Sermon at Grace Episcopal on February 8, 2009

Isaiah 40:21-31
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.

Last week I was blessed to enter the imaginary world of a four-year-old girl. She told me how her mother changes her into a mermaid every night with a magic wand. It was late in the afternoon and she was informing me it was basically time for her to head back to Ariel and her friends under the sea. She was so caught up in telling me the story.

Have you ever wanted to be transported into another time and place? We may not want to be a mermaid, but a place where you could have adventure and still be safe would be a great place. CS Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia about a land where a powerful lion named Aslan lived and protected his people. There were evil forces and beings in Narnia, but just when things would look hopeless, Aslan would come in triumph and rescue his people. Aslan would sometimes come with "deep magic" and sometimes he would give special powers to his subjects to help them conquer their demons. Ordinary children, mice, and dwarves would get supernatural help and be transformed into persons who were bigger and stronger. Narnia was written as a story to teach children about God's love. Aslan, the lion was based on Jesus.

But mermaids and talking lions are fantasy. Could it really be possible that we can be changed into persons who are bigger and stronger and ready to fight for good? I believe it is. And our reading from Isaiah this morning tells us how.

Isaiah 40:31 is one of the most famous verses in the Bible. "…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." It's on pictures, posters, calendars, and beautifully framed in cross-stitch. It's one of those passages that's quoted often. It's been put to music. People have it memorized.

This passage is referring to the Israelites who were in captivity in Babylon, with no prospect of deliverance. Humanly speaking they were stuck as slaves in a foreign land. For anybody else, they would have just given up and died as a nation. But they never let go of the promise that the Lord would be with them. Despite their hopelessness and slavery, they had the expectation that God, at just the right time in His plan, would deliver them. So they waited for Him to come and transform them. So they waited.

But what does "wait" really mean? I found that there are 19 different words for "wait" in the Hebrew. Here is how this word is translated…
-to hope strongly, to trust. Another way of saying it is that they lived expecting the Lord to act with strength. They were putting all their hope and confidence that God would do something. They didn't exactly know what the Lord would do, but they expected Him to do something everyday.
So when Isaiah says, "wait," he is not referring to a fairy tale: he is referring to a sure thing. Haven't you heard? Don't you know? The Holy One who made all things has not gotten tired. Even if you don't understand His timing, He is still there, ready for action. It is He that will renew our strength. Some translators say that we will gain new strength.

Aren't there times that you feel that you don't have enough strength to renew anything? I'm kind of there this week. We had 2 weeks of roller coaster emotions and traveling waiting for the arrival of our new baby granddaughter, Lehiwa. While on Oahu, our newly acquired 4-year-old granddaughter, Lele shared her cold with me. Now this cold wasn't too bad for a mermaid. But it knocked grandma right off her feet. I haven't had any energy, or clear thinking for a few days. And there doesn't seem to be anything there for the Lord to renew. I know all of us have been there at one time or another.

So this week I really like the commentary that says that "renewing strength" is more like what happens when we change into fresh clothes. We exchange our old things for something new. I don't need any of Lynette's old worn out strength. I need to turn in my strength for His strength. I'm not talking about increasing just a little bit more or building my own strength back up.

What Isaiah is talking about is exchanging our strength for His strength. And the verb means that we are changing for the better. God is offering to trade us. We give up our weak, finite, limited, and exhaustible strength. In return He offers us His strong, infinite, unlimited, inexhaustible strength that never gets tired. Sounds like a good trade to me.

We see the same kind of thought in the book of James. James write, "if any of you lacks wisdom let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith without any doubting." Come to the Lord with the hope and expectation that God will trade your feeble wisdom for His magnificent wisdom.

This may come as a shock to some of us, but the Lord really doesn't need our advice today. He didn't roll out of bed this morning and ask all the angels, " I wonder what Lynette thinks about things?" You can substitute your own name there too. So James isn't talking about asking God to share our great thoughts, or adding to our abundant insights. Instead God wants to infuse us with new thoughts, and a new way of seeing things. He wants to put His ways into our minds and write them on our hearts. And James instructs us to ask with confidence that the Lord will act. And then wait. Don't run on ahead.

