Arise | "Shine with Repentance" - Fr. Aaron Damiani

A reading from the prophet Isaiah and it shall be said,

build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction

from my people's way. For thus says the one who is

high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, I

dwell in the high and holy place.

And also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to

revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the

contrite. For I will not condemn forever,

nor will I always be angry. For the spirit would grow faint

before me, and the breath of life that I made because of the

iniquity of the unjust gain. I was angry, I struck him, I hid

my face and was angry, but he went on backsliding in the way

of his own heart. I have seen his ways, but I will

heal him. I will lead him and restore

comfort to him and his mourners, creating the fruit of the lips.

Peace. Peace to the far and to the

near, says the Lord, and I will heal him.

But the wicked are like the tossing sea, for it cannot be

quiet, and its waters toss up mire and dirt.

There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked, the word of the

Lord. Let's pray together, Lord, We

need the wind of the Holy Spirit to blow into our hearts and our

fellowship this morning. We pray that as Your word is

opened that we would be given the grace to come to you, Lord,

not in the night, but in the day, ready to repent, ready to

shine with the glory that you impart in the place of what we

give to you Lord, our sins, our doubts, and all of the needs

that we have. We pray that the Spirit of Jesus

would be alive and well as we listen to the prophet Isaiah.

We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.

Oh, please be seated and you can turn your bulletins or your

Bibles to Isaiah 57 looking at Isaiah 57, verses 14 through 21.

Isaiah 57:14–21

This is the second message in our series that we're in called

Shine, which is looking at our spiritual beacon call.

We're right in the middle of our Arise journey which began in

November of 2024, which is a 2 year initiative helping us

prepare for a long term spiritual beacon calling.

We're not just here temporarily. We believe God's calling us to

put down roots here in Chicago and to shine with His glory and

His love for generations to come.

And so to prepare for that, we have embarked on this two year

journey and it is in part a financial and stewardship

journey. But it doesn't end there.

That's a starting place. It's not an ending place.

The ending place is our whole life, our spiritual lives, our

relational lives, the way in which we minister.

And so this is something that we're asking, we're not actually

not seeking primarily a certain number that would be artificial

and superficial. We're actually seeking 100%

engagement of hearts and lives in not only in this initiative,

but just in following Jesus. So money has this way though of

getting to the heart, doesn't it?

Where Jesus says where money is, so will a heartbeat also.

That's why money is involved. And we are asking for a

commitment. If you call Emmanuel your home

church on March 22nd and a few weeks from now, we're going to

have a commitment Sunday and we're going to be inviting

anyone who feels ready and if you can in freedom make a 10

month commitment to Emmanuel Anglican financially and

spiritually, we want to invite you and give you an opportunity

to do that. And along the way, you're going

to be able to hear some stories of those who have already made a

commitment, one of whom are really cool, someone from our

congregation with a very cool story to tell later on today.

But let's look at Our Calling, what we're here for.

We're looking at shining with repentance.

Today's message is a word of hope.

It begins with a word of hope for people who are far from God.

Do you feel spiritually dislocated today?

You feel any kind of boy, post traumatic faith, any kind of

longing for God, but you can't connect with him.

Are you discouraged? Hear verse 14 from Isaiah and it

shall be said, build up, build up, prepare the way, remove

every obstruction from my people's way.

Isaiah is hearing a promise from God, which is this picture of a

road being built that would lead us into the presence of God.

Imagine if there was a road, a highway built up, it would lead

you right into the presence of God.

And you know, as Americans, we might hear this and go, yes, Rd.

building. We know how to do that.

We can remove every obstruction, we can solve for X and we could

become a spiritual success together.

Let's join a new group. Let's do a service project,

let's do, let's take on some more spiritual disciplines.

Let's get close to God together, remove every obstruction, and

let's just look like God together.

There's something good in that. We've got high hopes for our

lives, for our families, for our church.

So yes, let's prepare the way and get the work done.

Let's build that road. Let's build that life.

So let's just pause for a moment and say this.

Sometimes Rd. building can backfire.

And especially when we're we're paving quickly over something or

someone important. You know, back in the day, the

the Eisenhower Expressway, the 290, you know, it had this way

of devastating Little Italy and it actually contributed toward

the famous and tragic racial segregation of our city.

