“Streams in the Desert”

An Advent sermon based upon Isaiah 35: 1-10

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

The Third Sunday of Advent (Cycle A), December 15th, 2019

Going any where over Christmas?  What about Southern California?  Not a bad thought, is it?

Have any of you ever driven from North Carolina to California?  If you take the most natural route from here, on I-40 through Texas, you’ll have to go through desert.  You’ll have to take some long, lonesome, nowhere roads through some of the most empty, abandoned, and seemingly lifeless areas of America. It’s the kind of place the street signs tell you you will put your life at risk if you don’t stop and fill up.  It’s the kind of place, speed limits are largely unregulated or disregarded.  The only good thing about that part of the country is that you can get through it driving very fast. 

I’ve never driven in that part of the country, though I’ve flown over it.  It looks just as  deserted and dangerous from above.  However, I’ve also seen pictures of how beautiful the desert can be in the spring, or when the seldom rains fall.  Flowers  blooming in a desert can be spectacular.  

The closest I’ve ever to experiencing the desert is when, while living in Europe I woke up to find red dust and sand on my white VW.  The Newspapers reported how strong winds carried dust out of the Sahara Desert across the Mediterranean Sea during the night.  Can you imagine that much sand traveling over 2,000 miles?  But then again, the Sahara Desert is one of the harshest places on planet earth, being larger in square miles than the entire United States.  That’s a lot of desert.

In today’s text we encounter the wilderness of a desert.  The prophet Isaiah and the people of God living in Judah knew a lot about the desert.  When you leave Jerusalem and head south, you are traveling on the ‘desert road’.  In the book of Acts, Philip was instructed by the Spirit to ‘go down on the desert road’ and share Jesus with an Ethiopian who riding in a chariot and was reading from this very scroll of Isaiah.  It was on a ‘desert road’ that Philip told the Ethiopian that Isaiah 53 pointed to Jesus’ own suffering for human sin.  And on that desert road they came upon a pool of water and the Eunuch was baptized in Jesus Christ.  All this happened on a road that was going to and through a desert.        

THE WILDERNESS…DRY GROUND…  (v. 1)

Isaiah paints some powerful, unforgettable images of a desert.  His images depict a physical, geographical desert that his hearers; his people, knew quite personally. The city of Jerusalem was located on the north side of a desert in rugged terrain only made inhabitable because of the large Gihon Springs located caves nearby in the Kirdon Valley.  King Hezekiah, a contemporary of the prophet Isaiah, built an large reservoir to store the water and tunnels to carry it into the city, becoming one of the most elaborate water systems in the ancient world.  Without a water source, their would have been no Jerusalem because their would only be desert and at least wilderness.  Still today the city of Jerusalem has less than 42 days of rainfall each year. 

So, when we read Isaiah’s word pictures about, wilderness, desert, or dry, parched ground, we have, at least, some idea of what he means.  We know how scarce, how tentative and how challenged life can be.  We’ve watched how even the strongest, most adventurous young people can be beaten down and weakened to near death when they’ve gotten lost in some secluded wilderness.  They go in hiking or jogging strong and determined, but they come out on stretchers, sunburned, starving and sometimes, near death, or worse.

Trapped in a barren, dry, dangerous place is exactly how Isaiah imagines the spiritual depletion and despair of God’s people.  He imagines people encountering, going through, and even experiencing first hand the abandonment, loneliness and emptiness of living their life in a spiritual desert.  This is what he means with images of ‘parched land’, ‘weak hands and knees’, ‘wild dogs’, ‘dangerous animals’, and ‘fearful enemies’ where people walk with ‘sorrow and sadness’.   I know it’s hard for us to contemplate such a negative, lonely, taxing place, especially at Christmastime, when we seek merriment and joy.  But we do seem to be entering times of spiritual loneliness and abandonment, whether we want to think about it or not.  Isaiah’s wilderness imagery has more to say to us than ever before. 

