The Lutheran Hour
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"Before They Call"
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Text: Isaiah 64:4
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See if you can guess this word. It’s been spoken by firefighters and ship captains, pilots, and even a president. The word that we’re talking about was spoken by President George Bush Sr. before he was president, when his airplane was being shot down over the Pacific Ocean during World War II. The word that we’re talking about was spoken by Firefighter Taylor Wood after he fell through the roof of a burning building in Ohio, and the word that we’re talking about should have been spoken by the captain of the Italian cruise ship, Costa Concordia, after it struck submerged rocks and began to sink just off the coast in the Mediterranean Sea. It’s one word repeated three times, “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” It’s the call of people in distress.
Sometimes a distress situation is obvious as in a house fire, a plummeting airplane, or a sinking ship. Sometimes it’s not so obvious. You could be in a distressed situation and not realize it. Other times you know you’re in distress, but you don’t want to admit it. That was the situation of that cruise captain. I mentioned earlier, the captain of the Italian vessel, the Costa Concordia, which sank in January of 2012. The ship that night had deviated from the normal course. The captain steered it that way, too close to land. It seems he was showing off maybe for the people on the shore, maybe for the passengers, maybe for the young woman he had invited to the bridge with whom he was romantically involved, or maybe all of them.
Whatever it was, at 9:45 p.m. that night everyone on board felt the ship slow down abruptly. Everyone knew something had gone wrong. But what they experienced immediately were surface symptoms: some dishes in the galley fell off a table and broke; the lights went out in the ballroom; the ships controls stopped responding. “Stay calm. Stay calm,” the passengers were told. “We’ve experienced a power outage, but the crew is handling the situation,” which was only half true. Sometimes you’re in a distressed situation and you honestly don’t know it. Sometimes you know, but don’t want to be honest. It was the latter for the captain of the ship that night and for many of his crew members. Immediately after it happened, the captain knew that he had hit the rocks. In the seconds that followed. He acted fast to try to regain some semblance of control, giving the order to close the watertight doors down in the hole of the ship. But six minutes after the collision the crew down in the engine room reported to him that they were taking on water. No Mayday call was made. Nine minutes after the collision: an announcement to the 4,000 passengers aboard: “The situation is under control,” they were told. Ten minutes after the collision: the ship’s engineer communicates the severity of the situation to the captain: 200-foot-long tear in the hull, water rushing in, ship going down—but still no Mayday. Twenty minutes after the collision: passengers on board are calling relatives ashore who are calling local authorities. Thirty minutes after the collision: the harbor radios the ship: “Is there a problem?” “It’s just a power outage,” the captain says, “We’re handling it.” Forty minutes after the collision: the captain calls the harbor back, says that they’ve taken on some water, but he withholds the information about the actual situation of the flooding. He asked for a couple of tugboats, but still no Mayday call. One hour after the collision: when the ship is pitched over at a 30-degree angle, with 20,000 tons of water in its hull, with passengers leaping overboard and others trapped inside. When it’s too late, the captain finally sends out a distress signal. Then he abandoned ship in a lifeboat with 300 passengers left on board and in the end, 32 people died.
One year later, the investigation board called the cruise actions “unbelievable.” They concluded that if the Mayday call had only gone out sooner, many if not all of those lives could have been saved.
What do you make of a report like this of mistakes made, covered up, then blown up out of control? What do you make of fellow human beings behaving so irresponsibly, trying to save face, hiding their shame, calculating at the expense of others with cold, short-term, self-interest? What do you make of it?
I see a couple of tacks you could take. You could chart a course toward the horizon of self-righteousness. You could insist that you are different, that your group is different, or that you could be different or would be different in that situation. Or another option, you could stop everything you’re doing right now and call Mayday.
