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Lorene E. Wunder
December 12, 2004

Weak Hands and Feeble Knees
Isaiah 35:1-10, Matthew 11:2-5

One of my favorite bands is U2. They came on the scene just when I was getting into rock music in junior high and high school, and I have followed them ever since. Although they won't call themselves this, they are a Christian band. Bono, the lead singer and songwriter, infuses the lyrics with images from the Bible, and questions about faith.

In this season of Advent, I've had a song from their album from four years ago running through my head. The track is called Peace on Earth. At one point the lyrics say,

Jesus in this song you wrote
The words are sticking in my throat
Peace on Earth
Hear it every Christmas time
But words and history don't rhyme
So what's it worth?
This peace on earth.

I love Advent and Christmas. I love the hymns we sing, the scripture we read, the preparations at home, the lights people put on their houses that make the long, dark nights seem just a little bit warmer, a little less frightening. But Bono with these lyrics expresses the question that lurks in the back of my mind. We do sing about peace on earth and goodwill towards all every year. But will we ever know peace and good will and all those beautiful visions of the future God promises, or is it out of our reach?

No book of the Bible expresses those visions of God's promised future better than Isaiah. Isaiah was a prophet, but he was also a poet. He gave us the vision of the peaceable kingdom from last week, where "the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. (Isaiah 11:6)" Isaiah also gave us the words we read every Christmas Eve: "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined….For a child has been born for us, a son given to us…(Isaiah 9, selections)

And this morning's text, which is perhaps not as well known, but is no less beautiful:
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing…(35:1-2)

This is some of the most beautiful poetry in the Bible, and Isaiah uses it to instill a vision of what's possible in the hearts of his people.

The prophet Isaiah wrote during the 8th century BC. He lived in Jerusalem, in what was then Judah, the southern kingdom, after the unified Israel had split into two after Solomon's death. The book of Isaiah has two different parts. The first part are words directed at the tiny kingdom of Judah, as it tried to figure out how to survive being caught between the Assyrian Empire and Egypt, the two superpowers of the day. The second part of Isaiah are words of consolation, spoken to the people after Judah's reliance on military alliances (rather than trust in God) had resulted in the ravaging of Jerusalem, and thousands of people being taken to live in exile in Babylon.

For a people whose religion was as much about the land of Israel and the city of Jerusalem as it was faith in God, life in exile left them almost without hope. Part of their identity was about being God's people, a people set apart, in a particular land, with a particular set of laws to follow, and a particular place to worship. In this strange land with its strange language, strange culture, and strange religion, it was easy to believe that they were cut off from the things that gave them their identity. It was easy to believe that they had been cut off from, abandoned by God.

Into this despair, Isaiah spoke words of comfort and hope. He uses images of all creation transformed, from the blossoming of the desert to the restoration of the blind and the deaf and the lame. Not only that, but in this desert there will be a highway, and
"the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. (35:10)"

And at the heart of this chapter of Isaiah is his exhortation:
Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God."

Isaiah gave the people a vision of creation transformed, a smooth highway to follow back home with newly strengthened hearts and knees. What could be a more wonderful vision of the future?

And it did come to pass that those who lived in exile were allowed to go home to Jerusalem. No miraculous highway opened up before them, and all creation was not transformed, but in their time in exile, a remnant had turned again to God, and had grown strong again in the faith. When they got back to Jerusalem, the city was in ruins. But faith in God helped them to rebuild the city walls, and to live again as God's people.

This may seem somewhat anti-climactic after Isaiah's vision. The thing is, sometimes God is as flashy as making an entire desert bloom, but I believe that more often than not, God's transformative work in the world is much more subtle. Isaiah's visions of God's promised future lifts our gaze beyond the brokenness of this world, shows us the world made whole, and gives us reason-against-reason to hope. We cherish the vision of the future God wants for us, but we also must watch carefully for the work God is already doing in our midst, often in the unexpected and unnoticed.

Take, for example, another text for this morning which we didn't read, Matthew 11. In this passage, John the Baptist is in prison, and sends word to Jesus, asking "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Jesus answered, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them…" (Matthew 11:2-5)

You can hear in Jesus' response echoes of the Isaiah text:
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy…(35:5-6)

But what I really love about this passage is that, according to Matthew, John the Baptist—the one whose whole purpose in life was to proclaim the coming of the messiah—this man did not even recognize Jesus when he encountered him.

Perhaps Matthew's John the Baptist had very different expectations of what the transforming work of God in Jesus Christ would be like. Perhaps Matthew's John. was so steeped in the words and visions of Isaiah and others like him that he expected the Messiah to be more dramatic in his work among the people. Perhaps Jesus, despite the healings but because of the people with whom he spent his time, seemed too ordinary.

I wonder if I'm not too much like John. There are times when I want God to "tear open the heavens and come down," another vision from Isaiah (64:1). And I'm sure that's what Bono of the band U2 is looking for, especially as one who grew up amidst the troubles in Northern Ireland. But as much as all of us at one time or another wish for God to act in a dramatic and decisive fashion, I don't think that's the way the God of the universe operates most of the time.

Rather, I think God gives us glimpses of grace, moments of strength and clarity, gentle reminders that serve to strengthen our hands and make firm our knees.

Take this story for example.
Not long after I started here four years ago, a young man came into the office and asked if he could talk with the pastor. I happened to be there, and offered to talk with him, although it was clear he hadn't met any women ministers before and it took a bit to convince him I was legitimate. He told me his name was Noel, and then told me how he had been raised a Christian, but he had been back-sliding, drinking and doing drugs. He wanted to make a change. We prayed together—much longer than Presbyterians usually do.

A few weeks later Noel came back in to ask for help, for a friend. I gave him $20 (which is something I rarely do). He promised to pay me back.

I didn't see Noel again for a long time. I had almost forgotten about him, in fact. And then one day late last spring, I came in to the office and was told a young man had dropped off $20, saying he owed me. It took him three years, but Noel made good on his promise.

Then on Friday morning, I was sitting in the office, proofing the bulletin, feeling tired and stressed out by all there was yet to do that day, and how I didn't have the sermon started. Noel came in to get a bus ticket. He gave me a big smile, asked how I was, said he'd heard that I have a lot more responsibilities now, and what a blessing it is to be used by God for so many things that you don't have time for anything else. I had to admit to Noel that those responsibilities don't always feel like a blessing. He told me how at his church on Sunday he had done the closing prayer, and in the middle of it, he started crying because he wasn't blind, and he had two good legs, and he was staying off of drugs and alcohol. And then he promised to pray for me, and to have his church pray for me, too.

Needless to say, this brief exchange with Noel caught me up short. Here was a young man who had turned his life around, which in itself is a small miracle. And then he came back and blessed me, strengthening my weak hands and firming up my feeble knees. A moment of grace in a day that was a whirlwind.

Sometimes we experience the big and wonderful things that make us stand up straight and fill us with faith and trust and hope and belief and courage. But I suspect most of us make our way every day finding strength in smaller, quieter moments, collecting them like the manna that sustained the Israelites during their forty years in the desert. Most of us make our way through the days with small blessings, like the unexpected calls or notes that come at just the right time, a conversation where someone says something that is just what we needed to hear, friends and loved ones who help us bear our burdens, catching a glimpse of something beautiful that somehow brings us back to our senses.

Sylvia Plath writes of these small moments in her poem, Black Rook in Rainy Weather. She ends the poem with these words,

I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you dare to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.

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First Presbyterian Church of Cedar Rapids
310 Fifth Street SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org