Even at Christmastime, churches and the spiritual and religious message of ‘peace and goodwill’ toward all isn’t what it used to be.  No matter how liberal, moderate, conservative, how fundamental, traditional, or how contemporary the Southern Baptist churches are; no matter how much revival, renewal, discipleship, evangelism, strategy and missions has been preached, proclaimed and worked out.  In these past 20 years, baptism and membership statistics have consistently and continually been in a state of decline.  Around 100 America churches close their doors each week.  Six to 10,000 close each year.  New churches are being formed, but not at the same rate as churches are dying. If trends continue, and it seems obvious they will, in the not too distant future, there will be fewer and fewer American churches.   

And who cares?  Most younger people certainly don’t.  Most of them have already left the traditional, mainline, historical, neighborhood church.  The fastest growing religious majority in America today are not the ‘moral majority’, but are the religious ‘nones’.  These are those whose preference of religious faith or church is having ‘none’. 

And what declining churches and increasing absences means for the future of the American churches, of all stripes and denominations, is spiritual wilderness and desert.  While a few churches are fairing better than others, at least right now, all American churches, like European churches have already experienced, are having to be church and do church in a barren spiritual territory we’ve never known before. This is the spiritual territory of ‘dry ground’, ‘weakness’ along with ‘sorrow’ and ‘sadness’, especially for those who remember what and where we used to be.

A ROAD WILL BE THERE…. (v. 8)   

Is there any good news?  Well, hopefully, yes!  Isn’t this the Bible we’re reading from?  The overall message of Scripture is one of inspiration and hope.  In today’s text, the most positive word this prophet has to say about this desert is that Israel’s God builds a road, a highway, that goes right through it.  

This ‘road’ or highway, going through the deserted, wilderness place of life and faith is a road of many surprises.  It’s a road where God’s people see flowers blooming and surprising miracles and wonders taking place, even in the spiritually deprived wilderness.  It is even in this wilderness where the ‘weak’ are strengthened, the cowardly become courageous, the blind able to see, the deaf begin to hear, cripples overcome their handicaps, and the thirsty encounter water gushing forth like ‘streams in the desert’.  The point Isaiah is making is that even in a desert wilderness God’s glory can be seen.  Even there, or here, where we also find ourselves, God’s salvation will be experienced.  In good news is that in this most spiritually barren place, where the church of Jesus Christ finds itself today, life, beauty and happiness can be known and experienced too. 

How does a ‘stream’ of life, hope and grace flow there, here?  We are told that it happens because God build a ‘road’ through the wilderness which is also ‘a way’ for God’s people to walk.  As Winston Churchill was quoted, ‘When you’re going through hell, keep going.’   You certainly don’t want to stop living right, stop doing right, or stop getting right when your in a spiritual wilderness.  This is certainly not a place to stop, or you could be eaten alive.  Remember the line in the famous story, The Wizard of Oz: ‘We’re off to see the wizard?  ‘We’re off’ means keep going!  Remember the luring sound of the sirens in Homer’s ears?  Homer, keep going!  And do you remember in Scripture how the devil came to Jesus trying to get Jesus ‘stop and take a look?  But Jesus kept going and moving toward his calling from God.  Jesus didn’t stop going God’s way, even the wilderness. Jesus didn’t stop and listen to the devil’s tricks, especially not there, or he would have been eaten alive.  The same thing could happen to us, when God builds us road through it and shows the way, and we stop walking on the road he’s been revealing to us all along.  Even when the winds of culture are against us, ‘Church, don’t stop!  Keep going!’

This road that takes God’s people through this barren, dry, and dirty wilderness is known as ‘the Holy way.’  The way through, out, and beyond this god-forsaken wilderness is not just any way.  It is, as one translation puts it, God’s way through the barren spiritual wilderness is to be holy, just like God is holy.  I imagine you didn’t see that coming, did you?  Being holy might be the last thing on our minds when we’re going through a spiritual drought, right?  Who cares, who knows, or who wants to know, how to live the ‘way’ that God calls us to live when it seems no one else is living this way?  But God’s true people know they must live God’s way.  As Isaiah reports, when God’s holy highway is found, ‘the redeemed will walk on it’ (v. 9).