The Dan Ryan Expressway gouged a hole right through the heart of

Bronzeville. The community still feels it to

this day. The wrong kind of Rd. building

can ruin us. The wrong kind of Rd. building

can ruin the world. So let's just ask this question.

What if the road and the highway mentioned in verse 14 is not

meant to go up, but to go down? What if it leads somewhere that

you and I would rather not go? Somewhere low, somewhere humble?

And what if those obstructions in the way are not just some

external problem to solve, but internal pride and performance?

What follows verse 14 is one of the most hope filled

descriptions of God ever written.

It tells us two different places where God lives and how we might

be with Him. Verse 15 says this, for thus

says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits

eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy

place. God's dwelling is in a high and

holy place. His very name, verse 15 says is

holy, which means set apart, pure, perfect by definition, not

part of the creation which He made, which He exists above.

Creation can't hustle to Him creation.

Human beings can't build a road to this high and holy place.

It's too high, it's too holy. His holy and eternal dwelling

exists far above all human striving.

In fact, when we try to get to this high and holy place, when

we try to build a road to an upwardly mobile above average

life with God, we end up in some above average space where He

doesn't dwell at all because He's up in the high and holy

place in His holy temple in heaven.

And he also dwells at what one pastor called rock bottom.

Those are the two places where God makes his home and one we

can't build a road to. And one that's where he's

calling us. second-half of verse 15.

I dwell also with him or with her who is of a contrite and

lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to

revive the heart of the contrite.

Now that's where the highway that verse 14 alludes to, that's

where it goes friends, goes down to this contrite place, to this

lowly place. We can meet God there.

Isn't that amazing? He's made his home there, not

just a summer home like a permanent home.

He is there. He was there.

He, he became man and he, he said I'm that God man said I am

gentle and lowly in heart, and he came to offer rest for our

souls. The Hebrew word for contrite

here you can translate it as like crushed or pulverized.

And it describes someone who's at the pit of human existence.

They're exhausted, they're demoralized, they're brought

low, they're humiliated, they're dejected.

They have nothing, but they have everything because the God of

the high and holy place is with them and he's not paving a

highway over their sorrows. He's not spiritually bypassing

their pain. He's not rushing them through

some performance improvement plan.

He's with them reviving their spirits.

You hear that inside out language, the unrushed human

language of came to revive their hearts and revive their souls.

It's like he's breathing life into them, his breath into them

until they can breathe too. What's got us down this morning?

What's discouraging us? What's weighing, what's weighing

you down? What problems do we have that we

kind of wish we didn't have? If we could solve the problems,

we'd solve the problems. What have we failed at that we

were hoping we would succeed at? What dreams got crushed?

What part of us got pulverized in that?

What have we lost that was very, very precious to us?

And what if? What if going down was our true

highway to the presence of God? What if all those bad things

that happened were just obstacles getting removed to get

here? The one place we didn't want to

go, The one place we can meet with God.

Chuck Colson was one of the most powerful men in America a few

decades ago. He worked his way into the inner

circle of the administration of President Richard Nixon,

becoming part of his inner circle.

And he helped President Nixon advance illegal and sometimes

violent paths that that Nixon went along with.

And there was a scandal broke open by some reporters known as

Watergate, Watergate in an exposed Coulson and ultimately

landed him in prison. So he went from one of the

highest and loftiest places that you could get to in one of the

most powerful nations in the world, in all civilization to a

place of being crushed, pulverized, made low.

And as he fell from grace kind of mid fall, he went and saw a

friend, an old colleague who was also an extraordinarily powerful

man at that time, who had become a Christian.

And here's what Coulson said about that fateful meeting.

He says this that night he read to me from Mere Christianity by

CS Lewis about the great sin that is pride.

A proud man is always walking through life, looking down on

other people and other things, said Louis.

As a result, he cannot see something above himself

immeasurably greater. That is God.

Tom that night. Tom's the name of his friend.

Tom that night told me about encountering Christ on my own

life. He didn't realize it, but I was

in the depths of deep despair over Watergate, watching the

president I had helped for four years flounder in office.

I'd also heard that I might become a target of the

investigation as well. In short, my world was

collapsing. But when I got in the car that

night, I couldn't drive it out of the driveway.

