|
|
|
Sunday February 8, 2009 "Have You Not Heard?" Isaiah 40:21-31 |
 |
|
Location: Blogs Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons |
 | | Posted by: Brad Miller | 2/11/2009 9:22 AM | In 1594, William Shakespeare wrote the famous words, “Now is the winter of our discontent…” His words described the feelings of Richard III, who was unhappy at the way his subjects and the world viewed him. Key word: unhappy.
The prophet Isaiah, speaking to the Israelites gathered into Babylonian exile could have easily spoken those same words some 3000 years before Shakespeare. In Isaiah’s case, however, he would be speaking to the unhappiness of the exiled citizens of Israel.
Where I grew up, February was the month of year when discontentedness and unhappiness would reach its peak. I always felt sorry for my brother whose birthday is in February, but on the other hand, it was a bright spot in an otherwise dreary season. Believe me, I am not just saying this for dramatic effect. February in Detroit is cold and grey and even more uninviting than usual…February in southeastern Michigan regularly yields the second highest suicide rates in the country. You know where the highest rates are: The pacific northwest, where it rains some 250 days out of the year.
Growing up, I could have believed that Shakespeare’s line was written for us: to me, February was the unhappiest time of the year.
I live in a different setting now. The skies are blue and even if we get a few cold days, the shining sun helps see me through. But still, many of us could lay claim to Shakespeare’s line today.
Just as for Richard III, the citizens of Detroit in February, and the Israelites, these are not happy times for many, many people in this city and this country.
We need to name what is going on here: there is a palpable fear in the air. A fear that goes beyond uncertainty, a fear that goes beyond the actual risk to our life and livelihoods. It is a fear that is fed by continual negative reports about what is going on around us. These are not untruthful reports, but the drumbeat of bad news repeated over and over and over concerning the economy helps heighten our fear. And we, like the Israelites seem alone, bewildered, unable to act.
In the passage we heard this morning, Isaiah at first seems incredulous: “You are afraid? You feel as if God has left you? Have you not heard? Have you known?”
Some have heard these words as mocking the Israelite people. Some interpret them to mean that Isaiah is disgusted with his fellow citizens of Israel and is incredulous at their fear. I don’t interpret it that way. I hear in Isaiah’s words a validation of their fear and a gentle reminder that God is always with them. He does not call them names or castigate them harshly. He simply asks the question, more as a reminder than anything else.
Isaiah seems to understand that faith begins with memory. When our memory fails, the faith community is threatened. And there are lots of threats to our shared memory: it is easy to be distracted when we are in the midst of a crisis, not matter how temporary. When things go badly, we focus so intently on the bad that we forget when times were good. We also forget that there have been other bad times, and we forget that those bad times were overcome. And so we become mired in the negative, afraid there is no hope. Richard forgot the good will that had once existed in his kingdom, and saw only the negative. Detroiters forget that the sun will shine again in the spring, that the greyness has visited them before, and will again. Too many of us worry that our current problems are insurmountable, forgetting that we have faced hard times before, and we have endured.
This is the situation Isaiah sees in the Israelites in exile. Their memory seems to have faded, their hope is thin, and he knows that their faith is at risk because of it.
So, gently at first, and then with more and more vigor, Isaiah seeks to remind them, to put them back in touch with the memories of their faith journey. He starts with the most obvious at first: look around you. Do you doubt that a powerful God is present?
I would like you to hear parts of this passage in a slightly different, somewhat more accessible way. This is from “The Message” a modern paraphrase of the Bible.
“God sits high about the round ball of earth. The people look like mere ants. He stretches out the skies like a canvas – aes, like a tent canvas to live under…..”
And later Isaiah speaks to the people on behalf of God: “Who do you think made all of this? Who marches this army of stars out each nigh, counts them off, calls each by name – so magnificent, so powerful! And never overlooks a single one…”
What is the most beautiful sight you have ever seen? I would like you to do me a favor. For just a moment, close your eyes and come with me to the most beautiful place I have ever been.
I am on a train leaving Milan, Italy on my way to Switzerland. I am standing in the hallway of the train, my arms crossed and resting on the open window pane. I am talking with a young Yugoslavian man I met on the train. The train enters a tunnel and we are in darkness as we talk. When the train leaves the tunnel, we are high up a mountainside, the glorious peaks of the Alps above us, the valleys and streams below us. We are suddenly right in the middle of the most spectacular and beautiful sight I have ever seen in my life….our conversation ceases and my new found friend and I stare at the grandeur all around us. The silence is gently broken by my companion’s softly spoken words, “My God…my God.” My God, indeed.
Where is your most beautiful place? When you close your eyes and go there, how does it make you feel? Can you see God’s hand at work?