This is how Isaiah preached the good news to God’s people in his day, but what does this mean for us, in our own wilderness wanderings through spiritual drought and desolation?  Besides, what was the prophet talking about?  Was he talking about God’s people ‘returning’ after their destruction and exile in Babylon?  Yes.  Was he also talking about the ‘glory’ and ‘miracles’ when the Messiah, Jesus came to save ‘his people from their sins’?  Yes.  Could Isaiah also be talking to us about how God builds a highway that should be a way of life for us to live, even when the church and the Christian Faith seems to be going nowhere fast?  Yes, yes, yes!

How might there be a ‘holy’ way built for us to walk on that keeps us faithfully moving forward, when God seems far away, when faith seems dried up, and we feel like we are left out in a wilderness to die alone?  What might this holy highway be that is helpful, hopeful, and healing?  What way leads us through wilderness of where we are?  Can we name it, find it, and know how to walk on it?

One of the most discussed religious books of the decade is The Benedict Option, written by the editor of political magazine, The American Conservative‘.  In this controversial bestseller, Rod Dreher calls on American Christians to prepare for the coming spiritual Dark Age, or spiritual wilderness by embracing an very ancient way of living the Christian life he names as The Benedict Option.

In this writing, Rod Dreher argues that the way forward or through this spiritual wilderness is actually the way back—all the way to St. Benedict of Nursia.  St. Benedict was a sixth-century monk, who was horrified by the moral and spiritual chaos that followed Rome’s fall.  When he encountered how people lost their moral knowledge, how a sense of community broke down, and how people lost the ability to do the most necessary and needful skills, like raise their children or grow their on food, he left the city, retreated into the countryside and created a new way of life for Christians. He called the church away from the the city ways into newly formed communities based on principles of order, hospitality, stability, sustainability and prayer. His spiritual centers of hope were strongholds of light throughout the entire time Dark Ages, and saved not just Christianity but Western civilization as well.

Today, Dreher says, in our own increasing spiritual wilderness, a new form of barbarism rules the social and political airways. Many believers are even blind to it, and their churches are too weak to resist it, and will finally succumb to it.  In other words, the way we have done things, both politically and religiously, offers little help in this spiritual crisis.  What is needed is a renewed ‘holy’ way of life and living.  What is needed for the churches to create alternative, intentional, moral and spiritual communities that rescue and save.  What we need is, he says, is this Benedict Option.  Dreher believes that churches need a strategy for being holy—not better than others, or perfect, but to be a people who are called, chosen, and set apart, drawing on both the authority of Scripture and the wisdom of the ancient church to take society through this barren place.  To do this, Dreher concedes, churches must first embrace this idea of spiritual and moral exile so they will draw away from mainstream culture to construct a resilient counterculture.  In other words, churches must learn how an alternative holy road in and through the wilderness, not unlike envisioned by Isaiah the prophet.

Is this what we need to espouse, a Benedict Option?  This is what saved civilization once.  The same kind of thing happened for the Mennonites in about 1,000 years later, when they followed the teachings of Meno Simons and turned away from the corrupted Catholic church.  We still see the Amish living a counter-cultural lifestyle in communities that aim to resist the spiritual wilderness.   It’s also the kind of thing that happened again, all over Europe, when the Protestants broke away in hopes of reformation.  They choose, through the leadership of Luther, John Calvin and others, to move away from the corruption in the established church and follow a more biblical, reformed way of faith and life.  It’s also this kind of spiritual way or journey that the Pilgrims and other Europeans choose, when they moved away from Europe to come to America as their new religious and political promised land. 

