Sunday Message
December 5, 2004
Richard L Sheffield
Text: Isaiah 11:1-9

When I'm finished, we're going to sing a hymn that has been a favorite of mine over the years. (When your're a lame duck you can pick any hymn you want!) We've not sung this one often, if ever, because it's not found in The Presbyterian Hymnal – at least not anymore. It was in the old red Hymnbook that some of you may remember. Committees decide what goes into a hymnal. With more than 50,000 hymns extant and more or less singable, not everything gets in. Actually only about 1% get in. If you assume that every hymn is someone's favorite, at 4 hymns per service, 52 times per year, it would take 240 years to be sure you sang everyone's favorite! I decided not to wait my turn. I chose to have us sing one of mine! It begins,

"God is working his purpose out,
As year succeeds to year;
God is working his purpose out,
And the time is drawing near;
Nearer and nearer draws the time,
The time that shall surely be,
When the earth shall be filled
with the glory of God
As the waters cover the sea." ¹

I wonder. Why would anyone leave that out? Was it the tune? I'm not a musician, but I like the tune. It has a cadence that suggests that the singer believes what the words say. God is working his purpose out.

There are four little "b's" at the beginning of each staff. I'm told those are "flats." I don't know what that means. But is that why they left it out?

Surely it's not just because it refers a couple of times to God as "him," and speaks of the "brotherhood of all mankind." Surely we're sophisticated enough in the 21st century, to read the poetry of the 19th century, without passing judgment on their time and their world. Given the mess our time and our world is in, the old saw that, "those who live in glass houses should not throw stones" comes to mind.

Maybe it's because it's two pages long, and we want our music like we want our food: fast.

Who knows. Probably only the committee knows why they didn't choose it. But what I do know, this morning, is the truth of what that hymn says. "God is working his purpose out." He's working it out in the life of the Market Street Presbyterian Church; and in the life of the Presbyterian Congregation in Georgetown. He's working it out, out in Lima, Ohio, and inside the beltway. He's working it out in your life, and in mine. And, "The earth shall be filled with the glory of God," someday.

Isaiah says it will no less than 18 times in 9 verses. He says: This shall be. This will be. In this uncertain world, that is certain, and that is the message of every Advent season. Not that:

"You better watch out,
you better not pout,
you better not cry,"
but that:
"Nearer and nearer draws the time,
The time that shall surely be,
When the earth shall be filled
with the glory of God
As the waters cover the sea."

I went looking for some more information on the hymn, and it's writer, Arthur Campbell Ainger. I was surprised to find it on one internet site listed as one of "The Hymns and Carols of Christmas." But on reflection that makes perfectly good sense, since everything the hymn says is that the promise of Christmas, the purpose of the coming of Christ, shall be fulfilled. That Advent hope is more than what we hope to get in our stocking on December 25th. That history is His-Story, and that story will end as every story worth the telling does – "And they lived happily ever after!" The whole of the Bible is directed to that end.

Arthur Campbell Ainger, a parish priest, apparently understood that and wrote his great hymn. His hymn, by the way, is about the only thing he seems to be remembered for. Everything I found on him started something like, "Arthur Campbell Ainger, writer of "God Is Working His Purpose Out." I'll be happy if a generation or two from now, when I have joined past pastors like Art Romig, and Wood Duff, and others, if someone were looking at those Confirmation pictures down the hall where you can see me age right before your very eyes, and someone were to say, "He's the one who said what Ainger said, and what Isaiah said before him: that God is working his purpose out."

That is what Isaiah said in the lesson I read. Isaiah's words have been a favorite for many. American Artist Edward Hicks painted a picture often found on Christmas cards called "The Peaceable Kingdom." It hangs in the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. (And it's copyrighted, or I'd reproduce it in the printed sermon.) It's familiar images of children playing with lions, and oxen, with a little vignette of the Quaker William Penn signing a treaty with the Indians in the background, is his take on Isaiah's vision.

In another kind of vision, the "Christian Vegetarian Association" takes Isaiah literally, and declares that, "We anticipate the diet of the Kingdom by adopting now the diet of the age to come and living as ethical vegetarians." ² On one hand I found that a bit humorous, and wondered what Isaiah would have thought. On the other hand I'm glad someone takes Isaiah's words seriously. Most often, it seems, we don't. Or if we do, it's more out of sentiment than out of believing they might be true.

The Curio Cabinet and Christmas Village in Worthington will sell you a Lladro figurine named, "And a little child shall lead them," (Isaiah 11:6) The 6" figurine portrays the sweetest of sweet children, kneeling next to a bambi like deer. That'll be $285 and the last day to receive your item by Christmas using standard shipping is December 20th. ³ Please do not rush out and buy me one! I'd much rather you spend your $285.00 to help our mission committee fill stockings this year for the Salvation Army! Isaiah didn't intend to be sentimental; he intended to be certain.

Isaiah intended to convey the same certainty that is in Ainger's hymn, in a world just as uncertain as yours and mine. A world where I am told I will soon be living not far away from banks of anti-aircraft guns on the banks of the Potomac that are aimed over our new house. A world where people flying into and out of National Airport in our nation's capitol can't get up to go potty for 30 minutes in and out of D.C. A world in which you probably don't want to know what might happen if you tried to!

Ours is a world in which people like Eloise Page are sometimes all that seems to stand between us and a world that seems to have no purpose at all. I've told some of you this story. Eloise Page was a Sunday School teacher, head of the altar guild, and helped with weddings at the Episcopal Church near her home. She wore white gloves, and conservative dresses. If the altar linens at Christ Church had the slightest wrinkle, they were sent back for re-ironing. She was "the quintessential southern lady."

"Miss Page [as she insisted on being called] was [also] secretary during World War II to Army Maj. Gen. William E. Donovan, chief of the Office of Strategic Services, which was the espionage service that preceded the CIA. With the founding of the CIA, she transferred into the organization and made espionage and intelligence her life's work.

In 1978, [Miss Page] became the agency's first female station chief, assigned in Athens, where three years earlier, Marxist terrorists had assassinated CIA station chief Richard Welch. She became one of the CIA's experts on terrorism, and after her 1987 retirement from the CIA, she was a consultant on terrorism to the Defense Intelligence Agency and a teacher at the National Defense University. From 1975 until she retired, she had been the CIA's highest-ranking female officer." ⁴

She was a spy!!

According to her obituary in the Washington Post, Eloise Randolph Page died at the age of 82 on October 16, 2002, at home in Washington DC. Her home was on P Street, NW in Georgetown; which is the Sheffield's new home come the New Year. They called her "the iron butterfly." We intend to get one for the coffee table!

Miss Page knew, probably better than you or I ever will, or want to, what this world can be like. Miss Page worked to make it better. I can only assume, but it is a good assumption, that Miss Page, from time to time, could be found on a Sunday morning singing from The Episcopal Hymnal, Hymn #534: "God Is Working His Purpose Out." If she could sing it, and believe it, so can we!

1. The Hymnbook, 500.
2. http://www.christianveg.com/declaration.htm
3. http://www.curiocabinet.com/shop/products/productview.asp?prodno=8041
4. http://www.navyseals.com/community/dropzone/dropzone55.cfm