"Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength"

Sermon for Sunday, February 8, 2009
Text: Isaiah 40:21-31
Title: “…those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength…”
Rev. Bill Pederson

At the second service last week I failed to say anything about being gone the prior three Sundays to the University of Aberdeen, in Aberdeen, Scotland continuing my doctor of ministry studies. Someone very, very close to me mentioned Sunday afternoon that I should have at least said something to the congregation. I gave several excuses for my oversight – I was distracted by many thoughts; I was trying to get through worship and on to the annual congregational meeting with as much dispatch as possible; and third, but not least, my firm conviction that I am not the center of attention in Presbyterian worship – Jesus Christ is. To which, this person who is very, very close to me responded, “Jesus Christ wasn’t missing from worship for the last three Sundays; you were, and you should have said something!”

So here’s a little story from my trip to Scotland for you. It was an interesting experience not being in the United States for arguably one of the largest historical moments in our nation’s history – the inauguration of Barack Obama as president on January 20. Our Scottish professor did, however, bow to the request of the Americans in our group and let us out of class early, at 4:00 p.m. on January 20, to view the inauguration on the closest television set to our classroom which happened to be at St Machar’s Bar – a vintage pub, some would say dive, on the university campus.

The publican of St Machar’s set us up nicely with a reserved table in front of one of two large screen t.v.’s in the establishment. It was an amazing experience to see folks coming in off the streets and packing the tiny bar, shoulder to shoulder and front to back in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the historic moment. I thought for a while that it was going to be impossible to hear any audio with the patrons getting louder and louder as more and more people arrived. But when Barack Obama finally stood to take the oath of office, all noise ceased and all faces were glued to the t.v.’s. I peered around the room and was struck by the silence and rapped attention that these foreigners were giving to our soon-to-become president. Clearly their attention was respectful, dignified, and even quietly celebratory that this event was politically a monumental one not just for the States but for the world.

Peering from an ocean apart in an obscure little bar, my colleagues and I were struck by the sheer magnitude of the crowds in Washington, by the electricity in the air, by the power such a moment contained and emanated for a worldwide audience. Judging from the palpable, respectful silence in a very crowded St Machar’s Bar, clearly the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States was one of the most powerful political moments of this, or any age.

But what manner of power we must ask as a people whose faith is shaped by the biblical affirmation to the living God. What can we say about power when we bring the awe-inspiring images of the inauguration of Barack Obama into contact with the voice of Isaiah of the Babylonian captivity who writes about the living God “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.” (verses 23-24)

In the front windows at one of the bookstores on the campus of the University Aberdeen one was reminded how fleeting power and fame can be. For days leading up to Barack Obama’s inauguration, his books were prominently displayed for sale in the bookstore’s windows. On January 21, the day after his inauguration, Obama’s books had been replaced by Charles Darwin’s works as Brittain and the world get ready to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of the famed naturalist’s birth on February 12. The University of Aberdeen’s bookstore window had covered some powerful ground in the span of one day’s time: from Obama to Darwin, from politics to science, the two great loci of power in western civilization since the 14^th century Renaissance and forward to today.

Along with Darwin’s work in that window were fifty other science books deemed by the bookstore as science’s fifty best. Among those fifty best were several modern titles dealing with the burgeoning science of astronomy and physics as today astrophysicists peer deeper and deeper into interplanetary and interstellar space. It appears that the next space race is really on the ground as engineers and astronomers create the next generation of monster telescopes with the capacity to pick up light emanating from the first stars and galaxies. These powerful telescopes will assist astrophysicists in unraveling the mysteries of dark matter, dark energy, and black holes. (National Geographic, “The Once and Future Frontier: Space” page 98)

The Isaiah of the Babylonian captivity peered into the night sky and saw many of the same lights that astrophysicists are capturing today in very sophisticated telescopes. Only as the prophet looked into the night sky, he was not attempting to map galaxies or unravel the mystery of black holes. The prophet was fathoming the depths of power, true power. “Lift up our eyes on high and see,” the prophet directs us, “Who created these?” the prophet passionately teases us. Not one to wait for a response the prophet exhorts, “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.” (verse 26)

It was the Isaiah of the Babylonian exile’s distinct calling to re-introduce Judah to the living God. It was not as if Judah in exile had forgotten God. No, far from it. But the exiles experience was causing deep questions to be raised about Yahweh’s power or Yahweh’s faithfulness to his people or if Yahweh even cared. Some of the exiles were settling into life in Babylon where they were allowed to buy land and engaged in commerce and make a life and a living. Others of the exiles were desperately homesick for a land they once knew and a God they once trusted whom they took for granted would forever keep them and forever guard their land and Jerusalem as God’s own.

Exiles were a vulnerable people, in a foreign land, confronted with foreign gods, not at all certain that Yahweh cared, or if Yahweh did care, was Yahweh powerful enough to overcome Babylon. The Isaiah of the Babylonian exile’s words are searing in their impact and soaring in their purpose. The prophet begins by chiding his people that if they do not think that Yahweh is powerful enough to act, then they are the last people on earth to believe this. “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?” (verse 21)

What follows is a powerfully poetic rendition of God’s power brilliantly displayed in verbal participles in Hebrew which carry the connotation that God is sitting above the circle of the earth; God is stretching out the heavens like a curtain; God is spreading the heavens like a tent to live in; God is bringing the unjust princes of the world to naught; God is making the unjust rulers of the earth as nothing.

Confronted with a God who is sitting, stretching, spreading, bringing, and making on a cosmic and national level, the question then arises in verse 25, “To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One.” Of course, the answer is, “No one.” Which leads this poetic prophet to his main point so passionately rendered, then “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’?

What follows is language that is beautifully evocative of God’s power and the exile’s weakness. Four times the word “faint” appears and three times the word “weary.” The contrast between God and the exiles is astoundingly rendered: the exiles are faint, the exiles are weary, the exiles are powerless, the exiles are exhausted. Yahweh is sitting, is stretching, is spreading, is bringing, is making; Yahweh is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. Yahweh does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. Yahweh gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless.

The prophet’s unmistakable message is: stay close to the only power that matters. Stay close to the only power that is. Stay close to the only One who is powerful enough to do something about the state of exile you find yourself in. Wait says the prophet. Wait for the Lord exhorts the prophet. And the Lord will renew your strength. Wait in the Hebrew has the connotation of “twisting,” “stretching,” “tensioning.” Far from a passive word, wait in the Hebrew means a vibrantly, fierce expectancy and hope that stretches and twists us into God. And there, in God, having waited for the Lord in extreme reliance upon the Lord, the Lord will renew the prophet believes, renew. This word does not mean simply restore to a former state; it means the receipt of a divinely different vigor and divinely infused re-direction.

You do not have to be in Babylon to be in exile. Where ever you lives have changed drastically and differently than before; where ever you find yourselves powerless; where ever you end up weary and faint; where ever you feel like falling exhausted – you are in exile. At that point wait, wait in exile, with a fierce, expectant, vibrant, stretching and tensioning hope. Wait, wait for the Lord, who will renew your strength according to Isaiah of the Babylonian exile. Wait for the Lord, a prophetic exhortation that will be echoed in this benediction five hundred years later from the Apostle Paul: “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21)