Is this the kind of spiritual calling, holy highway, that we are being called to walk on in the spiritually and socially deprived wilderness ?  What kind of ‘option’ or ‘holy way’ are we being called or chosen to take?  What kind of spiritual highway will renew our faith, sustain our churches, enable us to journey through this spiritually dry and dark day?

THE REDEEMED WILL WALK ON IT  (v.9)

It’s interesting to see how Isaiah envisions ‘the redeemed’ walking on God’s holy highway through this wilderness.  He says that this holy way will not be accidental, but it will be intentional, as Fools will not wander on it (v. 8c), but in wilderness times, people will only find God’s way because they desire God more than ever before.  This eliminates all those ‘accidental’ Christians who just happen to come God’s way because they have nothing better to do.  No, today’s faith journey is more like the well-worn joke about the fellow who said you wanted to believe, but he couldn’t find God anywhere.  The preacher told him, that if he really wanted to find God, he could. 

“What do you mean?” the man questioned. 

So, to illustrate, the preacher took the man out into a lake and said I’m going to show you how to find God.  I’m going to dip you in the water like I’m baptizing you.  The man agreed to the experiment. 

The preacher dipped him into the water, and brought him up the first time, asking him,  “Did you find God?” 

The man responded frankly, “No.” 

The preacher put him under again a little longer and then brought him back up.  “Did you find God?” 

The man answered “no” once more. 

This time the pastor held him under longer, much longer until the man started struggling for air.  When the preacher finally brought him up, the man let out a large gasp for air, and screamed,

“What are you trying to do, kill me?” 

The preacher answered, “Man, when you want God as much as you wanted air, you’ll find him.”

There are no more accidental churches, nor accidental Christians in a spiritual wilderness.  The wilderness removes from God’s roll the cultural or conventional faith.  The people travel God’s road now, here, are people who intentionally desire to walk this way.  There will little place left for false or fake Christians.  As the saying goes, in the wilderness church: ‘fools will not rush in where angels fear to tread’. 

But there’s something even more incredible about the wilderness church.  Isaiah also envisions that when the faithful take God’s holy road faith sincerely and intentionally, and less accidently, the ‘redeemed of the LORD will return and come to Zion with singing, crowned with unending joy.”  This way of seeking, returning, and traveling God’s way becomes a way of ‘singing’ and ‘unending joy’.  Finding a road through the desolation and desertedness of the wilderness is not a somber or sad way, but it is a way of relief, release, and returning that takes God’s way through, which brings hope, and with hope comes ‘joy’ and ‘song’.  

I love this closing image, which describes how God’s people discover that on God’s highway  ‘gladness overtakes them’ and ‘sorrow and sighing will flee’.  Here, I find something even more enduring than ‘The Benedict Option’, which we might call the Christmas or ‘incarnational’ option, so that ‘the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.’  For as Jesus lived God’s way, so can we, so that the greatest ‘mystery’ in the wilderness is, as the apostle Paul expressed it:  ‘Christ in you (is) the hope of (God’s) glory in this wilderness world  (Col. 1:27).   “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me….”  That’s how Paul explained ‘the way’ that challenged and changed his own ‘wilderness’ world. 

The main message of this text comes right ‘at the center’, where we learn, in verse 4, that even a spiritual wilderness is not ‘God-forsaken’:  "Here is your God," announces the prophet (v. 4b).  Right here, in this barren, desolate, and deserted place, God has not ‘deserted’ his people, but God comes with power to overcome the wickedness, disease, and disorder that stand in the way of God's breathtaking new age. “This is not an abstract or even eternal truth” one biblical teacher has said, but “it is a present announcement: God is showing up. Watch what happens!  Since God is the author of Christmas, and God is with us on this way; anything is possible!

Patti Davis has worked as a Chaplain in a Nursing Home.  You can’t get much more ‘wilderness’ than that.  But she says, that one Thursday, at about 1:30, residents gathered for an afternoon activity advertised as "Drumming with Connie.”  About 30 residents straggled in. They sat, as they almost always do, in a large circle.  A few people spoke to each other, but mostly they just sit and waited in silence, as if this were just another diversion to help pass the time before dinner. This was just another Thursday.

