July 13, 2014 – Isaiah 55:10-13
Isaiah 55:10-13
Clapping Trees? Singing Hills? Shouting Rocks?
5th Sunday after Pentecost [Lectionary 15] – July 13, 2014
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
I have always puzzled over this bit about clapping trees and singing hills.
Seems kind of ridiculous when you think about it.
What could that possibly mean?
Would you even want to hear it?
At this point in Isaiah, Isaiah is speaking of the exiles in Babylon returning home to
the Holy Land.
They had been in captivity for 70 years and now, finally, were going home.
For some reason, the trees and hills cheer them on.
The trees and hills are happy they are going home. Really?
Apparently it’s good news that the exiles are going home.
Good news for the exiles, for sure.
But somehow, Isaiah is suggesting, good news for the trees and hills.
Good news, somehow, for all creation.
Creation is rejoicing at the return the exiles.
When you start to think about it, you think: Right:
the exiles are returning home so they can once again be free to be God’s people and
be free to do the work God has called them to do.
And the first work God called them to way back in the beginning in the very second
chapter of Genesis is to tend the garden of creation.
God called the people – and God calls us – to care for the world God has made,
for every creature in it – human and non-human – for every lake and tree and hill,
for the earth and the sky and sea.
It’s what we’re for.
If we came with an instruction manual out of our mother’s wombs, that’s what it would say:
“A device for helping God care for creation.”
And when creation is well tended, it, well,
it speaks and sings according to the biblical imagination,
like an instrument that is well tuned and in tip top condition.
Listen – it’s not just Isaiah who seems to have lost his grip:
Psalm 19 says this: The heavens – that is, the sky – the heavens are telling the glory of God.
Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
In Psalm 148, the Psalmist assumes that all creation is able to sing praises to God:
Praise him, sun and moon; praise him all you shining stars!
Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens.
Praise the LORD from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps,
fire and hail, snow and frost, mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars!
Wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds!
Kings of the earth and all peoples.
And Psalm 96 speaks of the sky being glad and the earth rejoicing:
let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it.
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the LORD;
for he is coming.
The biblical writers imagine that creation was made to sing with life and
abundance and well-being and fruitfulness.
The biblical writers imagine that we are to enable that song to be sung and join in it.
And yet, and yet we know what Paul came to know and to say in Romans.
The earth and its creatures and its peoples more often groan than sing.
When human beings become God’s apprentices to creation care rather than
the destructive and careless creatures they often are, then creation will sing again.
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God . . . in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves . . . groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. ( Romans 8:19-23)
Creation is groaning: we know this as well as Paul.
Creation is having a hard time singing and rejoicing, thanks mostly to us:
we know this as well as Paul.
If you’re an endangered species, it’s hard to sing when you lose more and more of your habitat to
human greed.
If you’re an extinct species, it’s hard to sing at all, and we know the rate of species extinction is
accelerating and the wondrous variety of our planet is imperilled.
If you’re a honey bee it’s hard to sing when you die by the million from
herbicides and insecticides.
And how can anyone sing without honey?
And we too, we know too well, are inwardly groaning over many things that make it very hard,
if not impossible for us to sing.
We groan inwardly for the state of creation.
We groan inwardly for injustice.
We groan inwardly for poverty and neglect.
We groan inwardly for addiction and illness and grief and death.
We groan for those we love who go through difficult times.
We groan for broken relationships and broken promises.
We groan inwardly for things we can only admit to ourselves and our secret sorrows.
And in this we are not alone, for all creation is having a tough time singing the song of God.
It is often hard to sing. It is often hard for us to praise God, when our hearts are heavy as stone.
When Jesus enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday in Luke’s Gospel,
the big deals tell him to tell his followers to shut up and be quiet.
Finally, people have something to sing and shout about!
For finally someone has come who is not about money.
Finally someone has come who is not about power.
Finally someone has come who is not about exploitation.
Finally someone has come who appears to be pure, unbounded fathomless mercy and love.
Finally someone has come whose task is healing.
Finally someone has come to mend what is broken so that we can sing again.
And what does he say?
“If I tell them to keep quiet, even the very stones would shout out.”
The stones! And I imagine him going on in a part that someone forgot to write down.
If I tell them to keep quiet, even the trees will clap their hands.
If I tell them to keep quiet even the hills will sing.
If I tell them to keep quiet the seas will roar and everything in them.
If I tell them to keep quiet the fields will exult and
the sea monsters and the fire and the hail and the snow and the frost and
the mountains the hills and the fruit trees and the cedars and you – yes,
even all you scrooges – will sing when you see that love has come and
and that nothing can stop it not even your violence and
your pettiness when I forgive you from the cross.
When I am raised by the love of God from the death you give me.
Then you, even you, will sing.
For love has come. And love isn’t going anywhere.
And love will forgive you.
The mender of all that is broken has come.
So that we can all join the hymn of all creation – so we can sing again. So you can sing again.
So you can be freed from the exile you’re in and take up in freedom the thing you’re made for:
caring for creation, caring for one another. So you can sing again.
Our brother Cecil Isliefson died last fall and we buried him up in Husavik last weekend.
In his baptism Cecil clearly received a good measure of the Spirit of Jesus,
that part of the Spirit of Jesus that rejoiced in mending that which is broken so that
it can sing again.
Cecil mended many many string instruments as a hobby, and he was entirely self taught.
Prominent musicians came to him with their violins and trusted him to make them sing again.
At his grave, his grandson Jett, going into Grade 6 this year, played the violin.
And that violin sang a song of hope, and sang a song of resurrection, and sang a song of life
in this beautifully kept cemetery where the old trees sang their song in the wind along
with him, and the birds sang their song in the trees.
The sun sang in its shining and the insects sang in their buzzing.
And for a time we joined together in the song of the mender, who had mended us in grief
all these months later so that we could sing a song of praise again.
I think the trees were clapping in that cemetery.
I think the stones were singing – even the headstones were singing.
For the mender of death has come. The mender of grief has come.
The mender of all that ails us has come.
The mender has come. The mender is coming. The mender is here.
With grace and healing and love. You will sing again.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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