to the venerable Stephen Hawking, there is a perfect solution to all the worlds’ problems. A perfect solution to pollution, pornography, poverty, and possibly even war: and, best of all, it’s easy!
Get off the planet.
I’m serious! Isn’t that foolproof? Why waste time and money trying to fix our society’s problems, when we can simply get out of Dodge and make everything better? As the Huffington Post article quoted him saying:
"Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million.
"Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain lurking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space."
Now, that is the best solution that I’ve heard all day – why bother working together for a solution? Why bother with this obviously misguided talk of “peace on earth”, when our genetic code means it will never happen. And Stephen Hawking should know, right? I mean, this is the physicist who said “religion is bunk” and made national headlines. The last time I said, “theoretical physics is a bunch of hooey”, people just said “he’s a theologian, what does he know?”
All right. So maybe I’ve picked on this subject enough for today – but its frustrating to think that we’re to the point that this is regarded as a viable solution to our problems – of course, it has been since Ray Bradbury wrote his first book in the 1960s. Any fans of science fiction here? What’s worse, is that we seem willing, as a society, to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars on these programs, rather than investing in, say, education, the environment, and healthcare, which could perhaps fix those problems from the bottom up.
We’re not the first people to look at the world around us and think that it’s too broke to fix. You don’t have to look very far to find that people have often, if not always, looked at the world around them and wished that someone – or something – could fix the mess they’re in.
“O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…” is there a more plaintive cry from Isaiah than what we heard today? His people have been in exile. They have lost touch with the God, they have sinned and fallen short of the covenant they made with God. The only solution that Isaiah can see is that God must come, now if not sooner, and set things right.
And Isaiah argues with God! “because you hid yourself we transgressed!” Isaiah shouts. And maybe, just maybe, Isaiah is right. God can be maddeningly silent and remote at times; especially at times when we feel we need God the most.
At times like that, we most often have one of two responses, and neither is particularly helpful: one, is to throw up our hands and say “that’s it, we’re in this for ourselves!”; and the second, is to start feeling like we’re responsible for God’s remoteness – and then the thought of God with us becomes a frightening possibility, fraught with judgement and ruled by terror. God’s perceived aloofness must be someone’s fault; it may even my fault.
Somehow, though, it’s not like that for Isaiah. Isaiah sees hope in God’s presence with God’s people; he sees the presence of the God who created all things as a good thing, a blessed thing, something that should be looked forward to with hope.
But we don’t, do we? At least, not for the most part. There’s a huge amount of baggage that we associate with our cultural conceptions of the day of Christ’s return. If you’re familiar with the Left Behind series of books you know that there’s a lot of fuss made about who’s going to be ‘the elect’ that Mark mentions in his gospel; a lot of speculation; no, a lot of “fact” about the signs that are supposed to accompany the return of Christ.
There are several Christian denominations that focus much of their energy and attention on what is imagined will happen on that day – judgement, hellfire, and damnation. The only way to avoid it, they say, is to make the right decisions for yourself, choose Jesus, and be prepared to watch everyone who hasn’t face the consequences of those decisions.
In that way, then, people are saved through their own actions – which, really, is what Stephen Hawking is saying. A lot of Christians, I think, would agree with Hawking that the world is headed to hell (though not necessarily in a handbasket). And, although they’d disagree with means, their solution remains the same – focus all of our attentions on the few, so that the cream of the crop can rise to the top.
In both scenarios – either Hawking’s colonization of space, or a fundamentalists’ judgement on the last day – only a few, the deserving, are saved. The vast majority of people are condemned, either to hellfire, or life on a planet from which all life has been driven.
Does either of those scenarios give you hope? I don’t find a lot of hope in the return of a Christ of judgement – I am too aware of my sins. And I don’t find hope at all in Hawking’s idea of colonization, because I know that neither myself nor anyone I know or love would ever be on the ‘list’ of people who would be moving off-planet. Both scenarios are for the elite; for the powerful. In one scenario it’s the genetically superior who are saved; in the other, it’s the spiritually perfect.
But this day, this season of Advent, is about hope. It’s about hope that God truly does “so love the world;” hope that Christ will return, not to judge the world to hellfire, but to judge the world in righteousness; because in Christ we share that righteousness – we are given, as Paul writes, the grace of God…in Christ Jesus.
O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…down to a manger, down to a world full of sin and hopelessness, bringing the promise of hope, peace, joy, and love. God tore open the heavens and came down, bringing the promise of light that shines in the darkness; light that the darkness cannot overcome.
We are an Advent people; we wait for the coming of Christ. We wait for the birth of a baby – a baby we know has already been born, has already lived out his mortal life, and reigns forever as Christ the King. But at the same time, there is a very real longing – and maybe you feel it. Maybe you feel in yourself the deep-seated wish that the baby would be real this year – that rather than commemorating an event, we would have a real celebration.
We are an Advent people; we prepare for Christ’s return. We keep awake, we watch with longing for the coming of a Saviour – not a wrathful judge, but the deepest longing of our hearts that grace, and mercy, and love will one day reign in this world, will one day replace the grim grey reality of hatred, hostility, and helplessness that seeps into the core of our being and stiffens and cracks our compassion for each other.
We are an Advent people; we wait for the master of the house to come, we wait for the chance to rejoice at his presence. If you look for a picture of an announcing angel, or in particular see a statue of one as part of a religious structure, you will see that they face east; they look to the rising sun in anticipation of the king who comes with the dawn.
Beloved of God, look east, and wait with hope. Wait with hope that Christ comes to free from suffering, not cause more. Prepare for his return by caring for his body, the Church; and wait with peace because the king returns in power, and in glory, to end all suffering, and to redeem all those who trust in him.
Look east, and watch with hope. For the child is coming; the child is coming for you, for the whole people of God.
Let the people of God say amen.
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