Has anyone noticed how many bugs seem to be swarming at night these days? It seems that smashed insects constantly cover the windshield on my car. You might be thinking that the cold medicine must be acting on my brain because how does bug glue on a windshield relate to waiting on the Lord and exchanging His strength for ours? So ask me, "How do dead bugs on our cars fit in?" …I'm glad you asked.

Every time I drive with a dirty windshield it reminds me of how I see things when I am not regularly reading my Bible. When it is daytime, and I look through my filthy window, everything is fuzzy and blurry. I can see colors and shapes, but not clearly. When it starts to get dark, things get distorted and even more dangerous. The scary part is that if I don't scrub the bugs off, I can get used to a fuzzy blurry world. I start to think this is how things really are. And all I have to do is wash the glass so that I can see clearly. This week I went so far as to buy glass cleaner specifically made to take care of squashed bugs. But with my cold, it just rode around on the floor of my car. I didn't pick it up and open it. I didn't puka through and apply it to my windshield.

One of the best things we can do as we are waiting for Jesus is to read His Word every day. The Bible has the ability to do two things. It can clear the glass so that I can see things better. It also keeps any new bugs from sticking. If I read the Word of God, my vision gets clearer and the bugs don't stick as easy. That keeps my eyes open to see where He is working. But first I have to pick up my Bible, open it and apply it. It doesn't do any good riding around in my car.

And as I pick up and study His Book, I see that God is a great changer. He wants us to trade death in our sins for new life in Christ. He wants to exchange our being bound by sin for freedom in Him. He wants to trade our short-term life, for eternal life with Him. He wants to exchange our anxiety for His peace. He wants to exchange our selfishness for a life that serves others for His glory. He wants to trade fear and anxiety for a peace that surpasses all comprehension.

One more thing - God is eager to make this exchange. It's not like going to customer service at a store the day after Christmas and getting some grumpy, discourteous clerk. God is the one who made the first move. Jesus is eager to exchange His life for yours. As we wait for the Lord, we find that He is waiting for us to open the door and let Him begin to work.

As we have said many times, God loves you exactly the way you are. But He loves you too much to let you stay in the same place.

Let's see what happens to those who let the Lord change their strength for His. Back to verse 31 it says they shall... "mount up with wings like eagles, run and not be weary, walk and not faint…"

What an image. That's what happens when we live in hope that Jesus will change us. He can help us fly. He can make us strong. He can give us endurance to help us keep from giving up when things get tough.

Many of us can remember the time we asked Christ to come into our hearts. For most of us, that moment came while something hard was going on in our lives. Suddenly we were faced with the fact that we couldn't do this without some help. Our own righteousness seemed weak or as filthy rags, and our strength seems pretty weak. As we turned to Jesus we got a new life and new wind in our sails. We got new strength. And then we started down the path of life again, but this time we were walking with His strength. So it might seem that all we need is for God to give us a bit of help to get over the hump. Maybe a jump-start.

Often that is when things get bug on the windshield kind of dangerous. Those are the times we have grabbed our old stuff back. And being weary begins to seem normal. Being frustrated by our schedules and other people's expectations seems perfectly natural. Once again we begin to carry the load that He never intended us to carry.

God doesn't want to bless our foolishness. He doesn't want to give merit to our crazy plans. Those are the times that we need to stop and pray and ask Him to take it all back. Those are the times to exchange your fatigued soul with the refreshment that comes from giving it all to Jesus and waiting on Him. Those are the times to realize that God can perfect our characters when we give Him our weaknesses.

2 Corinthians 12:10 says it this way, "Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong."

This week promise to let God do an exchange in your life. And then live with the expectant hope that Jesus isn't finished with you yet. AMEN

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