Rev. Jay Rowland
Isaiah 40:21-31
February 7, 2021, First Presbyterian Church, Rochester MN.
This sermon utilizes commentary material, some of it verbatim, published by Doug Bratt https://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/epiphany-5b-2/?type=old_testament_lectionary
THE WONDER OF AWE
Sooner or later, we all encounter situations in life which cause us to feel abandoned or defeated, or convinced that we face this life all alone … situations which tempt us to doubt that God cares about us; situations which at first seem so final or which make the present and future appear so bleak that we wonder, what’s the point of praying or trusting God anymore.
Sooner or later, we encounter situations also, moments when we feel small or insignificant in a more hopeful way. Like, for instance, a moment when we’re hushed by the brilliant colors of a sunset, or the silent mystery of the Northern Lights, or standing near the ocean or Lake Superior feeling and hearing the power of the surf.
I recall a time at my parents’ lake place many years ago, it was a completely calm, moonless night. I pushed a canoe out into the middle of the lake. I could feel it before I looked up to behold it: the vast Milky Way above me--immense and glorious. Beneath me the sound of the lake lapping at my canoe. I was in awe of the beauty enveloping me, the unmistakable feeling of a Living, Benevolent Presence—whispering to my soul a quiet assurance of God’s care, God’s goodness, God’s readiness to make a way, come what may.
Perhaps you’ve had moments like that, fleeting moments of profound peace and beauty … seeing God’s fingerprints upon Creation and feeling in awe, feeling the wonder of awe, sensing the presence of God in that moment.
This passage from the Prophet Isaiah highlights such wonder as a way to minister to suffering Israel on God’s behalf. The prophet turns to the creative power of poetry to describe God’s goodness and beauty visible in creation. Isaiah is trying to encourage a demoralized people who feel forgotten, abandoned by God. Israel was overrun by Babylon, the superpower of the ancient world. Their best and brightest neighbors and citizens were forcibly exported to live in that foreign, pagan culture year after year after year. It’s been so long they feel like life back in Jerusalem was only a dream, standing in the sacred space of the Temple worshiping together. The long years of exile in Babylon have put them into what I imagine to be a functional sort of trance--going through the motions, doing their best to tend to birthdays, anniversaries and holidays, births and deaths, meaningful milestones and rituals, etc., but always with a sick feeling in the pit of their gut.
That’s how I see it as I contend with the sick feeling in the pit of my gut, a constant companion these many long days and months of pandemic. I imagine what God’s people living in exile in Babylon must have felt, as I often do, that they were losing (or lost) whatever capacity for endurance they once had—as if running in a marathon where the finish line keeps moving further away. Did they feel, as we often have, worn down by being continually forced to compromise, continually making unbearable choices between “bad” and “not good” amid unrelenting instability and uncertainty.
Into this weariness, Isaiah boldly reframes their reality *and ours* by reminding them *and us* of God’s wonder. Isaiah assures us that God both knows about and sees everything. Everything. And, furthermore, that God helps tired, weary and weak people like the Israelites, you and me. (Bratt) If so, perhaps we are left to wonder whether or not our God is then willing to help us?! To which Isaiah again insists that God loves to help people who feel abandoned, forgotten, left behind, overlooked, overwhelmed.
While “most of us naturally want to do something to fix whatever’s wrong with our world, and with those we love and who love us. You and I, however, can’t fix [most] of the things that make us most weary and weak.” Perhaps we can find ways to temporarily revive our energy, but only God can give strength that lasts to those who “hope in the Lord.” (Bratt)
Our predicament, it seems, is waiting for God to work in our lives and world yet not passively, not with our collective head in our hands, but rather with the expectation that God is moving now to revive us and even use us to help revive our world and its people. After all, Isaiah insists that, as surely as God created the “ends of the earth,” God “increases the power of the weak.”
And we are weakened to be sure. It’s exhausting to reconcile this pandemic, and the lurking catastrophe of climate change, and the ongoing political and racial turmoil with God as described here by and through Isaiah. Or perhaps it’s more honest to admit how much our fears, our doubts, our worries can become irreconcilable with faith in our caring God.
God declares through the prophet Isaiah (here in chapter 40), that those who rely on the Lord shall find that help. If doubt clings too strongly, go beneath a starry-filled sky one night soon, maybe tonight. Look up and feel.
We know that God doesn’t simply just take away the world’s overwhelming problems. But I have learned that what God does give, in abundance, is spiritual stamina needed to endure and deal with these problems. God helps vulnerable people like us to keep on keepin’ on--to keep on living, to keep on caring, lest we tire of caring, lest we give up on caring. God lends us God’s own inextinguishable hope and energy, and tenacity, all that is needed to walk these long and winding roads of hardship without growing too weak, to run toward that moving finish line without becoming too weary to try anymore.
Which seems to me to be the most dangerous predicament of all. These crises we’re enduring can and do deplete us spiritually. The danger is that we can become so depleted or defeated that we become effectively blind to the beauty that remains ever-present all around us in so many ways, in so many beautiful people in our lives.
There is no fairy tale happy ending ahead of us. But that doesn’t mean God doesn’t care or that God refuses to help us, or that has abdicated being God. It doesn’t mean that God is being somehow being blocked or overpowered by some other force in the universe.
The prophet Isaiah refuses to engage in naiveté … no frivolous guarantees that God will suddenly just make all this suffering simply disappear. Instead, Isaiah reminds us of the sheer beauty of God, the sheer power of God’s love and God’s Creation, God’s creative power which heals and transforms ... and which has always lead us through every difficulty, every hardship, every crisis. The Creative Power and Beauty of our God who gave us the dazzling stars will make a way where there is no way visible to us in our weariness and grief.
In the meantime, we look for and remember the awe and wonder of God’s glorious creation. Remember the starry sky above, the rushing waters, the wonder of snowfall and the evocative stillness of winter nights. To know God’s character is to be in awe of God’s character. God’s presence with us, Emmanuel, “God-with-us” gives us daily provision and the hope-filled energy needed to see us through this present suffering come what may. Jesus himself will be our nourishment for the journey: given to us in this small piece of bread, with this simple cup. Together let us partake of the beauty that is God with us and follow in the wonder of awe.
