BEpiphany5 – 2009 Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-11,20c; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39 February 8, 2009 She has held on for a long time. Finally she lets go of that rope tied to her faith and watches it like you would watch a dock as your boat pulls away from it. She now can say what she’s wanted to say for a long time. God doesn’t care. God won’t come and rescue me. God has no interest in fairness or justice in my life. I’ve tried to figure God out. I’ve tried to picture God as a strong father, a nurturing mother,a a shepherd to watch over me, a king to protect me. I’ve prayed in every way I know how. I’ve told God my troubles and asked for his help. I’ve prayed specifically and gotten no specific answers. I’ve let go and let God. And, well, it seems God has let go, too. God helps those who help themselves? I’ve taken responsibility and made decisions, taken risks, and the outcome, well there have been some real failures. I’ve planned ahead, set the course of my life, good education, sound investments, and I’ve not gotten where I should have. God is up in his heaven, and all is NOT right with the world. Where is the all powerful God I was taught to have faith in? We can’t help but let the rope go and ask these questions sometimes. It’s probably pretty natural. What we’re going to look at here is why Isaiah says that when we think this way, we are making idols for ourselves. And then – what the prophet has to say about how to think about God. When our thoughts are like this woman’s (this ‘woman’ pictured letting go of her faith is Israel complaining to God) we want proof that God is fitting into our plans and into our specifications. We want God to fit into our sense of timing, which is usually immediate. Isaiah says when we think of God in this way, We are like a workman that forms a cast, and a goldsmith who overlays it with gold, and casts silver chains for it, an expert that chooses choice wood that will not rot, a craftsman that carves and sets a figure permanently in place. When we think of God in this way, We begin to make God into the way we want God to be. And, by doing so, we limit our ‘god.’ We experience life and we judge God by our experiences. Our judgments of God become the god of our understanding. And we idolize our judgments. We decide how God should use us, involve us, and value us. In our sense of being God’s indispensible chosen, we make idols of ourselves. We instruct God as his personal counselor. We consult with him to make him more perceptive. We teach God about justice. We inform God of things God needs to know more about. We try to make God understand what needs to be done. Isaiah says… this is like trying to catch and measure dust that never settles.. this is like trying to lift mountains onto scales to weigh them. The One who sits far beyond the borders of our own land, who dwells above the circle of the earth and stretches out the heavens like a curtain we would pull across a window. We are likened to grasshoppers and blades of grass. What is ultimate to us is nothing to God. The psalmist expresses this also: A thousand years in your sight, O God, are like yesterday when it is past. Our years come to an end like a sigh. The most powerful people - who hold our destiny in their hands… they are like grass that is uprooted as soon as it is planted. They all dry up and blow away. NOTHING IN HUMAN EXISTANCE IS AS FRAGILE AS POWER It can be gone in an instant. Look beyond our human existence - up to the stars. God fashions the multitude of them, knows each one. Not one star is missing. That is how God is to be judged, says the prophet – by the time it takes to set the stars in space. Do you remember as a child, watching ants? I remember watching them…seeing a long line of ants that stretched from one edge of the driveway to the other. I would watch them moving like an endless conveyor belt and could see them carrying their loads. I would follow and try to find out where their home base was. I would touch a finger to the concrete to interrupt them and would watch them get confused and go in circles. Then, I would lift my finger and see them get back on track again. Fascinated with their miniature universe, I remember asking for one of those plastic kits sometimes called ant cities, sometimes ant farms, where you could see into their tunnels and see how they live. Living down into this small reality, I remember wincing the next time our car backed out that driveway or the lawn mower plowed through an ant hill, or that white powdered poison got poured into one. But, if we traveled or kept our lawns based on the needs of individual ant colonies, we would not be able to get out of the driveway to buy our groceries or walk barefoot in the grass. Two very different realities. Often not seeming to relate to each other. But on the whole very connected. Same soil, same oxygen, same need for organization and cooperation in our two very different societies. And same vulnerabilities. They a finger cutting off their path sending them into chaos . We a bridge collapses and cars go into a river. They a lawn mower plowing through their colony. We a tsunami that gulps up and spits out towns and villages. They a poison that kills their queen and leaves them all to die. We…war, famine, plague… When I picture how an ant might understand my actions, It helps me to get into proportion with God. God moves through decades of our time… centuries, millennia. To try to understand God or expect God to stick to our time is impossible. God’s time is not our time. God’s moment in not our moment. An attitude which can wait for the God of the ages and his plan Will gain strength to rise above the moment Not tire or faint, but go on and on. Those who can learn to wait on God’s time and God’s way and stay connected to it even when we do not understand, Will renew their strength,will run and not be weary, walk and not faint. We are given the image of the eagle wings – lifted up and carried, caught in the wind that is the Spirit of God soaring above the ant hills, the grasshoppers, the grass. God looks over stars and galaxies we have not begun to discover. We – so small – live in a reality and time so miniscule. We are urged to trust in the connection, that while we may be such a small part of the whole there is a strength and power that will carry us in such a large way that we cannot comprehend it. We grow tired and faint when we lose faith that it’s all connected. We think God is a faint or weak God when we judge God by our present needs. We are carried up into God’s power when we offer ourselves into God’s larger reality. Then we are lifted up like the wind catches the eagle’s spanned wings, and carried through this life by that reality. Jesus is our way of knowing that we have a place in the universe of God. He teaches us how to live. He shows us now to trust in what is too large for us to understand. But, who takes care of us? Who hears our cries for help? How do we get the guidance we need? The understanding we seek? Well, those things happen among us. Especially in an intentional Christian community, Breaking the bread of Christ, learning the ways of Christ, practicing the presence of Christ… praying together, in fellowship with each other, We learn together to become God’s hands, God’s heart, God’s mind for each other. We learn to see the God of the universe reaching out to help one of us using the small hands, the tender heart, the working mind… of one of us. And so the woman asks, (you know the joke)When did you help me, Lord? When I sent the boat and the helicopter and you wouldn’t leave the roof of your flooded house. And she wonders, When have I ever see you, Lord? When you clothed the hungry, visited the prisons, fed the hungry, helped a stranger, listened to a friend. We are connected to our God. And our God meets us all the time if we will only have eyes to see, ears to hear, and lips to speak.