Isaiah 25:6-9

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the covering that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.

Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, “See, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

Sermon Text

Lately I’ve been thinking more about legacies. I guess part of having a child is thinking about what you are raising them to be – even if the most substantial thing you do most days is feed, change, and maybe read a storybook to them. Even in these early days, I’m becoming more and more aware that I have a new purpose in life, on top of anything else I do, and that is to leave something for my children to take up. Not necessarily the exact thing I devoted my life to, I hope they can find an easier way to be than being a minister. Not necessarily an inheritance to benefit from, they’ll be lucky to get a dime at this rate. No, the thing that we have to leave to those who follow us must be more significant than more work to do or more money to buy things with.

The reality that we have a finite amount of time on this earth is something that slowly grows in our hearts. As our bodies get weaker and our bones begin to strain against the weight of each day. As our friends become fewer around us and our ability to do diminishes. As time wears on, we are made to number our days with the knowledge that eternity stretches in front of us. We are left to either become frustrated or hopeful, to see in the limited time we have a great deal of potential or to see it as something taunting us. The choice has to be ours, whether we will lean toward one or the other, and scripture gives us a clear answer which we should dwell upon. I’ll cut the anticipation and tell you, hope and generativity have to win out over our concern for what might be.

From the time humanity left Eden we were aware that there was something broken with the world. It took less than one generation for humanity to go from simple disobedience to murder. It took only a handful of generations for the violence of the world to be so great that a flood was needed to set things right. The Flood didn’t do it, nor did the reign of the patriarchs or of the judges or of the kings and the prophets. No leadership ever fixed the problems in this world, never completely at least. Because of this, hope was born anew every generation for something new to happen in the world.

Our scripture today follows a promise that bad times were ahead for God’s people. Isaiah describes the complete destruction of the land around God’s people. It will be like in the days of Noah, where creation seems completely erased. Death will reign and no one will be able to rejoice again. Wine and songs will not cheer anyone up, disaster will be all that anyone knows. People will cry out to God, and they will feel in their bones that God just isn’t listening. This prophecy was fulfilled in the days of Isaiah when Babylon came into Judah and destroyed everything in front of them. Death was supreme, joy was nonexistent, God seemed far away.

Yet, as soon as God tells them that this disaster is on its way, there is a promise that follows for something different. The people will not always know death, because all the world will be brought together again. There will be food in abundance, there will be songs and joy and dancing again. Death, the specter that haunted the people since they had left Eden was going to end and life stretch on forever. There was hope that could not end, and it was coming just down the line. A day when Moab would be no more…

Wait… what was that last part? Moab? There is no Moab anymore, and yet there is still plenty of trouble. What’s the deal? Clearly this earthly kingdom was not the end of trouble for God’s people… So why is it mentioned at the end of a prophecy that promises an end to the troubles that all people face. The answer, comes down to perspective.

We cannot conceive of what stretches beyond ourselves. We sit and we fret and we worry about things that the generations after us don’t have to worry about. My father-in-law had a sister who had polio, and Grace and I live in a world where Polio is all but extinct. Measles, mumps, childhood diseases that once posed an existential threat to children erased by progress. Likewise, the daily anxiety of the Cold War ended and no longer does the fear of the USSR loom above the USA. Time has made problems that seemed all encompassing, as the only trouble that could possibly fill the horizon, simply disappear.

New problems, it is sad to say, have filled the void. The USSR is no longer an issue, but boy is Russia working hard to follow its legacy. Measle, mumps, and rubella may not be an issue, but we lived through a pandemic that proved diseases still can take us down. Wars and rumors of war rage all around, an election is to be held in two days that has filled all people with anxiety. Each era brings with it new problems, new opportunities, but somehow the same hope.

God promised the people deliverance in terms they understood. The people who threaten you, won’t anymore. For us today, God speaks in different terms of hope, but with the same basic promise under it all. There will be an end to all this trouble. There will be an end to death and destruction. There will be life for the people of God long after the last vestige of death has been wiped away from our tear stained eyes. The darkness that is, cannot withstand the light that is to be.

The thing that we pass on to our children and grandchildren, and to anyone who follows us ought to be how to better perfect the eternal qualities of life. We are brought into life to be taught three things that remain when all else fades. To have faith in God, to hope that there is an end to the present troubles, and that love equips us to help each other through this world in the meantime. I don’t mind what Jack will grow up to be, but I do want him to perfect these aspects of himself. I want him to have hope in the future, and to have faith in God, and to love all people as God first loved him.

Today, as we celebrate the Saints, the people we love who have left us for glory, we have a great many memories of them within ourselves. Think of them and notice that the things that stick are often the things that brought something deeper than just a smile or some tears into our life. Sure, the day my grandfather couldn’t find his clothes and wore my grandmother’s moo-moo around the house stands out in my mind. Yet, far more than any thing he did I remember the love he showed me, the love he taught me to show others.

The reality of our lives is that only a few generations will know us by name. Our money that we make will be gone, at best, within our children’s lifetime. Businesses we worked at will close or else forget us as soon as our desks are emptied. Most everything in life is extremely fleeting. If we want to invest our time smartly and really make a difference – we need to invest in things that last far beyond the material reality around us. We must invest in loving each other, in inspiring hope, in holding tightly to our faith. These things are what we received from the Saints we honor today and these things are what we too will pass on. Give richly to those who follow after us, give the gift of these eternal gifts of God. – Amen.