The Fourth Sunday after Easter - Jubilate - April 25, 2010

The Church Season of Easter,
Easter 4, One Year Series
Our Savior Lutheran Church, Midland, MI (April 25, 2010)

“Strength to the Weary”

Readings:
        Psalm 147:1-11   
        Isaiah 40:25-31   
        1 Peter 2:11-20
        John 16:16-22

Sermon Form:    Deductive

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Grace, mercy and peace be to you from the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen

The text for today’s message will be from the Old Testament lesson as recorded in the 40th chapter of Isaiah, especially the following verses:

Isaiah 40:25-31 (NIV)

25 “To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One. 26 Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing. 27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God”? 28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. 29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

Alleluia! Alleluia! Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed! Alleluia!  Amen.

The Holy One of Israel calls to the Old Testament prophet Isaiah and tells him to “Lift your eyes and look to the heavens” and asks him “Who created all these?  He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls them each by name.”(v. 26)  This is the same Holy One, God the Father Almighty that calls His people to faith.  This is God who has told you to set aside your cares, for he speaks to you saying, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.”(Is 43:1)  It is an amazing love that God would speak to us in such unfathomable terms.  Because if you think about it, this is God who has set the stars in the heavens, and they are uncountable, unreachable, and they are untouchable.  And the more we peer at them, their numbers appear to grow greater and we appear less significant. This God tells you that He gives you strength, and will renew that strength.  He tells you, you will run and not be weary, you will walk and not be faint, He tells you that with all the magnitude of the universe with all these great things there is none other like Him.  And so God tells Isaiah, that He cares for you and He will give...

“Strength to the Weary”

    Well of course we like the part about the strength, the running, and the lack of weariness, yet the thought of actually doing all those things also brings our minds to doubt.  Because, life is never exactly what we want nor what we expect.  Have you ever noticed that?  No matter how hard we try, something always seems to go wrong.  Something different happens from what we expected and sometimes, something is missing.  You can make a little bit of money, have everything you need, want for nothing, yet still want more.  You can make a lot of money, but there is never enough.  Our needs, or our desires, our thoughts always seem to outrun our income.  You struggle for the perfect home, but there is always one more project.  What wasn't even conceivable before now it seems almost imperative.  We plan our budgets so carefully, and yet, when we get to the end of it, it isn't what we expected to end up with.  And what’s the problem with all that want?

The problem is sin.  The consequences of sin are much more readily apparent to us than the underlying cause.  We are never quite satisfied.  Others don't respond to us - or our circumstances - the way that seems only reasonable to us.  We give it our best shot and it is never quite good enough, or, when we achieve what we set out to do, it is no longer satisfying, we don't find ourselves fulfilled by it, and we stretch toward the next goal in search of that elusive thing called satisfaction, or success, or happiness, or whatever we may call it. 

“Who is my equal?”  Who knows what I see?  We look up to the heavens and wonder if God can see where we are in our lives.  To us, those are the words of temptation.  We are tempted, at times, to give up, or to feel crushed and defeated by the difficulties of life.  If we have the big problems under control, the little ones drive us nuts.  It often tempts us to think that God is punishing us, that our troubles are God's response to our sins. 

But, think about it.  Every morning, when you get up, there is air to be breathed, and it is filled with Oxygen in just the right proportions.  Too much would damage you.  Too little and you could not function.  The peculiar properties of water still work, making life possible.  Food is still digestible, and it nourishes your body.  The properties of electricity, which God prepared, still work, and the trace elements in your body are still so constituted that they allow nerves to sense and muscles to flex.  On rare occasions, the human body loses or distorts those abilities.  We call that "disease," or "paralysis," or "Muscular Dystrophy," or "Parkinson's," or "Macular Degeneration,” Osteoporosis," or even "cancer."  Yet, it doesn't seem that rare because we hear about it so often.  That happens, ultimately, because everyone gets sick and everyone dies eventually - but consider the wonder of your body!

Your body functions flawlessly for decades, often repairing itself when it is injured.  It works twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  You go to bed, your body keeps working.  Your heart pumps millions of gallons of blood every year, year after year. Your brain keeps calculating for close to a century, doing more work every hour - and more complex work, even while you sleep.  Your mind store memories in sound and color pictures - with smell and taste connected to many of those memories - in a space the size of a grapefruit that would require a roomful of flash-drives to store, if we knew how to store sensory data, and you keep them indexed by subject and person and season and emotion and scents of the air on that day, available for instant retrieval.  You smell something cooking and immediately your mind is back in mother’s or grandma's kitchen sixty years ago.  We get frustrated on those days when our retrieval system fails us in one or two memory request out of the thousands each hour we just take for granted.  When the whole system finally begins to fails, we call it "dementia".

But God has given us great things, for “those who hope in the Lord [for He] will renew their strength.”(v. 31)  And how is your strength renewed?  God does that for you in His loving-kindness as He gives us His Son Jesus Christ!  He gave His only-begotten Son into death for our sins.  He hung Him on a cross to bleed and die in agony, that we might be forgiven.  And He raised Him from the grave on Easter to show us irrefutably that our sins have been forgiven, paid for completely.  Rejoice!  Jesus Christ is Risen! Your sins have been paid for.  You are forgiven.  You have been redeemed by the blood of the very Son of God!  It is finished! He loves you with a love that transcends any full comprehension!

But we still say, ‘Oh yeah I know all that, but why do things keep going wrong?’  Why do we get sick?  Why is life painful and difficult and frustrating at times?  Why do I  grow tired and weary, and why do I seem to stumble and fall?  I cannot tell you how every event in your life is good.  But God can, and He tells us that it is good.  I can’t bring myself to call God a liar, so I must accept that even the things in my life which I do not like are for good, and that God is with me.  

Maybe a different question to ask is this, ‘What is the will of God for us?’  And the answer to that is, He desires our salvation.  The Apostle Paul said it this way, "if [we are God's] children, [we are] heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.  For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us." Romans 8:17-18 

In every situation, St. Paul finds that whatever we endure will prove to be well worth it, and more!  God will renew your strength to face each day.  God gave Jesus the strength to face a day on the cross, and the strength to conquer death, for you.  And God in Christ Jesus gives that strength to you too.  The Lord will, has, and does renew YOUR strength in Holy Comunion, in giving you the true body and blood of His Son Jesus Christ.  The Lord will indeed renew your strength and bring you to Himself in His heavenly home.  There in God’s arms there will be no more worrysome or wearisome “Whys? or Why me’s”  There in God’s kingdom in the arms of Christ You will “soar on wings like eagles; You will run and not grow weary, You will walk and not be faint.”(v. 31)  And you will do all these things forever and ever.  That is the hope and strength for  you the weary, the hope and promise sealed by the resurrection of Christ.   Amen.
   

Alleluia! Alleluia! Christ is risen!  

He is risen indeed! Alleluia!  Amen.

The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
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