Can we begin to understand God’s creation? Of course not. Words often fail us when we come face to face with the undeniable beauty and wonder of all that God can do. Isaiah hammers the point home to his fellow exiles: God did all of this. Our God is truly an awesome God. God’s power is overwhelming. And that is exactly Isaiah’s point: ours is an awesome, overwhelmingly powerful God. God created all that is and we cannot even begin to fathom all of that fully, but along with the incredible power is an incredible grace: God who exists beyond our imagining also cares for each one of us, and as Isaiah reminds the Israelites, “calls each of us by name.”
This is the word of hope that Isaiah brings to the exiles: God never leaves us. Look at all of creation and remember that God made it all happen. Think back to the times when times were hardest and remember that God saw us through. From the Exodus from Egypt to forty years of wandering to dominion over the “promised land” to prosperity beyond wild imaginings, God was always there. And God will always be there.
Does this make our fear and uncertainty any less real in 2009? Well, we are human, so we will worry. But we are children of God, so we need to trust God to always be here. It begins with our memory. Why are we here? What brought us to this place? How has God blessed us in the past? What comfort has come from being part of a community of faith? Isaiah may as well be speaking to us: Remember what God has done and realize that God has not forgotten us, so let’s do our best to not forget God.
I called a friend of mine this week who is a psychologist and asked a simple question: “Is there any benefit to being a person of faith in hard times?”
Her answer was an unequivocal “absolutely.” She explained to me that that biggest psychological threat that each of us face, especially in hard times, is worry. Worry can wear a person down, can inhibit sleep, cause physical problems and generally lead to a place where worry becomes outright despair. But, she told me, people with a faith in something larger than themselves, people who regularly pray and meditate and celebrate the power of that larger presence are far less likely to worry and thus far less likely to suffer those psychological and physical ailments. “Basically,” she said, “Trusting in God leads to less worry, which leads to better health.” Isaiah couldn’t have said it better himself.
What then are we to do? In one of the most powerful passages in all the Bible, Isaiah tells the Israelites, and by extension us, what we are to do: we are to wait. Wait for God’s time. Wait for God’s strength. Keep doing what we do and know that God will not leave us. And soon enough, God’s provision for us will be another memory to add to our faith journey.
Hear again the paraphrase of Isaiah according to “The Message”:
“God doesn’t come and go. God LASTS. He is creator of all you can see or imagine. He doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch his breath. And he knows EVERYTHING, inside and out. He energizes those who get tired, gives fresh strength to dropouts. For even young people tire and drop out, young folks in their prime stumble and fall. But those who wait upon God get fresh strength. They spread their wings and soar like eagles. They run and don’t get tired. They walk and don’t lag behind.”
Does this mean that we will not face hard times? Does this mean that we will not face sorrow and grief? Does this mean we will not face uncertainty? Of course not. What it does mean, however, is that if we remember God’s power in the world and God’s grace in our life, if we strive to keep our faith fresh through praying, through studying God’s word, through worshipping, through practicing hospitality, through experiencing and extending forgiveness, we will know that God is present and God is part of all we do.
William Carl III, a professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, wrote the following story about a woman who knew what it meant to remember God and to wait upon God.
“There is a woman in Tennessee who understood. Her name is Margaret Stevenson. She is in her nineties. She used to hike ten or fifteen miles every day. She is a legend in the Smokies. It was always a joy to hike with Margaret because she knew every turn and every trail and every plant and tree by its Latin and its colloquial name. My first trip up Mt. LeConte was her seventy-fifth, and my second was here hundred and twenthy fifth. My third was her five hundredth trip. When she finally stopped hiking, she had climbed Mt. LeConte more than 700 times. Her husband rarely went, even before he got cancer. For her it was her chance to experience God and after her husband got sick, it was her chance to remember that God is always present, no matter the trials and hardships.
Once when we were hiking together, we came upon what Margaret described as the most unrelenting two-mile ridge in the whole area – two miles up with no break, and this after a hard six miles on a very hot day. I like to hike in spurts, so I said, “See you later, Margaret,” and took off in my usual fashion and got way ahead of her. At some point, I found myself lying flat on my back in half delirium. A blurred Margaret passed by at her steady pace. I can still hear the click-click of her cane and with no pity at all in her voice, “One more mile to go, Bill. I’ll see you at the top.” And so she did, arriving well ahead of me without stopping once.
Not long after that, her husband died of cancer, but because of her daily walk with God their last few days and hours were spent not in sadness or remorse, but in joy and celebration. For when Margaret says, “I’ll see you at the top,” she means it, for her face is fixed on Christ, her step is steady and sure, and she knows the meaning of Isaiah’s words:
“Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
Amen and Amen.
Let us pray: All powerful God, we believe. Forgive our unbelief. We remember. Forgive our forgetfulness. We have faith. Forgive our faithlessness. We love you. We need you. We seek to glorify your name in all we do. Strengthen us as we continue our journey, blessed by your abiding presence and limitless grace. It is in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
| | | Permalink | Trackback |
|
|
 | |