Daily
Renewal
Isaiah 40
Rev.
Matthew M. Fry
As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Grant unto us now O God, the ability to go beyond our limits, so that we might experience you more fully. Speak Lord, your servants are listening. Amen.
Isaiah 40, the first chapter in second Isaiah. I could probably spend the better part of this sermon just talking about the transition from the first book of Isaiah, which we find in chapters 1-39, to the second book of Isaiah, beginning in Isaiah 40, today’s passage, and going through chapter 55. And it’s good stuff, too. Instead, it is good enough to say that this section marks an Isaiah that writes from exile. The people have been uprooted and by force have been taken away from their land, from the temple, and are captives in Babylon. The people are away from the Temple, away from access to God’s presence, which was marked by the place in the temple called the “Holy of Holies.” In 1st Isaiah, chapters 1-39, this is not the case, but as we move to chapter 40, 2nd Isaiah, the people are away from home, away from the temple, outside of access to God’s presence in their minds.
They are not only away from home, they are a captive people. And that context is important for the words that are found in Isaiah. Especially the beginning and the ending of this chapter, which are words meant for a stressed out, oppressed, separated, in their tradition, from access to God’s presence, people. So, with that context in mind, hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in Isaiah. Listen. Isaiah 40.
Comfort, O comfort my people,
says
your God.
2 Speak tenderly to
Jerusalem,
and
cry to her
that she has served her
term,
that
her penalty is paid,
that she has
received from the Lord’s hand
double
for all her sins.
3 A voice cries
out:
“In the wilderness
prepare the way of the Lord,
make
straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every
valley shall be lifted up,
and
every mountain and hill be made low;
the
uneven ground shall become level,
and
the rough places a plain.
5 Then the
glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and
all people shall see it together,
for
the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
6 A voice says, “Cry
out!”
And
I said, “What shall I cry?”
All
people are grass,
their
constancy is like the flower of the field.
7 The
grass withers, the flower fades,
when
the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
surely
the people are grass.
8 The grass
withers, the flower fades;
but
the word of our God will stand forever.
9 Get
you up to a high mountain,
O
Zion, herald of good tidings;
lift
up your voice with strength,
O
Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
lift
it up, do not fear;
say to the
cities of Judah,
“Here
is your God!”
10 See, the Lord
God comes with might,
and
his arm rules for him;
his reward is
with him,
and
his recompense before him.
11 He will
feed his flock like a shepherd;
he
will gather the lambs in his arms,
and
carry them in his bosom,
and
gently lead the mother sheep.
12 Who has measured the
waters in the hollow of his hand
and
marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed
the dust of the earth in a measure,
and
weighed the mountains in scales
and
the hills in a balance?
13 Who has
directed the spirit of the Lord,
or
as his counselor has instructed him?
14 Whom
did he consult for his enlightenment,
and
who taught him the path of justice?
Who
taught him knowledge,
and
showed him the way of understanding?
15 Even
the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
and
are accounted as dust on the scales;
see,
he takes up the isles like fine dust.
16 Lebanon
would not provide fuel enough,
nor
are its animals enough for a burnt offering.
17 All
the nations are as nothing before him;
they
are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.
18 To whom then will you
liken God,
or
what likeness compare with him?
19 An
idol? - A workman casts it,
and
a goldsmith overlays it with gold,
and
casts for it silver chains.
20 As a
gift one chooses mulberry wood
--wood
that will not rot--
then seeks out a
skilled artisan
to
set up an image that will not topple.
21 Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
Has
it not been told you from the beginning?
Have
you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
22 It
is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
and
its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who
stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and
spreads them like a tent to live in;
23 who
brings princes to naught,
and
makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
24 Scarcely are they
planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely
has their stem taken root in the earth,
when
he blows upon them, and they wither,
and
the tempest carries them off like stubble.
25 To whom then will you
compare me,
or
who is my equal? says the Holy One.
26 Lift
up your eyes on high and see:
Who
created these?
He who brings out
their host and numbers them,
calling
them all by name;
because he is
great in strength,
mighty
in power,
not
one is missing.
27 Why do you say, O
Jacob,
and
speak, O Israel,
”My way is
hidden from the Lord,
and
my right is disregarded by my God”?
28 Have
you not known? Have you not heard?
The
Lord is the everlasting God,
the
Creator of the ends of the earth.
He
does not faint or grow weary;
his
understanding is unsearchable.
29 He
gives power to the faint,
and
strengthens the powerless.
30 Even
youths will faint and be weary,
and
the young will fall exhausted;
31 but
those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they
shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they
shall run and not be weary,
they
shall walk and not faint.
The Grass withers, the Flower falls, but the Word of the Lord endures forever…Thanks be to God.
