Sermon prepared for
by Pastor Gregory S. Kaurin
Text: Isaiah 40:21-31
Sermon:
Well, Wha’d’ya Know!
Click to go to: homepage – or – sermon menu
– or – sermon
archive
Twice
in our lesson Isaiah asked, “Have you not known? Haven’t you heard?” Well…that’s a good question, “What do we
know?”
And
I love these humbling images in this passage.
Isaiah said that God sits above the circle of the earth and stretches
out the heavens like a curtain and a tent.
Meanwhile all of the inhabitants below are like grasshoppers. Take a moment to think about that. What do you think he meant; how are we all
like grasshoppers? We hop around,
literally and figuratively, but relative to God and his whole plan for
creation, we’re here for a brief moment, we jump around and then we’re not.
We
might be tempted to feel lost in all this, the world and billions of people
spinning and hopping around us, looking up seeing billions of stars in a huge
empty space…and what am I? How do I
matter? Do I matter?
And
Isaiah took that attitude head on. He
said to Jacob’s children, to Israel, “Why would you say such things? Why would you imagine that what you do and
say goes unnoticed?” God is huge and
eternal, that’s true. But he isn’t huge
and eternal like space, you don’t get lost in God. You get found in him. You matter to God. What you do and say matters to God.
This
past week has been an odd one for me…lots of stuff, people and activities…a
whirlwind. Last Sunday, while Pauline
and I were on the east coast, we visited friends and my first
congregation. It was great seeing many
people, but after six years, we noticed and talked about many people who were
gone, some had died. Most of the
teenagers from my youth group were gone, in college, even married. We figured out that by now the congregation
is about 55% all new.
Meanwhile
the space shuttle “
Then
I listened to Collin Powell’s address to the United Nations. I feel all number of conflicts and fears
about this impending war—a war that I think may become very dangerous for all
of us.
And
yesterday morning our new class of Stephen Ministers discussed at length the
seriousness and the warning signs that lead to suicide: the emptiness and
hopelessness.
Then,
a few hours later, I married a delightful couple, Donna Hutton from our
congregation to Bob Hoyt. She’s in her
70’s and he recently turned 80.
An
hour after that, last night, we were in the wonderful company of the all staff
of Messiah Lutheran being treated to a wonderful dinner hosted by this year’s
church council. This was on the eve of
today’s congregational meeting, after several months of transition, both
wonderful and stressful.
It
all leaves a person feeling overwhelmed.
And small. And wondering through
it all, "What do I know?" Maybe
we are just tiny specks of star dust spinning through the universe. What do I matter?
But
then in the middle of all this stuff, there was probably the best speech and
most comforting words I’ve ever heard coming from our president, in his
announcement about the
In the skies today we saw destruction and tragedy. Yet farther than we can see, there is comfort
and hope. In the words of the prophet
Isaiah, “Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one
and calls them each by name. Because of
his great power, and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.”
The same Creator who names the stars also knows the
names of the seven souls we mourn today.
The crew of the shuttle
This
world can seem harsh and dark. It can be
overwhelming with all the good and the bad, the ups and downs, leaves us
spinning, spinning. So many opinions and
words and tragedies and births and deaths…all of us are jumping around in our
brief lives like grasshoppers. What do
we know?
Well,
I’ll tell you some things I know for certain.
Often, we mainliner Christians, especially Lutherans, I’ve heard us frequently
called fence-sitting or lukewarm Christians.
We
get called that, because there are a number of things that many of us seem
ambiguous about. What’s our position on
homosexuality, and abortion, or war, or patriotism, or Bible interpretation, or
this law or that law in the scriptures, or women’s proper place in church, or
what are the seven steps to good Christian living, or the tithe, on and on? What do we know? All this discussion on all these things, it’s
sometimes very important, but it should never be allowed to take the defining
center of your faith.
·
When someone
tries to tell you that they know who’s in and who’s out,
·
when someone
tries to tell you they know who God likes or hates,
·
or why he allows
this tragedy or those people to suffer,
·
when someone
tries to tell you that they know the limits of God’s grace and love.
·
when you hear
this stuff, I want you to grab hold of the hand of a God whose plan and mind
and heart is bigger than all of us. You
know God’s love.
You
know his forgiveness. You saw it in
Jesus Christ. And there are things that
God is much more concerned about: more than all this stuff about morality and
purity. It’s time that Christians started
to learn from all the Pharisees’ mistakes.
The mistake they made was an absolute focus on purity and good moral
living. Jesus clearly said and showed
that they were distracted from other things more important. God is much more concerned about things like loneliness,
about abuse and fists, and arrogant, hard-hearted Christians.
I
am not a fence-sitter. I am adamant
about what I believe is most important, about the center of faith: Jesus
Christ, that he died for me, and that he died to save the world. He was God.
He looked out over his confused people, who were and are shouting and
crying and clamoring about like a bunch of crazed grasshoppers, and he said,
“Father, forgive them.” I believe at the
center of my faith that we are in God’s hands, that God will get what he wants,
and that what God wants is us, and I believe that nobody can tell God what to
do with his grace and mercy. I believe
with an absolute conviction that we will all be surprised in heaven and that
whatever God does will be the most loving, merciful, and the most just
thing.
And
in the end the real question is not “what do we know,” but who knows us, each of
us by name. God knows you. And because of Jesus Christ, you know that
you are loved by God, you are home.
Click to go to: homepage – or – sermon menu
– or – sermon
archive