Ex Marine, captain, White House, tough guy.

I was crying too hard, calling out to God.

I didn't know what to say. I just knew I needed Jesus and

he came into my life. Now.

Coulson's story echoes this quote, this beautiful quote from

a medieval theologian named Anselm who also found himself at

rock bottom. And he said this to himself.

Come now, little man, flee for a moment from your agitated

thoughts. Pull aside now.

Put aside now your burdensome cares and worrisome toils.

Abandoned yourself for a while to God and rest in him a little

while. This is the thing about rock

bottom that we don't always think.

We don't always know. It's a relief to get there.

Once we're there, it's a pretty restful place.

We can actually rest in God's greatness.

He's up there high and lifted up and we're like, wow, I don't

have to be up there. I can be down here.

I could rest in his settled, beautiful holiness that's

reviving me back to life. When we can experience God's

greatness as kind of pure gentleness.

You ever known the pure gentleness of God, which is also

His greatness and it revives us revive some deep place in us

that got wounded along the way. Verse 16 the Lord says about

himself, for I will not contend forever, nor will I always be

angry, for the spirit would grow faint before me.

This the spirit of human beings, of of women and men, of

children, and the breath of life that I made you.

Can you see from verse 16 and from Isaiah 57 that the Lord God

doesn't want us to grow faint. He doesn't want to destroy us

with his anger. He doesn't want to destroy us

with His Holiness. He wants to renew us with His

Holiness. He looks gently upon our frail

nature. He he doesn't want us to die or

grow faint. But like Chuck Coulson, we're

paving roads to success for ourselves.

We're building highways to get us out of rock bottom.

Some of us build highways that gouge out the goodness of other

people. Some of us are tempted to do

some Rd. building that that ruins and precisely because of

his gentle love for us, God cannot stay silent when we start

those Rd. building projects. Verse 17 because of the iniquity

of his note this phrase, unjust gain.

I was angry because of the iniquity of his unjust gain, I

was angry. I struck him, I struck her.

I hid my face and was angry. But he went on backsliding.

She went on backsliding in the way of their own heart.

Friends, why is God angry? Why does he get angry?

He's not angry at people's gain some there's a myth out there.

God get, you know, God's against people flourishing.

God wants us to flourish. He wants us to to bear fruit in

the world and to fulfill our call, but not at the expense of

justice, not at the expense of someone else's dignity.

God wasn't angry at Chuck Coulson for going into public

service. He was angry at Chuck Coulson

for seeking power by planning violence and lying about it.

Have we paved a road to success, a road to pleasure, a road to

fulfilment on someone else's dignity?

See, for us it's more subtle than with Chuck Coulson, isn't

it? Have we ever sent signals to

someone that we're maybe interested, but we know we're

not, we just like the attention? Have we ever taken credit for

other people's hard work, but never giving the credit, never

passing it on because we want the promotion?

We need the promotion. What about building a nice, nice

nest egg for ourself, but passing up opportunity after

opportunity to be generous to the people in our life that have

real need and are really hurting financially?

Making everyone at the party laugh, but at someone else's

expense. They're not in the room to

defend themselves. Martin Luther King Junior called

this the darkness of destructive selfishness.

The darkness of destructive selfishness.

Isaiah calls it unjust gain, and the Lord feels anger about it,

no matter how subtle or not subtle it is.

This isn't who He created us to be, so he he strikes us.

This is the language in Isaiah's prophecy.

That is to say, he lets us feel the pain of our choices.

Sometimes He even hides his face, which is his consoling

presence. That is a sense of God's

absence. And this is not punishing

absence. It's it's meant to wake us up

because God cares too much. So he intervenes and he he

actually demolishes our Rd. building ruinous projects and

this might getting caught totally red handed like it did

for Chuck Colson or having a stricken conscience or friends

who care in us to confront us or getting fired or getting dumped.

God is beckoning us all of these ways to come back to rock bottom

because that's where he can dwell with us and make us whole.

He wants to heal us. He says in verse 18, I have seen

his ways, but I will heal him. I have seen her ways, but I will

heal her. What a countercultural message

that is. We're used to hearing.

I have seen their way, so I'm going to punish them.

I've seen their way, so I'm going to pay them back.

I've seen her way, so I will judge her.

