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 Isaiah 62:6-7,10-12
Upon your walls, O Jerusalem,
I have posted sentinels;
all day and all night
they shall never be silent.
You who remind the LORD,
take no rest,
and give him no rest
until he establishes Jerusalem
and makes it renowned throughout the earth.
Go through, go through the gates,
prepare the way for the people;
build up, build up the highway,
clear it of stones,
lift up an ensign over the peoples.
The above is a portion of one of the texts for Christmas Day in this year’s lectionary. I find the idea that the “sentinels” of the beleaguered Holy City are called upon to remind the LORD of the conditions of the city and its people striking. What can it mean to remind the all-seeing God of the world’s woes?
First, I need to remember that for the people of Israel, God was not far away, but had been found to be a God both transcendent and immanent, a God who inhabited, caused to be, and sustained the whole universe, but also a God who traveled with them through the wilderness, who tabernacled with them. For the Hebrew people, unlike many peoples with whom they shared the land, the God of the universe had come near and dwelt among them.
For us, as Christians, the trajectory moves to God taking on human life in Jesus the Christ, and beyond that, to the Holy Spirit taking up life within the life of the earth, within our Christian communities, and within our own hearts.
So understanding the indwelling Spirit of God we can ask about “reminding the LORD” in another way; what does it mean to remind God-with-us?
The New Zealand Book of Common Prayer, in one of its marriage rites, says that prayer is “an outlook, a sustained energy, which creates a marriage and makes love and forgiveness life-long.” Prayer then is the use of our energies in the intentional forwarding of what we discern to be God’s way on earth. So, as we act with godly intentionality, we are praying. Let me suggest that as we so act, we are reminding ourselves of the indwelling Spirit. The prayerful action awakens and renews our sense of God inspiring and animating our lives. You could say that in such moments, the Christ Child is born anew among and within us.
—The Rt. Rev. Marc Handley Andrus
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