"Remember..."
Isaiah 40:21-31
February 8, 2009
St. Paul United Methodist Church
Rev. John Andrew Fleming
Some of you know that as recently as three or four years ago, our church had a softball team. Our church had a legendary team many years ago whose trophies fill the case in our History Room. I am not talking about that team. Some of us were the sons and grandsons of men who played on that team, but we were not that team.
The first year we re-organized our team, we competed in a league whose games were played out at Interstate Park. There was one division and seven or eight teams. On a good night, on a very good night, we might win a game, but most nights we had no chance of winning. In fact playing the full game without the ten run rule after five innings or twenty runs after two innings was our goal!
The next summer Coach Short got us into a church league, sponsored by Temple Baptist Church. That year, there were a lot of teams and three divisions. We were in the bottom division which was fine with all of us. We had a better chance of winning there. To tell you the truth, I really miss playing softball and hope we can have a team again this summer!
Our team, of course, had uniforms, a t-shirt, with our name proudly displayed on the front of it in bold letters and a number to distinguish ourselves on our backs. There was a team that played in our division whose name and denomination escapes me. Like us, the name of their team was displayed on the front of their shirts and a number on their backs, but just above their number was the biblical verse, Isaiah 40:31, one of the verses of our lesson for today.
Our team had warmed up. We were waiting to take the field. I believe it was Brett McKnight who noticed the verse. He turned to me and asked me what the verse was. Luckily I knew it and was able to recite it. Several of us were there. One of our teammates wondered if we had a biblical verse printed on the back of our jerseys, which one it should be. Again, we weren't that good of a team. We had lost a lot of games. Our third base coach, Tommy Benson, smiled, smirked really, and said, "It would probably be, ‘Jesus wept.'" Tommy was the same one who told me that when I was too old to play softball they would trade me to another United Methodist Church.
The verse on the back of that team's jersey is a verse that has been embedded in our hearts. It is an encouraging word. If you have seen the movie Chariots of Fire then you might remember that one of the main characters, speaking in a deep Scottish accent, reads these words, filling the Sanctuary of a Paris Church.
I pass these words most days. In our office, hanging on the wall that leads to our copier, is a picture of a majestic soaring eagle. Under her wings are these words. These words also hang in our hearts. They offer an encouraging word to the discouraged and anyone at anytime a word of hope to help them along.
I will run with these words tonight when it is time to get on the treadmill tonight. On my list of songs that I play when I run is Lincoln Brewster's song Everlasting God. At the end of the song Lincoln's son reads, "The Lord is an everlasting God, the creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding. He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. Even youths will become weak and tired and young men will fall from exhaustion, but those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint."
Or, for the more traditional among us, the time-honored song we will sing just after our last amen is On Eagle's Wings.
These are encouraging words and ones that were first written to the exiles of Isaiah's day who were very sure that God had forgotten all about them. It hadn't always been that way. There was a time when everyone else looked at these children of God with envy and appreciation. In fact, the word that would have come to their minds was the word blessing. There was a time when their cities were the best and strongest and a time when their Temple was the most beautiful in the entire world. You might say that they had soared with the eagles and had reached for the heights, but they had also forgotten all about God. You might say that after they reached for the heights, they stooped very low.
Isaiah doesn't tell us, at least in this passage, what their particular sin was and the things that they did to merit an exile. We could guess because we have done the same kind of things. My guess is that they began turning to things instead of God and believing that they didn't need anyone's help. And when they found themselves in a distant land, far from home, with their city in ruin and their Temple in ruin, they wondered why God had forgotten about them.
It is God, through Isaiah who gently tells them that it is time to come home. We start the Christian year with the opening verses of this fortieth chapter, saying things like God is coming and so we had better prepare the way. Near the end of the chapter, the prophet reminds the Israelites the things they surely knew. "Have you not known? Have you not heard? Haven't you known this from the very beginning? The Lord is an everlasting God, the creator of the heavens and the earth."
And now look at what this God does. He gives power to the faint and the faint of heart. He gives strength to those who have no strength. Isaiah writes, "Even the youngest of us will be weary on our own, but those who wait (and none of us like to wait) for the Lord will have new strength. We will no longer be weary. We will fly like eagles.
Now, I think it is hard to find more encouraging words than these in our Bibles. I see as one of my main jobs to encourage you in your faith, but do you ever feel like the Israelites? Have you ever wondered where God is? Are we like most that when things are going well, we don't pay all that attention to God, but when they don't we cry out as fast as we can? We may be like the disciples on that restless sea that night. We might cry out to Jesus, "Don't you care that we are perishing?" Of course Jesus cares.
Beloved, God has given us something that no one can ever take from us. Death cannot steal it and despair cannot devour it. It is our memory and now listen to this, I believe that our memory may be our first movement in faith.
I can remember sitting in an examination room some years ago. It was on a Thursday. I know that because I had to rush back here to preach at our contemporary worship service. I was there with Susie for an ultrasound. We were anxious to see and hear our baby's heartbeat. We soon learned that there was no heartbeat and no longer a baby. The one doing the ultrasound looked at us and told us the doctor would soon be in. We were devastated! There were tears. Who ministers to the minister? That day it was Dr. Paul Wendel. Dr. Wendel knew us. He had been with us with Annie Grace. He knew I was a pastor. In return for an extra ultrasound, we had agreed that he could preach one Sunday for me. That Thursday, Paul Wendel gently reminded me of my faith and the God I love and the one who loves me. His words made the difference; it didn't make the loss easier, but his words reminded me that God has always been with me.
Since then I have returned the favor to many. I can remember standing in the chapel of one of our hospitals when some bad news had just been delivered to the parents of a young child. We talked. We prayed and afterwards I reminded them of something they already knew, God can be trusted and this God never forsakes us. I reminded them of the foundation that they had been building on for years, the concrete being poured out in Sunday school lessons. Brick upon brick had been added on in the years and now they had something to fall back on.
I have sat in countless numbers of living room, asking to be a part of a family reunion of sorts, when someone in our family has died. And I've asked the family to remember not only the stories of their loved one, but the places where God's love was so strong. One of the things I said was that our memories would be there.
I started our sermon with a story about a t-shirt with our passage written on the back of it. Let me close with one, too. Rabbi Harold Kushner tells that when his son died, part of his journey back, decided that he would run in a race, a seven mile race. His family helped him train for it and his daughter bought him a shirt that on the back were printed the word and number, Isaiah 40:31.
Harold Kushner says that the shirt did not make him a champion, but ever since that day, these words have been important to him. They remind him where to find God in an unpredictable and often discouraging world, and they teach him that it is God's power the replenishes our own.
I am with him on that. Let me encourage you with these words, "...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, that shall walk and not faint." Thanks be to God. Amen.