I have seen his way, so I will exploit him.

But in his fatherly love the Lord says I have seen her ways,

but I will heal her. I have seen His way, so I will

heal him. Weeping may come through the

night, but joy comes in the morning.

That's God's ark, that's his intention.

Resurrection comes after death. Where do we need God to heal us

this morning? What part of our lives are are

infected or out of joints are wounded?

God has some healing in mind for rock bottom.

And in verse 18, the Lord promises I will lead him or her

and restore comfort to them. That is His mourners.

God's looking for mourners, those who will grieve, those who

will lift up their pain to him and says, I will bring comfort

where there's grieving and pain. And then in verse 19, he says

peace, peace to the far and to the near.

And this word peace is, is Shalom, which is this amazing

complex Hebrew word for wholeness.

I will make whole. I'm going to heal and make whole

where there's been breaking and tearing.

The Lord God is putting our lives back together at rock

bottom from the inside out. It's just crazy that you're

like, no one wants to go there. You, you look down at the like

ravine, you know, like there's no way I'm going down there.

I I'll do everything I can to stay up here, but I'm not going

down there. Looks too steep.

It looks too scary. It looks terrible from a

distance. Everybody's crying.

But once you're there, it's a place of healing.

It's a place of consolation. It's a place of being made

whole. Chuck Coulson breaks the law of

God and man in pursuit of power, and his worst nightmare comes

true. He finds himself locked up in

prison, humiliated publicly serving time behind bars.

What happens for him at rock bottom?

God heals his pride. He forgives his sin, and he

redirects his leadership, gifting to serve inmates all

over the country and to an extent, the world for the rest

of his life. He's totally fulfilled in a way

he never was when he had power. A woman harbors resentment

against her mother-in-law for decades because of her meddling

and her cruelty. And one day this woman realizes

that what began has hurt has become pure hatred, and that

this hatred is slowly destroying her body and soul to the help of

a loving small group and the Holy Spirit.

She grieves the pain of all those years.

She just releases all that pain. She learns how to forgive her

mother-in-law. She releases the hatred.

And even though that road of forgiveness is long, she can

finally sleep at night. A young man is secretly addicted

to pornography. It's consuming more and more of

his time, and it's eroding his willpower.

It's filling his soul with shame.

After one relapse, he cries out to God for help.

And then there's this idea that just kind of pops into his head.

Search for a recovery group. He does that, and the next day

he summons every ounce of courage he has to walk into a

room full of strangers who welcomed him as a brother.

And he walks out the first day of his freedom lighter than he's

felt in years. A woman in the middle of her

career is burning out. She's given everything she has

to her clients and her craft, but somewhere along the way, she

forgot how to rest. She thought she couldn't afford

to rest, but. And her body over time begins to

fail her. Taking a true Sabbath for her

was an act of repentance at rock bottom, and at first it felt

like a threat to her system. But week by week she begins to

overflow with grace and love, which was the first reason she

got into this in the first place.

It takes real humility to go down to rock bottom, to let

ourselves see how crushed we really are and to let the High

and Holy One just be with us and to love us back into life and to

be to be put back together in a Shalom like way.

There it is. That's the road back to rock

bottom, the cross of Christ. It's the way of the suffering

servant who was crushed for our iniquities.

He came down from his high and holy place, that high throne

where God dwells. He took the immense weight of

the wrath that we deserve, and He bore upon Himself the unjust

gain of billions of people. And He did that so He could give

us the light and easy yoke that He brought from heaven to rock

bottom, where we could be healed.

Being at the foot of the cross is a very peaceful, shaded place

where God's greatness becomes gentleness, where His Holiness

becomes forgiveness, and we are brought into a community of love

and grace that shines with repentance.

Some of us friends want to go there, but we're not quite

ready. Some of us are hearing this and

we want, we want, part of us wants to go to the cross.

Part of us wants this repentance.

Part of us wants to go to rock bottom.

But part of us really just can't get there yet.

And we're wrestling and we're, and we're, we're in an in

between place. The thought of seeing our

faults, the thought of taking responsibility for them, the

thought of being LED down a road of humility where we cannot be

in control or the feeling of in control is just too hard.

And we're resisting. And for, for, for some of us,

there's like some spiritual turbulence this Lent.

