ruary 5, 2006 (Jimmie Johnson)

Isaiah 40:21-31

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 heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers 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 be 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.

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Life can wear you out.

Even the strongest of soul, mind, and body at the end of life looks a lot like the Velveteen Bunny whose story is told in the great children’s book. All the living and loving and giving and hugging wear off the button eyes and nose and even an ear. Loving and receiving love are costly. My daughter Shannon had a pink bunny, and my daughter Shay had a tan puppy. I believe they still have them, and the last time I saw bunny and puppy, they were thread worn and dilapidated. Just as the little child’s bed time cuddle “lovie” becomes worn out, so do many of us.

This is why at every funeral I choose to read Jesus’ words about “Come unto me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens. I will give you rest.” I trust that promise of Jesus because he, himself, entered fully into the fatigue and weariness and difficulty of life. As a man of both sorrows and great unbridled joy, he, too, knew in body, mind, and soul the weariness and burden of life and the wearing down that comes from living fully, too. But mostly, it’s the sorrows that sandpaper us toward smallness of spirit and hope.

When Isaiah interprets the experience of the people of God, the people felt as if they had become invisible to God, that God noticed them no more. They believed they had become like the withered grass of the field, blown every which way, scattered to the wind. No one would even know they once lived and loved and died. Much of their nation had been taken captive and sent into exile. They suffered mass deportations and feelings of helplessness from the weariness and pointlessness of it all. So it became natural for them to project their tiredness, powerlessness, and exhaustion outward upon the whole cosmos and even God.

What they experienced is genuine doubt. Genuine doubt is different from shabby doubt that is some excuse for unethical behavior. Genuine doubt is also different from doubt that is impatient with stultifying, coercive religious beliefs or structures. Genuine doubt is merely proper rebellion on its way to a finer faith. And genuine doubt is not the airing of brilliant denials--that is conceit. No, genuine doubt is the reverse side of genuine faith.

How can we believe in the God who cares when what we see and feel contradicts what we believe? What are we to do when we are feeling completely overwhelmed by life, feeling as if we will faint? What are we to do when our whole self-understanding and belief in God
are called into confusion and question? What are we to do in those disturbing moments when we ask if the beliefs we heard from our parents or learned in the church really are true?

Most of us will reach a point where things are never quite the same again. From then on, the “yes” of faith will always struggle with the “no” of doubt. So what do we do when we believe we have become invisible to God? Well, here at First Presbyterian, you can tell someone you know that it is all right to say to one another: “I am going through a very dark night in my soul; I am barely able to inch along.” We can say to that person that he or she doesn’t need to feel guilty about feeling that way.

Here at First Presbyterian we understand that there is a sacred doubt which is the mother of true faith. Like sickness and grief, then, doubt is something you can expect and should prepare for, not letting it surprise you like a thief in the night. So, here, we have permission to talk about it. We don’t think it means we have lost our faith or become a bad person. We know that people of faith can experience a time of weariness and exhaustion. Therefore, we feel we can tell someone. If we don’t, we are in great danger to be worn out and feeling alone which can lead to making bad moral choices. Lives can be ruined by fatigue.

Secondly, after you have shared with someone, remember, you can’t always believe what you feel and even see. Now, this is very important. You can’t always trust what you feel because God is not to be identified by what you are feeling. God is more than the sum total of your experience. This is the reason that Isaiah is reminding us that we can’t always trust what we are feeling; sometimes we must doubt our doubts.

Can you remember going camping, lying back on your cot or sleeping bag and looking up at the stars, overwhelming in their brilliance, in their beauty, and in their orderliness? Can you recall such a moment? Isaiah is reminding his readers and listeners as they feel their loss of confidence and belief in God, to go out into the night sky and look up. And then Isaiah, much like in the tradition of Job, poses the question, “Who created these stars?”

God, the commander of the universe, calls out God’s myriad stars, and each star takes its appointed place as God calls its name. They stand in their great battalions in response to the call of their commander. This is the imagery that Isaiah is using. Not one star is missing. Not one. God calls them into existence and to their places as God calls you and me to our time and place. Isaiah is offering us faith understood as trust.

The stars show God’s desire to keep invigorating creation. God will not grow weary of loving creation. God will not grow tired of caring about you. God will not grow sleepy and worn out, unable to remember who you are, and where you are, and what time it is in your life. God passionately desires to be God, not because of some god-sized ego. God is no tarnished Babylonian idol. Isaiah preaches that God is devoted to being God because God’s greatest joy

is giving power to the overwhelmed and strength to the exhausted. The One who creates us and commands us like the stars in their courses can be relied upon never to overlook us. This is the sacrament of the night sky. Look up and see the stars.

After the death of her sister, Emily, and with another sister, Anne, dying of tuberculosis, Charlotte Bronte wrote to a friend: “I avoid looking forward or backward, and I try to keep looking upward. The days pass in a slow, dark march. The nights are the test. The sudden wakenings from restless sleep, the revived knowledge that one lies in her grave and another, rather than being at my side, instead, is in a separate and sick bed. However, God is over all.”

Look, in the weariness of life and its unfairness, my mind always goes toward atheism, but my heart looks up. “The heart has reasons the mind knows not of,” wrote the philosopher Pascal. The heart’s reasons are far from flippant and arrogant.

Look upward says Isaiah. God shall renew our strength, and we shall be lifted with wings like eagles and run and not be weary. Jesus said, “Come to me, and I will give you rest.” As the hymn promises, “There is no place where earth’s sorrows are more felt than up in heaven...”

Some of you have taken trips to the Holy Land. Doubtless on these trips, you’ve heard the guide compare the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea. The fresh waters of the Sea of Galilee sparkle and are full of fish, while in the salty Dead Sea, no fish can live. The reason for the difference is that the River Jordan runs through the Sea of Galilee, but it only flows into the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea has no outlet. And the obvious point of the guide’s talk is that life comes through giving as well as receiving. And that is how we are renewed. And that’s valid.

But an exceptionally imaginative preacher, George Buttrick, once went on to identify another truth. The Dead Sea does have an outlet. It does. We simply forget it or go unmindful of it because it doesn’t fit our expectations. The Dead Sea has an upward outlet. Over the centuries, as the sea surrenders its life to the sun, a residue of potash builds up around its shores. Potash is the main ingredient of fertilizer, and engineers estimate that if the potash around the Dead Sea could be properly mixed and distributed, there would be enough to fertilize the whole surface of the earth for five years. The resources of life are piling up around its shores.

Does life ever come to a complete dead end? Remember, says Isaiah, you can’t always trust what you are feeling. In such a time, God will see to it that new life comes from the old. Look up. Look upward.