Christians, followers of Jesus, are people who have been led on that latter course to turn from that horizon of self-righteousness and to call upon the Name of Jesus. But sometimes it’s hard for us to believe, even for Christians, that our situation is really that bad. Many of us live in relative comfort and safety with enough of what we need to get by without too much trouble. Can we really say that our circumstances are so dire that they would warrant a distress signal? Yes, we say, because we are learning not to gauge our situation by the surface-level experiences we’re having at the moment, but rather letting Jesus, His apostles and prophets diagnose our situation. We let God’s Word tell us the truth about what’s actually happening down in the hull, under the surface.
Over the next several Sundays leading up to Christmas, as baptized Christians gather in worshiping communities around the world, many will be hearing readings from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. Now, Isaiah is one of those people who has been turned from that horizon of self-righteousness toward God’s rescue—toward the arrival of the Messiah, the Rescuer. And God gave Isaiah the task of helping others do the same.
Isaiah recalls the story of how long ago in the earliest days of human life we suffered a catastrophic collision, spiritually, that is, in relation to God our Creator. And since then, we’ve had many self-appointed captains and commodores who’ve told us that they’re handling the situation, and sometimes we tell ourselves that we’ve got it under control. But the truth is we have suffered irreparable damage. The ship is going down. We need to call Mayday now. Listen to how Isaiah says it toward the end of his book in chapter 64.
He says, “Oh that You would split the heavens open and come down so that the mountains would shake at Your presence, as fire kindles the brushwood, as fire boils water to make Your Name known to Your adversaries and make the nations tremble at Your presence. When You did awesome things that we did not expect. You came down, the mountain shook because of Your presence. From of old, no one has heard, no one has perceived by ear, no eye has seen a God like You who takes action for those who wait for Him. You meet those who joyfully do what is right, those who remember You in Your ways. Look, You were angry, and we sinned. In our sins we have been a long time. Will we be saved? We have become like one who is unclean, all of us. And all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags. We dry up like a leaf, all of us, and our guilt like the wind carries us away. There is no one who calls on Your Name, no one who rouses himself to take hold of You. For You have hidden Your face from us; You have made us melt in the grip of our guilt. But now, Lord, You are our Father. We are the clay. You are the One who has formed us, all of us, we are the work of Your hands. Do not be so very angry, O Lord, do not remember our guilt forever. Look, please, look on Your people, all of us.”
Isaiah clarifies our distress situation. He helps us see past the surface issues, to grasp their source. We know that something has gone wrong in the world. But what we normally sense are symptoms on the surface: some dishes broke, the lights went out, our means of control aren’t responding. But those are just signs of a catastrophic collision. We broke ourselves against the bedrock of God’s reality, God’s will for His creation. And we’re too stubborn or too ashamed or too preoccupied to cry out and ask for help. That’s the source of our problems. Isaiah says, “There’s no one who calls on Your Name, no one who rouses himself to take hold of you.”
The problem isn’t just that our ship is sinking. The problem is that we tried to set a course without God as our Father. God’s will for His creation isn’t just a search-and-rescue operation to get us out of the fire, out of distress. No, God’s will is to get us back on His ship, in His family, with Jesus the Christ as our Captain and our Brother. So, Isaiah sends up a distress signal on our behalf. He calls God to tear open the heavens and come for us like He did with Moses and the people of Israel at Mount Sinai, when the mountains literally quaked and shook at His presence. Isaiah knows that God has a track record of faithfulness. God takes action for those who wait for Him. But he also knows that God’s way of rescuing is surprising. God does things we didn’t expect. Isaiah didn’t live to see what God would do ultimately to rescue us, but he caught glimpses.
God let Isaiah foresee a powerful King who had come, an anointed Messiah, the Christ. The Messiah would come in God’s power and steer creation back to God. And Isaiah foresaw another figure, a lowly Servant from God would come, a Suffering Servant who would suffer the consequences of our self-serving choices. A Servant who would save not by abandoning the ship, but by going down with it and burying it at the bottom of the sea. Isaiah spoke of both figures, the Servant and the Messiah. But no one expected that these two figures would be the same Person. And no one expected that that Person would be God Himself—God’s Son in the flesh. And when it happened, when Jesus was crucified, the mountains shook, and when He rose from the dead, the nations trembled. But has it reached you, this trembling?
