Isaiah 40:21-31, Psalm 147:1-11, 2-5-12
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ
I stand before you holding a stick; it is originally from a
birch tree; it is not very white but I think that it is from a white birch. I
picked it up one summer while serving as a chaplain at Bear Creek Camp; my plan
then was to use it as a walking stick; I took off some bark in places and I,
kind of, carved out the head of a bear, but everybody tells me that it looks more
like a dog or a cow.
A good artist, a real wood carver, could turn a stick like
this into a piece of art. A tool maker could take this stick, cut and shape it
so that it could serve as a handle for a tool. A gardener could take this stick
and use it to support the growth of a plant. A kid could take it and use it for
a stickball bat. The human mind can imagine all number of uses for something as
simple as a stick.
And this is God’s doing; God created humanity with the ability
to be creative in working with the things that God created, but God did not give
us the ability to create from nothing. So we as humans can take a seed, plant
it, nurture it and grow a white birch tree. The human mind can even genetically
altar the tree so that it looks different or grows differently. But, as hard as
we may try we cannot create from nothing something as simple as this stick. And
were we to succeed, the truth is, that we would know that the whole idea of a
stick came first from God and we would still need to depend on God to sustain
it.
This was a part of the meaning of the message in today’s
Psalm. The words continually point to the Lord: “The Lord rebuilds Jerusalem”,
“The Lord heals the brokenhearted”, “The Lord counts the number of the stars”,
“Great is the Lord and mighty in power”, “There is no limit to God’s Wisdom”,
and then the words describe God as the provider of all.
We find similar words in our reading from Isaiah. The book
of Isaiah was written during the time of Israel’s exile and bondage; the People
of God had not set their eyes on their Promised Land for many years; at the
time of Isaiah they were struggling to hold out hope that they would ever
return to it. The great prophet Isaiah, set out in this passage, to remind the
people of Israel that, despite their circumstances, God was fully in charge.
Isaiah appears almost indignant that the People of God
should lose hope. Isaiah begins, as though he were speaking with children who
had not learned their lessons: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it
not been told to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the
foundations of the earth? It is he (God) that sits above the circle of the
earth….” Isaiah continues, as with a kind of litany of God’s powers,
accomplishments and responsibilities: He, that is God, “stretches out the
heavens like a curtain”, He “brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of
the earth as nothing” “he blows upon them and they wither”.
It is very clear; as far as Isaiah is concerned, that no
one, not even another god (if there were one), could compare to the Lord. Isaiah
is certain that the Lord is the creator of all, that is and was created, that
God’s power is unmatched anywhere and that God alone is from everlasting.
But this everlasting God is not to be understood as some
cold, uncaring god who simply observes without concern for the suffering of
God’s People and the suffering of the world. God is a loving God, who gives
power to the faint and strength to the powerless.
You may recognize Isaiah 40 verse 31 in the words of the
beloved hymn, “On Eagles Wings”. Isaiah’s intent was not to chastise, but to
reassure the People of God, that God will in fact restore them to their
Promised Land, that those who wait for the Lord will have their strength
renewed, and that they will mount up with wings like eagles, and they will run
and not grow weary, and they will walk and not grow faint.
It will not be of their own power that all this will happen,
but by the power of God. The Psalmist wrote his Psalm so as to emphasize the
power and glory, the love and compassion of God. Isaiah’s words were a
prophecy, they too spoke of God’s power and glory, love and compassion, but
they were also written to inform Israel that God would restore them to their
Promised Land. And, history tells us that the People of God were restored to
their land; the Bible attributes this to God’s use of a foreign king to make it
possible.
We today, often lose sight of God’s presence, God’s
involvement in the workings of the world. We focus on what we ourselves, or
what humanity in general, can or will accomplish. We focus on the great
accomplishments already made by humankind. We say: we have built our great
cities; we have created cures and vaccines that save lives; we are endowed with
the power to destroy nations; we, by our mechanical and intellectual skill have
created the equipment to venture out into space and to explore the ocean
bottom; we have succeeded in deciphering some of the genetic code; we have
built computers that can solve mankind’s problems at a quickening pace. We! We!
We! We say, we have done all these things and we can do more that ever before.
We forget! We forget that God has given us the gifts that
make all this possible. We forget that God has created all that we must use to accomplish
those great deeds. We forget that God in his time, before we were even given a
thought, created the laws that govern nature and he created also the code by
which all that exists, life itself functions.
The fact is, God has given us already all that we need to
feed the world, to cure cancer and any other disease that you might name, to
produce safe clean and sufficient energy for the world and even to predict the
weather, but we have not directed our resources in a way that would allow us to
accomplish such things. We allow pride, greed, a thirst for power, prejudice,
lust and envy to get in the way, to waste our resources and turn us from the
work of love, the ministry of Jesus, the work that God has called us to do.
But this does not have to be. All we need to do is wait on
the Lord, turn our priorities around so that we seek God’s will and reflect in
our words and actions Jesus’ love. There is so much that the world can gain by
following God’s will and sharing Jesus’ love. A safe and happy world is all
within humanities grasp, there is hope.