Then Connie came in. A short, rather round woman of middle age with long platinum blonde hair, she came in with a flatbed cart laden with drums. And she began unpacking. Tall drums that sat on the floor went to residents with two good hands. Smaller drums could be held between the knees; and so for those paralyzed on one side by a stroke, she had drums that hung from the neck by a strap. She had drums of every size and description, a hammered silver drum from India and a hand-carved wooden drum from Egypt. There were drums covered in hairy cowskin and drums of smooth leather, wooden drums from Nigeria and painted drums from Haiti. And for those who couldn't manage a drum, she had maracas, those gourds that are so easy to shake. And people perked up then, because it's been a long time since someone handed them something unique and valuable and said, "Here, this is for you." And eyes brightened and there was an air of anticipation in the room.

And then Connie sat down with her own drum and began to teach what she knew. "It's easy," she said. "Let's start with the sound of your own heart: lub, dub, lub, dub." This is music we all know and so it was easy, and everyone found they could make that sound with their drum. "Now," she said, "while you play I'll add a note. But you must be sure to hold the beat, because we'll come back to it again and again." And the people played their heartbeats and she added a beat here and there and soon this incredible deep bass throbbing filled the place and they were all faithfully drumming together to the same beat!  When she got louder, all the drums got louder. And when she drummed soft as a whisper, everyone drummed softly. Every drum beat in a tempo passed from soul to soul, drawing on something primitive and sacred, the heartbeat of life pounded out in a place of wilderness and desolation.  And Connie knew just how to teach this ‘way’ because when it came time to end the song, she would count down: 4 - beat, beat, 3 - beat, beat, 2 - beat, beat, 1 - beat, beat, and everyone stopped-and then broke out in joyous applause!

When a woman with Alzheimer's, who sits most of her days in her room in silence, was shaking her maraca in time and grinning from ear to ear, you knew this was special, this was connection, and this was healing. And people seemed to be dancing in their wheelchairs, drumming out the rhythm and smiling for the pure joy of it. And even the deaf could hear this sound, deep within they felt the pressure of the beat of it, and it was a wonder too. And the throbbing drumbeats filled the building and staff members wandered in and couldn't help themselves, but they joined in too. 

And if you think this couldn't possibly have anything to do with what Isaiah saw and felt in his heart, then you are mistaken.  Isaiah’s vision is about our endless search for the presence of God in the wilderness of our lives, no matter who or where we are.  Isaiah’s hope is about our yearning for something to lift us up and restore our souls. Listen again to the drumbeat of Isaiah: The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom…Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.   In this poor flesh, in our lost ways, we will find ourselves lost in the wilderness of take the ‘road’ back to him.  There are lions out there and ravenous beasts and life can get scary, but through it all, God is there, God is here, drumming out his message of salvation: Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come and save you.

Can we believe this, that God still shows up in human flesh through his Spirit in our hearts that connect to our hope in him?   This Christmas, and beyond, Let us pray that we too, will be given eyes to see and ears to hear- the beat of what God is doing through Jesus in the world around us.  Second, let’s also take the holy road and keep marching to God’s beat of faith ourselves, so that we too become signs and sounds of God’s coming kingdom to those who are watching, waiting, and listening for God.  (From Patti Davis at: (http://day1.org/1016-salvation_in_a_heartbeat   and also from Fred Gaiser, (https://www.workingpreacher.org/ preaching.aspx?commentary_id=10).

In Christ, not just at Christmas, but all along the way, God is in our midst, in the center of our lives beating out the rhythm of his presence and promise.  And just as God did surprising things in his Son who was born in this world, he can still do some amazing and surprising things here, now, in us who live his ‘way’ through the wilderness, we can find God’s flowing ‘streams’ of life and hope even in a desert. Amen.