A sermon preached by J. Stuart Taylor III
St.Mark’s Presbyterian Church
February 5, 2006
Why do you say O Israel, and why do you speak O Jacob: “my way is hidden from the lord and my right is disregarded by my God? With these words Isaiah began a conversation with the people of God and with a little imagination we can hear the Israelites respond. Well let us tell you Isaiah. Let us tell you why we are feeling abandoned. God promised to give us a homeland but now we find ourselves to be exiles in a foreign land. God has promised to protect us from our enemies and preserve people and our traditions. Instead we are conquered captives surrounded on every side by the overwhelming power of the Babylonian Empire. Why should we believe that Yahweh is more powerful than these Babylonian gods all around us? Crying out from within the painful reality of exile, the people of Israel wondered if God had abandoned them. Their ability to trust in the faithfulness of God was stretched to the breaking point. They no longer had the strength to continue the journey. And now this morning, Isaiah takes up the same conversation with the people of God in a different time and place. Isaiah asks us to account for the secret murmuring of our heart. Isaiah asks us: Why do you feel that somehow, somewhere God has lost track of you. Why do you say: God doesn’t care what happens to me? Okay, Isaiah has put the question to us. How do we respond?
As I entered into conversation with Isaiah over this past week I had to ask myself where in my experience could I relate to the profound abandonment that the Israelites experienced in exile? And more importantly where could be the points of contact with our global reality, with this community of faith, for each one of us individually. Exile can mean mean lots of things. The biblical metaphor of Exile points quite literally to the reality of millions upon millions of migrants and refugees around our globe who have been forced to leave their homelands in search of a better life. For US citizens exile could describe the sense of bewilderment and rage and loss that we have experienced since the attack of 9/11, the exile of living in a hostile world. For us exile can mean an increasing sense of alienation from our government that has publicly defended its right to torture, that is surveilling its own citizens, that is arresting humantarians for the crime of seeking to save someone’s life. But the disillusionment of exile can also be a very private and personal reality. Perhaps in this moment of your journey you are experiencing what could be called exile. A moment where the plot lines that we have imagined for our lives have gone awry. Where we feel alienated and cut off from life giving relationships. Exile for us could mean that the hopes, plans and expectations that we had for our lives are not being fulfilled. That the things that once gave meaning to your life no longer seem to. Maybe exile is this moment in your life when you feel exhausted, empty not sure where the journey is taking you or if you have enough strength to find out. Your pastors witness some of these exile moments in your lives. An exile moment can a time when a mental illness is wrecking a family. An exile moment can be a marriage at a crossroads. An exile moment can be that interminable waiting for a diagnosis, for a test result, for surgery day. The challenges of aging and failing health, not sure at all how one is going to finish this journey called life. In those moments, we too cry out like the Israelite exiles, Why have you abandoned me God?
Exile is experience in many different ways. And if you are in such a moment as that. Then continue this conversation with Isaiah. Have you not known? Have you not heard? Isaiah said to Israel long ago. And today Isaiah speaks to us. Have you not known? Have you been paying attention? Have you been listening? God doesn’t come and go. God lasts. God is the creator of all that you can see or imagine. God doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch her breath. God knows everything inside and out. God energizes those who get tired, gives fresh strength to dropouts. For even young people tire and drop out; Young folk in their prime stumble and fall. And here is the clincher. Those who wait upon the Lord. Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, They will mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not get weary. They shall walk and not faint. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. I remember reading to my girls’ children’s story that was based on an ancient tradition within Native American spirituality. The story was about a mother teaching her daughter that she could call upon the spirit of any of God’s creatures to aid her in times of trouble and struggle. When we need patience we call upon the spirit of Brother Turtle and in a sense we become brother turtle. . When we need cunning, we appeal to Brother Coyote. When we need divine perspective we call upon the eagle and we become that eagle. Is this not an amazing paradox, proclaimed by Isaiah? That when we wait upon the lord we are lifted from our place of exiles where we languish to a horizon line of hope and promise. What Isaiah asks us to do is to imagine ourselves as an eagle soaring, riding the wind, and seeing the broad sweep of God’s horizon line. Isaiah is inviting weary and hopeless exiles to learn how to fly.
