A sermon preached at Kowloon
Union Church on Sunday 8 February
2015, Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, by
the Rev. Dr. John LeMond. The
scripture readings that day were Isaiah 40:21-31; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark
1:29-39.
There is a popular Christian song that says,
“Our God is an awesome God.”
Awesome means causing feelings of amazement
Feelings of power and strength.
It means all-powerful
and almighty.
Our God is an awesome
God.
And that’s what we hear from the book of Isaiah:
There is no God more powerful than our God
God is great, high above the earth…
And we, Isaiah says, are like tiny grasshoppers
Another translation says “locusts,” which is not only a
small insect
But a dangerous one.
God is high up above the earth.
If you have ever flown in an airplane
You know what this means.
Up high, above the clouds,
Everything below seems very small and insignificant
The tallest buildings in the world
The highest mountains in the world
Seem like nothing when we fly over them in an airplane
That is the picture we have here
God sees everything from a high position above the earth
Higher than we can even imagine.
The heavens are nothing more than God’s shelter
God spreads it out and manipulates it
Just as one would a tent.
In fact, everything…everything…is
subject to God’s will.
Everything is subject to God’s likes and dislikes
If God likes something…it can live and prosper
If God doesn’t like something…
God’s hot breath blows over it
And it withers and dies.
God causes strong winds to cover the earth…causing
destruction and suffering
God’s hand is dipped into the ocean
And tsunamis roll across islands destroying everything in
their path.
And…God never
grows tired.
Our God is an awesome
God.
But isn’t our God also a terrible God?
Awesome can also mean “terrible.”
Striking terror in the hearts of those who encounter God.
Isaiah says we are like insignificant grasshoppers before
God.
Grasshoppers are small, vulnerable insects
How do we really feel about that?
Do we like being called small, vulnerable insects?
Isaiah says that God makes the rulers and the princes of the
earth “nothing.”
If God can do that to rulers and princes
God can certainly make us
nothing as well.
Are we nothing to God?
Do we really like the possibility that God might look at us
and consider us nothing?
This is a frightening thought
The chasm between God and me is vast.
God is all powerful…and I am powerless.
God is everything…and I am nothing.
God is up high…and I am down low.
Our God is an awesome
God
And I…am a pitiful, sad, insignificant creature.
Someone who can be destroyed by God at will.
Thanks be to God…right?
But wait…
This is not the end of Isaiah’s message.
Near the end of this passage Isaiah says something else
He says there is hope for us
There is hope for everyone
Isaiah says, “Those who wait
for the Lord shall renew their strength,”
“Those who wait for
the Lord shall mount up with wings like eagles,”
“Those who wait for
the Lord shall run and not be weary,”
“They shall walk and not faint.”
So, I may be small and insignificant
I may be powerless and down low.
But there is hope for me
Yes, there is hope for me.
There is hope that all of this can change
There is hope that I
can be powerful and high up too…
Like an eagle!
There is hope that my strength can be renewed…
And I can fly up high into the air…and
look down on the small things of the earth
I can run and run and run and not get tired.
I can have strength and muscle and power
I can be awesome
I too can be…like God!
That's awesome!
Our God is an awesome
God…
And I can be awesome, too!
According to Isaiah, to have all of this
To be up, not down
To be important, not insignificant
I only have to do one thing:
Wait for the Lord.
Hope for the Lord, look eagerly
for the Lord
Serve the Lord,
All I have to do is believe
in the Lord
And I can have all the things that God has
Power and the wings of eagles!
High instead of low
Fast instead of slow
Big instead of small
I can be like God.
______________________________
We are attracted by this image of an “almighty” God
We are attracted by it because…
We want a God who can protect us and answer our prayers
And we ourselves want to be
like that kind of God ourselves
This is the kind of God we want on our side.
Our God is an
awesome God.
If our God is
powerful…we can be powerful.
We can be powerful believers; powerful Christians
And that only makes sense:
No one wants to follow a powerless God
No one wants to believe in a helpless God
No one wants to trust a vulnerable God
No one really wants to proclaim…a crucified God.
But, it turns out, that is who our God is
And if we have been waiting for the Lord,
As Isaiah instructs us to do,
That is the kind of God that we have been waiting for all
along.
“Wait for the Lord,” Isaiah tells us
So, we did wait for the Lord.
The world waited,
All of creation waited.
And when he came…he was not high up above the earth at all.
He walked the dusty and dirty streets of Palestine
He was not powerful and almighty
He was an ordinary man who was subject to the rulers of the
earth just as we are.
And the rulers and powerful had him arrested and killed.
He was not a destroyer,
He was a healer.
This isn’t who we thought God would be
This doesn't seem to be the God Isaiah promised us.
The God we have
been waiting for,
Was the God we thought would protect us and make us powerful along with him.
But this God:
Calls us to walk a very different path
Calls us to follow him to places we never wanted to go
Calls us to be people we never really wanted to be
Calls us to be people who embrace death.
Wait for this
Lord…
And your strength will
be renewed
It will need to be renewed
Because it will be depleted and you will be weak
Wait for this
Lord…
And you will fly
like an eagle
But you will also walk and crawl.
Wait for this
Lord,
And you will run with strength,
But you will also be tired and exhausted.
And long for the Lord to renew your health.
__________________________________________________________
When Jesus went into the house of Peter’s mother-in-law
He entered into the very heart of the world
Into a place that was unclean and on the margins
He touched the sick-bed of an elderly woman
In his culture, that was about as low as he could be
And it was not he who rose up as an eagle
But the sick woman…who had now been made well.
Those who came to see him
They were not the fast runners and the powerful
They were those on the bottom of the social ladder
And they found Jesus…they found God
At the bottom of the ladder with them.
He was the God
they had been waiting for
This was the God who for them was awesome.
Have you not known?
Our God…the one who sits above the circle of the earth.
Comes to us. Lives with
us and among us.
Have you not heard?
The one who stretches out the heavens
Stretches out his hand to a dying woman and to a suffering
world.
The one who is more powerful than princes and rulers
Moves easily among the sick, the hopeless, the powerless.
He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.
The God we wait for is an awesome God.
The God who comes is a crucified
God.
And that is
awesome.
Amen.
# posted by Kowloon Union Church : Sunday, February 08, 2015