Why is life so hard? I preached on it in August, during the series of things that annoy me about God. The answer to that sermon was that life is so hard because we don’t have a fix-it God. Instead we have a comforting presence God, a ‘God with us’ who says, “Comfort, O Comfort my people.”
At the end of the day, at the end of a long day, we lay down, perhaps say our evening prayers, and go to sleep. Even before the time of Jesus, Israel had the understanding that evening sleep and morning wake was to symbolize death and resurrection. We ‘Rest in Peace’, hopefully in peace, if not in peace, get a business card from Dr. Lankford. But we Rest in Peace and then we rise anew. It is a living parable of death and resurrection.
Life is hard. Our days are marked by joy, certainly. But they are also marked by difficulties and failure. There are things in which we fail, and there are things which fail us. And the purpose of evening prayer, the purpose of the living parable of death and resurrection that is a night’s sleep, is to let go at night of all that has failed us and all that we have failed.
Melissa always knows when something at church is troubling me. I wake up at 3.30 or so, and can’t get back to sleep. My mind races, and rest eludes me. I lay out in the Den and watch the drivel that is on at 3.30. ESPN runs replays of the previous night’s games, and there are loads and loads of infomercials. I can simultaneously figure out how to be a computer genius, how to acquire real estate, and how to best work out. What I can’t figure out is why all those girls have gone so wild, though I have made sure not to do research in that area. So, I watch replays of Miami beating Dallas or the 1997 World Series of Poker, cause I don’t need real estate, I’m not going to work out, and I sure don’t need to see just how wild girls can go. You see, it is because your Pastor has self control that I am the current holder of a certain belt buckle.
But Melissa knows when something is wrong, or if I’m concerned about one of you for any number of health or other reasons, or I’m worried about this thing or that thing, without me having to tell her. My leaving the bedroom at 4 a.m. lets her know.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like not sleeping well. I much prefer when I can let go of the difficulties of life, of all that has failed me and all that I have failed, and get rest. When I do, I find renewal in the morning, that the new day is a fresh and clean slate, that the old has gone, the new has come. I don’t have to continue the patterns that have caused hurt, both in my life and in the lives of others. A new day comes, a new opportunity to choose life.
One of my favorite movies that is a kid movie is called Iron Giant. We’re watching it on Wednesday nights, during the Intergenerational Bible Study and discussing it, until Joan of Arcadia season 2 comes out on DVD. Anyway, one of the lines of the movie is a personal favorite. “You are who you choose to be.” And the context is such that our lives always present us with options, and we can choose to act in one way, go down one path, or we can choose to act in another way, and go down that path. The way we acted yesterday does not have to be the way we act today. There is renewal in the morning, we can let go at night of all that has failed us, and all that we have failed, and we can choose life.
Granted, some choices are not in our hands. I’ve had dear friends who were not able to choose who they were, because of stuff they could not control. Things like clinical depression, to name one of the many, many things that are part of reality, mean that the choice for life is to choose to get on, and stay on, the proper medication. Choices open up when folks reach for life in that manner, and if you or someone you know feels a sense of shame about taking medication that in that way, understand that in reality, medication like that is a choice for life. And in this way, “You are who you choose to be,” fits.
The chapter we read in Isaiah today starts with the phrase, “Comfort, O Comfort my people.” It later ends with verse 31, “…those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” The Fountain of life is before us to drink, be refreshed, be cleansed, and wipe away the stains of our past and taste new life within the limits of our finite bodies. The Creator daily renews the order of creation. Daily, God sets out new opportunities, and renews all of creation.
There are also powerful yearly renewal notices. Yearly, the grass renews. Right about now, I am looking forward to when my grass goes brown in November, and I get to take a few months of break from having to mow it every week. But I know that shortly after that happens, I will look forward to April when my grass will renew. Yearly the grass comes forth, and it means not only mowing, but it means the renewal of animal life. The grass all over the earth comes back up, and cows and deer have something to eat. Another symbol of death and resurrection. Renewal of life.
Renewal is part of the natural order, part of the rhythm of life. This we know not only from Isaiah, but from II Corinthians, 5.17. “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” This re-creation, this renewal, is not a one time thing. If it were so, the language would read something like ‘anyone in Christ has been given a fresh start’ or ‘anyone united with the Messiah gets a second chance.’ But instead, there is a sense that continual renewal is a marker of the life with God.
And let me throw in my translation from the Greek. When I translate, I do so literally, in an effort to leave the ambiguity that is in the original text in. This is my translation. “For anyone in Christ, there is new creation. The old things pass away, behold they become new.”
New creation, every morning, every year, every day. Renewal is available as we let go of death and get the opportunity to choose who we are. We regularly get the opportunity to choose life. Amen.