Walk and Not Faint

Sermon Isaiah 40:21-31 February 7, 2021

Walk and Not Faint

Today is Super Bowl Sunday. Now that might not be a big deal to many of you. Considering how messed up our sports seasons have been this year, many may not even give a hoot about watching this one football game. I do know though, that there are many who will sit down and watch this game just for a semblance of tradition as we’ve known in the past.

Tradition is something we hold dear as sport fans, as Americans, as families, and as Christian church goers. Traditions remind us that life has been worthwhile, and that life will continue beyond ourselves. Today is Super Bowl 55. That’s a lot of years for a sport to hold together a tradition in this fast-moving society. 

Which leads me to the question, "

what traditions do we cling to and why? 

Consider as we sit together today, 

here in the pews and those online, 

those things that bring comfort, joy, security, value, and purpose.

As we reflect, we will discover most of what we are considering involve being engaged with others in community. 

As we reflect on those traditions, they bring us an enormous amount of joy that draws us to a place of remembrance and praise. 

They fill us again with hope and joy.

The prophet Isaiah was talking to a people who had lost hope and were living their lives in the lament of what once was. The people of Israel had been taken captive and displaced to Babylon. They had been there for years. Life as they knew it ceased to exist. They were forced to take on manners and daily routines unlike they had ever experienced. They were full of grief and sorrow. They yearned for the day they could return to their country and return to their ways and their traditions. The people in exile were actually at a point where they were giving up looking forward. They felt abandoned by God. They wondered if the God they once believed in was really the God of deliverance.

As time went by, they became more and more despondent. And they doubted the God of wonders and the God of their tradition.

They had been in exile for so long they began to suffer amnesia and looked to the gods of their captors. Murdock was the sun god of the Babylonians as well as multiple astrid (or star) gods. Their knowledge of their traditions began to fade.

The book of Isaiah is divided into three parts. And chapter 40 is known as the beginning the second part of Isaiah. It is a crucial turning point chapter. It begins the first eleven verses with words we hear every Advent season… ‘comfort, comfort, my people’. Here in these verses we discover a God who has never abandoned his people, yet yearns to bring them from their lament to a life of praise and to return them to their traditions of worship and hopeful living.

I believe in every time and age God’s people have asked the question, “Can God really help us?” And, “Does our God still want to help us?”

Perhaps, that is where we have found ourselves as God’s people these past months. We have been removed from one another as in no other recent time. For many it is the first time in their life they have experienced a crisis. Many here were too young to remember 9/11 or WWII or the depression. But, even in those times communities were not isolated and cut off from each other. The greatest tragedy is when communities fail to function together and individual existence is more important. Even our Bible’s references are always on the universal community response to God as God’s people are called to live together.

How does the tradition of moving in life without fear, 

and seeking to participate together with God’s strength, 

return us to society?

We hear the words of Isaiah to the people of God and we respond to them.
Too many of us have been caught up sitting idle
waiting for things to change;
or waiting for things to return to what was.

Too many of us have socially distanced
ourselves from relationships.

It has been too easy to remove ourselves from society.
We can find all we need at our fingertips from home.

Our isolation from community has made it too easy
to be isolated and far removed from God.

We sing a hymn and an anthem where the refrain goes, “Come back to me with all your heart Don't let fear keep us apart,  Long have I waited for Your coming home to me And living deeply our new lives.” God is the one reaching out to us and drawing us back to himself.

Isaiah provides us with such grace in the reminder of the wonder and majesty of our God. He returns the listeners to the traditional truths of God.

God is the creator of the universe

and the ruler and power of the nations.

God is Lord of all.

God gives power to the faint and

strengthens the powerless.

Our God loves us to draw us up in our hour of need.

God removes our lament and

restores our souls with the songs of praise.

 

When we hear the song Majesty it too restores us to the tradition of God’s power and grace over all of us.

No matter how exhausted we find ourselves
we have the promise that God will renew our strength.

It is our Lord’s Supper tradition that we come to the Table remembering that Christ is our living bread where we are nourished and renewed, refreshed and strengthened. 

Photo credit Joe Valentine

In this tradition that God has given us

 we too trust that as 

we wait for the Lord 

we shall be renewed in strength, 

we shall mount up with wings as eagles and we shall run and not be weary, and we shall walk and not faint. 

It is the tradition that reminds us that we are the Body of Christ across the whole world. We are a community of faith drawn together through our Savior. Take time to return to the tradition of our faith and join in community here and now through reaching out to us as we reach out to you. Prepare your table before you as we sup as one.

Let us gather now and rejoice and praise God for his wonderful gifts to us. Let us lift up our voices and shout louder than the cheers at the football games, let us lift our spirits with joy! We are about to enter into the joyful feast of our risen Lord, it is time to praise our Jesus! Amen.

Resources: Interpretation Isaiah Paul Hanson; A Commentary on Isaiah Claus Westermann; NIB Christopher Seitz.

Property of Monica Gould sharing is permitted but not to be reprinted without permission.