Now Isaiah ends this passage with a bit of a picture of what

turbulence looks like kind of an image.

This is 1 of this was not a road image, but it's more of an

aquatic image. Verse 20 and 21.

But the wicked are like the tossing sea for an it cannot be

quiet and it's waters toss up mire and dirt.

There is no peace. There's that word again.

There's no Shalom says my God for the wicked.

So in Isaiah's prophecies, this word wicked is interesting

because he often uses it of respectable, upright, otherwise

religious people who look really good on the outside.

They're often very moral, very pious.

What makes them wicked is that they resist the grace that only

God can give. They resist the rest that he

offers. They resist the call to be

forgiven. And what they've decided is I'm

going to be my own savior. I'm going to work up the

forgiveness I need, the healing I need, the life I need.

I don't need God. I've got this foreign nation

over here. I'll make an alliance with them.

I've got this idol that I can control over here.

I'm just going to go ahead and like adopt some of the Yahweh

practices. But basically, I don't actually

need the Lord God anymore. That really is Isaiah's

definition of what it means to be wicked.

And I've been there, definitely tried to make peace for myself

apart from God. Maybe you've been there too.

Wicked's kind of a bracing word. Sometimes we need a bracing word

or a bracing experience to realize I am resisting God right

now. So our lives become like a

tossing sea, always churning ourselves into being awesome and

forgiven and whole. But instead of that wholeness,

just producing muck and mire and making a mess of it.

And The thing is that sometimes when we're as storm tossed like

this sea, if you imagine like Lake MI just churning, like it's

like we can't stop. We're just we're feeling all

these feelings. Our mind is spinning, our soul

is shaken up and like we can't calm ourselves down.

And there's this great story in the Gospels, Mark chapter 4

Mark 4 · chapter mention

where the disciples are like that.

They're in a boat on the sea. The sea is churning and the

disciples are churning and they're freaking out and they

wake up Jesus, like, don't you care?

And Jesus says, oh, you have little faith.

He stands up, he puts his hand up and he says to the sea, peace

be still. And the disciples got to see the

power of God, the greatness of God become gentleness where

there's only anxiety and churning and strife.

It's something calmed down in them too.

And the other thing about those men on the boat is that they

were freaking out, but they went to their deaths bravely and

boldly, and their hearts were stilled.

They went to rock bottom, trusting God with everything

because Jesus had brought them a peace they couldn't bring

themselves. And this is what Jesus offers to

you and me this morning, this Lent.

Peace be still peace. Know that he is God.

Peace. Follow him away from the

upwardly mobile highway of a self-directed life.

Stop the churning, walk the road to rock bottom.

Be calm, be restored, be made whole through Jesus.

Now what does this vision of repentance have to do with our

church's mission to be a spiritual beacon Church in

Chicago that makes the gospel known?

Everything, everything. The best way, friends, to

display the actual gospel of Jesus to our friends and

neighbors isn't to have it all together.

It's to have been put back together and to be brought into

a community of people who have been brought together in a

forgiving, humble, approachable foundation of rock bottom.

We aren't here to lift high, the name of our church.

That's not our goal. That's not why we're here.

We're here to lift high the Son of God who's loved our church

into life and wants to love our city in the same way.

And I love what the Reformed theologian Martin Luther said.

He he said this may a merciful God preserve me from a Christian

Church in which everyone is a St.

I want to be and remain in the little flock of the faint

hearted, the feeble and the ailing, who feel and recognize

the wretchedness of their sins, who sigh and cry to God

incessantly for comfort and help, who believe in the

forgiveness of sins and friends. I too want to remain in the

little flock of the feeble hearted, shining with

repentance. Friends are is going to keep us

in a good spot. Not glaring, not glaring from on

high, but shining from the valley of rock bottom.

Shining with a light that isn't from us, it's from the high and

holy place given to us by Jesus. What if we were friends for for

years to come? To shine with Shalom, to shine

with kindness, to shine with the beauty and glory of Jesus that

put us back together in the merciful shade of the cross.

Friends, I want to remain there with you and at the foot of the

cross, at rock bottom. May we make space for many, many

others to join us right here in the little flock of the faint

hearted at rock bottom where God's greatness becomes

gentleness. In the name of the Father, Son

and Holy Spirit, Amen.