The other day, while having lunch, my companions and I sat across from Batman.  He must have been about three years old, and he was all decked out in his cape, ready to save the world.  While his mother ate her lunch, he and his sibling hung out in the Bat-cave, under the table.  It was good to know that help was nearby should disaster strike at Bob Evans!

We have an innate fascination with super-heroes.  From ancient mythology, to mid-20th Century comic books, to animated television to live action movies, to the recent television series “Heroes,” we cling to our hope that when we are in danger, there is supernatural, superhuman intervention on the way to rescue us.

In the ancient world in which Israel found itself living, the stories abounded of the gods who descended from the heavens to intervene in the affairs of mortals.  So when we hear the opening words of this chapter of Isaiah, we understand the plea for help.

“Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down.”

The waiting time of Advent is about desire – it is about our desire that somebody or something would fix all that is wrong.  We are not good at waiting.

You need look no further than the traditional beginning of the Christmas shopping season known as “black Friday,” to understand the difficulty humans have with waiting.  The stores no longer open at their usual time.  They now open at ungodly middle of the night hours, and still, we line up to be first for the bargains.  The bargains are always available in limited supply, creating a competitive environment for those who must be first.  And every year the relationship between human greed and the profit motive of the retailers results in a tragedy.  This past Friday, a Wal Mart worker was killed when the crowd rushed the door and trampled him to death.  What will put an end to this insanity?

“Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down!”

This week, as we began the frantic rush toward Christmas, a woman stood on the street in Mumbai, India, waiting to see if her husband would be brought out of the Taj Hotel alive.  Early in the day she was optimistic.  He had been right behind her as she escaped at the beginning of the attack, but she lost him in the confusion.  Then she had heard news that he was safe.  But the hours passed, and still she waited.  No word.  No sight.  No news.

Sometimes, in the midst of these situations, I don’t want news.  I want an end to the madness, the violence, the terror.  No more!

“Oh, that you would open the heavens and come down!”

Waiting is sometimes a life and death matter and very personal – the time between a CAT scan and the results; the time between the ultrasound that shows a potential problem, and the birth of the child; the time between a shattering diagnosis and a life saving treatment.  Anyone who has ever been on an organ transplant list knows much about waiting.

Every child knows the agony of waiting to see if the perfect Christmas present will be under the tree, or what the proficiency scores or SAT results are, or of their new best friend will text them back or call them – and many children are waiting, waiting, waiting, to see if an absent parent is ever coming back.

Sometimes, when I am faced with the frailties of the human condition and I see people suffering from the agonies of waiting and hoping- I don’t want better medical science – I want a new creation where there is no more sorrow, no more sickness, no more grief – where crying and sorrow are no more!

“Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down!”

Isaiah’s long lament, from which today’s reading is taken, is all about the people’s departure from faithfulness, and God’s apparent absence.  Isaiah even speculates that it is a sort of vicious cycle – the people sin, God withdraws, and because God is absent, the people sin.  Robbed of hope in this time when Israel has been defeated and the temple destroyed and the community devastated, Isaiah’s cry rings out:  “Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down.”

As we sit here today hearing Isaiah, we have an economic crisis of still unknown proportions.  The very foundation of what we believed to be true has been shaken.  Some of the current situation, we have to acknowledge, has resulted from our own human sin.  Greed has certainly played a role.  The desire to fill our lives with things has played a role.  We are caught in a social structure and an economic model that depends on us spending money as consumers when our own financial and economic security is better served by saving money.  We have been caught in an era of excesses and easy credit and debts always come due.

But even those who were wise, and saved enough by every conventional standard, and who have never lived off credit, and could never be accused of excess find themselves shaken to the foundation.  The word “unprecedented” is used daily to describe our current situation.

Our families find themselves in unprecedented economic circumstances.  Certainly this congregation finds itself in an unprecedented circumstance.  We cannot reasonably open for business during 2009 with the funds that we anticipate from pledges and offerings.  Yet the needs for ministry will grow greater in these unprecedented times.

“Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down.”

Our economy still depends on Christmas being about what we wish for.  It used to be that we could delude ourselves into believing that everything would be okay, Oh, if only…

Oh, if only a Lexus would be parked in the driveway it would be a December to remember.

Oh, if only Guitar Hero III would be under the tree

Oh, if only we could watch 24 hours of A Christmas Story on the new 42 inch flat screen

Oh, if only the credit card bills would be lost in the mail forever.

It may be that we have confused Santa Claus with God.

God is not coming to give us stuff.  And the God of the scriptures is not in the habit of swooping in at the last moment to stop the speeding train of consequence from hurtling toward us.

That’s not what it looks like when God tears open the heavens and enters our world and our lives.  If we read a few verses more in Isaiah we discover wonder filled image of God’s presence with us.  God is the potter, and we are the clay.  We are all God’s people.  God comes to be in relationship with God’s people.

When the very foundations of our world are shaking and shattered, and we are hoping against hope that politicians and economists can save us, and we feel powerless as we watch the Dow Jones sink and rise and waver and wobble, and we agonize over decreasing our pledge to the church and limiting our spending for gifts for people we love and we wonder if our job will survive the New Year – there is real good news in the first Sunday of Advent.

We are all God’s people.  We are not our job.  We are not our investment account balance.  We are not the sum of what we can buy.  We are all God’s people.  In our relationship with God, we discover the one for whom we are waiting is already at work among us.

There is waiting idly.  There is waiting by substituting that which is not eternal for the hope of that which is.  And then there is Advent waiting.

We will have to wait on the economic system to turn around.  We will have to wait for the nations of the world to discover that there is no hope in war and more war.  We will have to wait for justice to roll down and mercy to overflow.  But we do not wait idly.

We are all God’s people, and so we wait faithfully.

This Advent and Christmas, I invite us all to let the situation we find ourselves in open us to the possibilities of investing in relationship.  Give the gift that God gives.  Give the gift of relationship.  Take time with others.

There are people who are going to need saving.  We are all God’s people – and because Christ has come and made us disciples, we are invited into that saving work.  I’ve seen us doing it already.  Several weeks ago, when I heard that CRC never has enough turkeys to give every family one at Thanksgiving, I suggested that the churches try to make up that difference.  North Broadway pledged 12 turkeys.  Last week, many of you took time off work, or time away from your families and your own holiday plans, and walked into the church with a turkey.  I believe we ended up with 25 turkeys.  And Beth Stewart Magee reports that for the first time ever – in this season when the economy is bad and getting worse- every family got a Thanksgiving turkey.

There are people who need saving.  Share the Light offers an opportunity to do that.  Shopping locally and at our own fair trade shop right here in the church offers the opportunity to do that.

Advent is about desire.  And so we cry – “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.”  But the God who is coming is not absent; far from it.  God is shaping us, creating us, saving us always.  Even as we wait…we are all God’s people.

We are waiting to celebrate the birth of a child, but we dare not wait naively.  As adorable as a child with a cape around his shoulders is … it is not a caped hero that saves us.  It is the child who takes up the apron of servant hood and the language of friendship who saves us.  Let us be about the work of being God’s people, shaped and shaping God’s presence in the world with our very lives.  We are all God’s people.