It’s one thing to be in a distressed situation and honestly not know. It’s another thing to know and not be honest about it. It’s time for you to be honest with God. But when you send up a distress signal to God, it’s not to provide information that He didn’t have before. Because our problem isn’t ultimately a sinking ship; it’s a broken relationship. And God’s rescue restores our relationship with Him. That’s why He sent Jesus to rescue us in this unexpected way. That’s why He brings us onto His ship, into His family, through Baptism. If you are not baptized, go find a Christian community who will baptize you. If you are baptized, remember that this is the unexpected place where your rescue happened.
The New Testament book of Romans, chapter 6, explains it: in Baptism God ties you to Jesus. He lashes you to the deck. He secures you to the cross as Jesus drives that old ship to the bottom of the sea forever, and your old self-serving nature goes down with Him, drowned. And if we have died with Him, we also will live with Him now and forever. When He returns in power to raise the dead and restore all things, that’s the unexpected way of this rescue. And the rest of your life as a Christ-follower is living out the reality of your Baptism, being rescued daily through death and resurrection. But how?
Fire departments spend a significant amount of time training their firefighters how—how—to make a Mayday call. Firefighter Taylor Wood, the one I mentioned at the beginning, who fell through the roof of a burning house in Ohio, he had just recently completed his annual training on how to make a distress call. It begins with calling Mayday, but there is more to it than that. Fire departments use various acronyms to help their firefighters remember what to say, after calling Mayday. For example, there’s the acronym LUNAR, L-U-N-A-R, which means that you need to relay your location, unit, name, air supply, and resources needed. Taking this training seriously can mean the difference between life and death. Because when you are in the jaws of a distress situation, you have to rely on habits ingrained through discipline training. When Firefighter Wood fell through the roof, he landed on a rafter. Dangling above the fire, surrounded by smoke, he called over the radio, “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!”, relaying his location, unit, name, air supply and resources needed, and three minutes later he was pulled out of the fire, reunited with his crew.
Isaiah shows us how to make a Mayday call. The fire department has a memorable acronym for their Mayday procedures, and Christians have one for prayer. The acronym is ACTS, A-C-T-S. The A is for adoration; the C is for confession; and I think Isaiah would have us make it a double C, one for complaint as well. More on that in a moment. The T is for thanksgiving; the S is for supplication. That’s A-C-C-T-S, ACCTS. Adoration means praising God for who He is because there is no one like Him. He’s in a class of His own who takes action for those who wait for Him, who makes the mountains shake, who humbles Himself to die for the creatures He formed from the dust. Confession means admitting to God how I have fallen short, how even my outwardly righteous deeds are tainted with self-serving motives. The second C is for complaint. As you can hear in Isaiah’s prayers, God welcomes complaints because complaining is still talking to God. It’s deepening the relationship even in the jaws of distress. Thanksgiving is gratitude for what God has done, how He rescues us again and again and again. Finally, supplication is a request. Tear open the heavens, forgive our guilt. Look after Your people. Isaiah teaches us the ACCTS of prayer and also how to take action while we wait, because God has already come.
As we come to know God more intimately, we remember Him in His ways. We do the kinds of things He does, and God meets us on the way. Later in Isaiah 65, God says, “Before they call, I will answer.” God is like those Italian search-and-rescue crews that responded to the Costa Concordia. They knew something was wrong, even though the captain was too proud to ask for help. They came before he called, and that’s what God has done. Before we called, He answered.
There are people around you who are desperate for help but are too proud or too embarrassed or just don’t know how to ask for help. God is sending you to them now, before they call. In Christ, you are God’s answer to them.
