|
Pastor or Lay Reader: Man had disobeyed God.
Man had sinned. Man would die. This was no secret. Man had
been warned that the wages of sin were death. There were
voices of warning - and of promise. Warnings of death, but
others promising God would send life. Many voices (Isaiah
enters and introduction fades as Isaiah shouts) Some
were heard, many were ignored.
(Isaiah walks into the sanctuary shouting at the
people:) Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
Remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; Cease to
do evil; learn to do good.
(Then he pauses and looks around at the
congregation) Excuse me, I was talking as I usually
did to the people of Israel. My name is Isaiah, son of Amoz,
and I was asked by our Lord to be a Prophet. I don't know
why I was asked to be a Prophet. Who knows why our Lord asks
any of us to do anything? It was certainly not because I was
living a perfect life so that I could tell others now to
live a perfect life. It was a frightening thing to be
face-to-face with our Lord.
(Read Isaiah 6:1-8 from your favorite
translation)
Isaiah continues to speak:
From that time on, for the next 40 years, I was a Prophet
for our Lord and I tried my best to do everything that He
asked of me - even when I didn't understand what He was
asking. Sometimes He would tell me to go to the rulers of
our land and tell them of all their sins. This was not an
easy thing to do; the rulers often killed people who dared
to oppose them in any way. Sometimes he would ask me to do
strange things. Like the time I was told to go naked and
barefoot - for THREE YEARS - as a sign of the fate that
awaited Egypt and Ethiopia. I'm glad I lived in a part of
the world where I could go naked and barefoot for three
years and survive to tell about it. I understand you are at
the beginning of what you call the Advent Season, a time of
waiting for the coming of the Lord. It is difficult to wait
and hope. In my time, over 700 years before the coming of
the Lord, it was also a time of waiting and hope. A much
more difficult time, we didn't know when the Lord was
coming, and many of my people had lost all hope. Our people
were suffering from wars with the countries around us; there
was gluttony, greed, social injustice and corruption. In the
midst of all of this trouble, our Lord gave me a gift; I was
chosen to be the first to tell the people of what was to
come, the Messiah!
(Read Isaiah 9:2-6 from your favorite
translation)
Isaiah continues to speak:
It was a beautiful prophesy, the greatest story the world
had ever heard, but many did not understand or forgot as we
all waited those many long years. I did not live to see the
coming of the Messiah. But, I was one of the first to tell
of His coming. There were many others after me and the story
has been told over and over again as the people waited for
the coming of our Lord - just as you wait today. It is well
worth the wait! It is a story that is well worth the
telling. Go and tell it to the world!
|