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February 5, 2006

Scripture: Isaiah 40:21-31

Sermon: “Make the Most of It”

Our scripture lesson this morning comes from the prophet Isaiah. I will be reading from chapter 40, verses 21 through 31. You are invited to read it along with me and you can find it easily on page of the Hebrew Scriptures in the pew Bible.

It is important to know the background from which the prophet is speaking on behalf of God to the people of Israel. Chapter 40 marks a major turning point in the writings of Isaiah. Rather abruptly the words change from dire warnings to the people and specifically to their leaders, to words of hope and promise. So, what has happened.

Chapter 39 ends with the last king of Judah, Hezekiah, mistakenly believing that he will avoid disaster at the hands of the Babylonians. He was wrong. Dead wrong. As Isaiah and his contemporary prophets had warned, the nation was overrun by the armies of Babylon—the newest power in the neighborhood. This was the beginning of the dreadful years of the exile when many people were forced to move hundreds of miles away and live in what is modern-day Iraq.

The crisis was one of desperate situations. The exiles were mostly wealthy and influential. But, their new lives were stripped of all of that privilege and they likely lived in a poor section of the ancient city. The crisis was also one of faith. How could God either allow this to happen, or worse, cause it to happen? Sure, they had not been the most faithful people before. But, wasn’t this just a bit overboard? The temptation to abandon the God of Israel was real. For forty years, an entire generation, they lived in exile.

Then, we begin to read chapter 40. It begins, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. 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.” 40 years passed between chapter 39 and 40. A new power had emerged in Persia, modern-day Iran. And under the leadership of King Cyrus, the Persians dominated the Babylonians and allowed of the exiles to return to their homelands.

Still, the crisis of faith for the people of Israel remained. It is to this that the prophet speaks the Word of God.

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? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heaves like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught, and makes the rules of the earth as nothing.

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.

To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. 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.

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”? 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. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and grow weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 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.

This is the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Let us pray: Mighty and Wonderful God, gather us in as your people. Though we may grow weary and faint, you are our source and our strength. Speak to us your Word. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts here together be acceptable unto you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Several of us took a trip down to New Orleans three months ago. We went to respond to what we heard was utter devastation—not just of buildings and physical things, but of people and their lives. For a week, we lived at a church building in Covington, Louisiana. That’s just on the other side of Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans.

Every day that week we traveled into the Lakeview neighborhood where all of the buildings sat under about six or seven feet of dirty, toxic water for over 14 days. Everything that was in the water was utterly ruined. In this part of town, many of the houses were at least two-stories. They had some hope of being salvaged. In order to do that, the entire lower floor of each one has to be completely gutted.

The five of us, and some other folks, set out to work on a house that belonged to a single woman who did not have the right insurance to pay for the necessary work. We began by removing all of the furniture and personal belongings that were water-logged and covered in mold. It was filthy, depressing work as we touched the very things that make life memorable for someone and took them to the curb to be hauled away to the dump.

We then began the work of demolition. We tore that house down all the way to the studs. With crow-bars, hammers, a few ladders, and our bare hands, we tore that thing down. For three and a half days, we poured our hearts and souls into that work. I’ll tell you, it was an amazing sight when we finished that first house. We had arrived to a complete disaster area. We left and that house looked like a construction site, ready to be built again. The spiritual significance of that alone was worth all of the work.

I remember when we could no longer find anything else to do in that first house. I walked out of the front door, pulled the dust mask down off of my face, took a drink of water, and felt for the first time that we had made a difference.

But, as I walked out to the van, it hit me like the weight of the entire world. I was standing outside of one house. Ruined houses stretched out for miles around us. There were no people there anymore. They couldn’t live there. The whole city was quiet. Everyone was gone. Many of them will never return and half of all of those houses are a complete loss. I began to feel as if we had hardly made a difference at all. I mean even to this day, most of those houses down there are just sitting there like they were.

I felt so small. I felt so powerless. It was humbling and it was frightening. The truth is that we are all so small. Maybe it takes something like a major hurricane, the shifting of the earth below our feet, the power of a tsunami to remind us of that. What is one life in the grand scheme of the universe? And what difference does my one small life really make?

I remember one afternoon when I was walking along a beach. In the distance I saw a woman. She would bend over and pick something up. Then she would throw it into the surf of the ocean. As I got closer to her, I saw that it was an older woman. She strained to get close to the hard, wet sand. With her hands, she picked up another thing and hurled into the sea. I wondered what this was all about.

I finally caught up to her as she again bent to the earth. I saw that she picked up a starfish from the sand. It was still fleshy in her hands, not like the solid, dead things that I had held in my own hands in school. They were still alive. And as I looked, I saw that there were many, many starfish that had washed onto the beach. The waves kept them wet and kept them alive, but the tide was retreating. Some of the poor things were already dead on the dry sand.

She picked up one after another and tossed them back to the place from which they came. I asked, “what are you doing?” She picked another one up and threw it into the ocean. “I’m saving some starfish. If they make it back to the water, they might live.”

As I looked around, I thought that her task would take hundreds of people hundreds of hours. But, there was only her. “There are too many. You can’t save them all. What difference does it make if you only save a few?”

She steadily bent down, picked up another starfish, tossed it into the water, and said to me, “it made a difference to that one.”

It’s an overwhelming, debilitating thought to realize just how small we are. In the face of all that happens to us and around us, all of the suffering we endure and see, we can just feel so helpless and powerless. For a Boy Scout, you may begin to ask yourself, “what difference does it make if I do a good turn daily?” It seems to me that is what the prophet Isaiah was dealing with and trying to speak words of faith to.

Listen to these words: the inhabitants of the earth are but grasshoppers. The princes and rulers of the earth? Even they can be brought to naught, nothing. Look at the heavens. See those stars? Who are we compared to them? And even in the prime of our lives, in our youth, we can be exhausted to the point of weariness and fainting. It’s enough to make us jaded. It’s enough to cripple our very hope for the world around us. It’s enough to make us give up altogether. After all, what difference can any of us really make? We are so small.

The Psalmist put it this way: O Lord, what are human beings that you regard them, or mortals that you think of them? They are like a breath; their days are like a passing shadow.

Of course, the Psalmist does not end there. Isaiah does not end there. We cannot end there, either. For these are not the thoughts or the words of faith. It is not the life of faith that resigns itself to insignificance. It is not the life of faith that refuses to believe that our actions, our words, our efforts amount to anything worthwhile. Faith, you see, places our smallness, our weakness, our humanity in the hands of a God that is so much more than our greatest imagination.

The prophets words are no less important to us now than they were then. You matter to God. And if God is the source of our strength, the center of our being, we shall mount up with wings like eagles. We cannot be overcome by the vast suffering and evil in our midst. We may be small. We may be like grasshoppers and our lives may be only a flash in the pan, but we are adored by God who is bigger than all that we can see or imagine. So, make the most of it. Believe! Live! Give your very best and your all!

In the very short time that we truly have, make the absolute most of it. Dig deep. Find out the wonder of who you are and all that you have to offer. And make the most of it. The God of the heavens and every magnificent wonder around us is also the God of you and me.

Rev. David James Brown
Midway Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

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