Would you pray with me? Dear Father, before I even knew I was in distress, You were here for me in Jesus. Help me to be there for others. In His Name. Amen.
Reflections for December 3, 2023
Title: Before They CallMark Eischer: You’re listening to The Lutheran Hour. For FREE online resources, archived audio, our mobile app, and more, go to lutheranhour.org. Now back to our Speaker, Dr. Michael Zeigler.
Michael Zeigler: Thank you, Mark. Today, I have the pleasure of visiting with Kari Vo. Kari is a theological writer with Lutheran Hour Ministries. Welcome, Kari.
Kari Vo: Hi.
Michael Zeigler: You do a lot of other things, but you primarily write our Daily Devotions and especially our Advent devotions. Today is the first day of Advent. So, Kari, what should people expect from these devotions?
Kari Vo: They start at the beginning of Advent, and they go through till January 6th. That’s Epiphany. During that time, we look at the Christmas story from its very beginnings when God sends an angel to say that John the Baptist is on his way, and then to the message to Mary, and then through Joseph’s finding out, and all the episodes until Jesus is born. And then the things that happen after that. They’re really short. They’re only about 300 words, something that you could read in five minutes.
Michael Zeigler: All right. I appreciate the way you come at a biblical story or just a moment in the biblical narrative, in a unique way. How did you develop this way of approaching the Bible or reading the Bible? What were some formative influences for you?
Kari Vo: Well, I was an English major, and when I was going to graduate school, I was trained in how you do a close reading of a text, which means that you pay attention to the details of the story. If you notice something that sticks out and catches your attention, you ask why. Why is that there? What purpose does it serve? You try to dig in on it and see, well, maybe I can learn something from that. When you do that to Scripture, it’s wonderful, because all kinds of great things come falling out. It’s like shaking a tree, and all the fruit comes down and you’re like, “Whoa, this is a lot of good stuff.”
Michael Zeigler: I’ve noticed when you do that close reading, you sometimes will show us the unvarnished truth about these people that God has, as you said, moved into their lives. They are people with the same kind of foibles and faults as the rest of us. What gives you the courage, even though you’re dealing with the Bible, what gives you the courage to let that light shine in those dark places?
Kari Vo: I think for me it’s almost the other way around. It’s seeing that they didn’t respond perfectly—that they goofed up; they made mistakes. That gives me the courage to think, well, then God can deal with me too because I make those same mistakes: I back off from God’s promises like Zachariah did. I can’t figure out what to do next like Joseph. By seeing how they handled things and God still did wonderful things through them, that gives me hope for my own situation with God now.
Michael Zeigler: You take us through this account of Jesus’ birth, going back to the birth of His cousin, John the Baptist, all the way forward to His presentation in the temple after He’s born, the visit from the Magi, even when He’s a toddler. Along the way you notice these many little details, the details of this family, Zachariah and Elizabeth, who are not officially part of the holy family, so to speak, details of Mary staying for three months with Elizabeth when she goes to visit her, all these things. Or Zachariah—I liked how you pointed out how Zachariah had to wait a week until after his son was born, John, to be able to speak. Why do details like that matter?
Kari Vo: The first thing they tell me is that this is trustworthy material. This is eyewitness material. It’s not something someone made up. If I was going to make up a story, why would I throw in a detail like having poor Zachariah stay mute a week after his son is born? That’s just strange, and reality is strange.
Michael Zeigler: Thank you so much for taking a few moments to visit with us, Kari. Again, if you want to hear these devotions or read them, you can find them at lhm.org, or you can download the Lutheran Hour Ministries app at your app store and look for the Daily Devotions app. All The Lutheran Hour sermons are there as well. There’s a separate tab for sermons or messages, and then one for the devotions. Thanks again for being with us, Kari.
Kari Vo: Thanks.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by Chris Bergmann. Used by permission.
“Savior of the Nations, Come” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.