Last spring I had the experience of going with a couple of old seminary buddies on a canoe trip down the Colorado River near the border of Colorado and Utah. On the 2nd day we came to a beautiful place along the river. The redstone canyon rising up around cradled grassy fields awash in blooming wildflowers. All of this persuaded us to stay here, camp and take the time to explore. We hiked up to a nearby canyon where 3 towering stone sentinels stood watch. Just as we entered the mouth of the canyon an eagle came soaring in and landed on a nest high up the canyon wall. Listening in the deep silence that wilderness affords; we could hear baby eaglets crying out for food. One of my friends made a comment about how daunting it must be for an eaglet learning to fly to take that first step out of the security of the nest into thin air. But then we realized that there was a steady updraft rising from the river up the sides of the canyon. This updraft would literally lift those young eagles, making it almost impossible to fall. I wondered about those times in my own life when like those eaglets I step out of places of security into the unknown and uncertain. Are any of us in a position to comprehend how it is that the Holy Spirit upholds and supports us whenever we step out on faith, just like those baby eaglets lifted by an updraft of air. Seeing more bald eagles along that river than I have seen in my lifetime, I could not help but exult with the prophet Isaiah who said “they shall rise up with wings like eagles,” and I remembered the prayer in our Pres. Book of worship for midday prayer. Like an eagle teaching her young to fly, catching them safely on her spreading wings, the Lord keeps Israel from falling. The Lord’s name be praised”.
They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.”
Many of us remember the film Chariots of Fire. That chronicles the story of the Scottish Presbyterian missionary Eric Liddell who postponed his religious vocation to pursue another calling to compete as a long distance runner in the 1924 Olympics. The film opens with Eric Liddell reading this very text from Isaiah and asking the congregation, “where does the power come from to see the race to its end? It comes from within”. We learn about Eric Liddells faith and how it becomes manifest in his remarkable running. We witness how at the critical moment in a race he would shift in to a higher gear and throw back his head and run like no one had ever seen. It is hard to see this film and not want to be a runner and experience life in that way. My running such as it is still feels much like a painful chore that I have to get through. I have never known the running high that some runners can attest to. Except once. I was living in Denver at the time and without knowing it my lungs had slowly adjusted to running at that mile high altitude. And then I was invited to go back south for a speaking tour with WFP. I found myself late one evening in Jackson Miss. preparing for a run. I got started and kept going and I noticed I was feeling pretty good and then when I reached my normal limit I just kept going and going. I am sure that any citizen of Jackson Miss enjoying his front porch of an evening must have wondered about the crazy man running down the street, laughing at loud and waving his arms in the air. I have never before and never since experienced running like that. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.” Is Isaiah suggesting to us that those who wait upon the Lord will experience this kind of power to keep on, keeping on? “Where does the power come from to see the race to its end? For a person of faith, “it comes from within” in a strength that is not on our own.
How do we learn to wait upon the Lord when waiting does not hold an esteemed position in our culture? As one theologian mused: “Waiting is the resigned sphere of the passive, the uncertain, the ones who cannot find the resources or strength to bring about change. One resorts to waiting when our plans of action utterly fail us. Underlying our capitalist, rational culture and buried deep in our bones is the idea that we are in control; that the proper action and strategy will bring the planned results. The discipline of waiting demands that we relinquish our idolatry of outcomes and face the truth: Change and transformation are rooted not in our power, but in God's. That for which we wait may not come in our lifetime. Nothing is greater testimony to this than the reality that both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament are shaped for faith communities in waiting--for a Messiah and for a return.” ”Waiting for the Lord is the foundation of the spiritual life of the Christian community. As the theologian Henry Nouwen wrote: “a Christian community offers us a place to wait. Christian community is where we keep that flame alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us. In this way we can live with courage, trusting that there is a spiritual power in us that allows us to live in this world without being seduced constantly by despair, lostness, darkness. That is how we dare to say that God is a God of love even when we see hatred all around us. That is why we can claim that God is a God of life even when we see death and destruction all around us. We say it together. We affirm it one way or another. Biblical waiting is clarity of belief that lives in the fire of hope. It isn't a waiting in case; it's a waiting for. Jesus uses a riveting parable to describe it: "Be clothed in readiness. Keep your lamps burning. Be like those waiting for the one who rules over them to return from a feast, so that when the ruler knocks, they may immediately fling open the door" (Luke 12:35ff) We wait together nurturing what has already begun in Christ, and expecting its fulfillment .Our waiting is always shaped by an alertness to the word. The question is are we home? Are we at the right address? Are we waiting for that word? And the word is: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.” Here is the word of Good news my brothers and sisters on the journey. God is faithful and will lead us home.