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"Full of Surprises"

Sermon by Dr. Greg Knox Jones
on Isaiah 43:16-21
given May 13, 2007

The second she was able to cut out of the office, Catherine zipped to the babysitter, picked up their daughter and drove her to soccer practice. While the youngsters were running up and down the field honing their skills, Catherine sat in the car with her laptop, working frantically to complete a project before a looming deadline. Her husband, Bob, was on a parallel track. He picked up their son and drove him to a dentist’s appointment, then rushed him to his piano lesson. They were ten minutes late and when they arrived at the piano teacher’s house she gave Bob one of those looks that says, “Well, it’s about time!”

Following soccer and piano, the family headed home where they wolfed down a fast food dinner and then dove into the evening’s homework. There was no opportunity for anything else.

When Bob and Catherine finally dragged themselves upstairs, Bob grumbled, “I feel like a hamster on one of those little wheels. I run faster and faster but I’m just spinning in place.” His wife nodded in agreement and said she could not see any way to break free of their predicament.

Have you ever felt as if you were being held captive by your work or your family responsibilities?

Martha has developed a heart condition that prevents her from living the active life she’s always enjoyed. She used to bounce out of bed at dawn and take their collie on a half an hour walk. She loved the sweet smell of the grass and the stillness of the early morning, before the school bus with its squeaky brakes lumbered through the neighborhood. It gave her great delight to get back home in time to fix breakfast for the family and send them off for the day. Then she could launch into her list of activities that kept her on the go.

However these days, Martha is unable walk for ten minutes without sitting down to rest. Their collie senses that something is wrong, but cannot understand why they no longer take their early morning romps through the neighborhood. Martha’s mind is as sharp as ever, which heightens her feelings of frustration at her inability to keep up her former tempo. It is as if her own body is imprisoning her.

Perhaps you know how it feels to be held captive by physical maladies and prevented from living the life you formerly lived.

Larry wages a constant battle with depression. He covers it up pretty well, but he says it is always there, lurking just beneath the surface. He feels exhausted most of the time, despite the fact that he gets plenty of sleep. And if there is anyone who needs to lose fifty pounds, it’s Larry. He eats to make himself feel better and to fill the emotional emptiness within. He also knows it is a losing proposition. The gnawing emptiness remains.

As far back as he can remember, Larry has always felt inadequate. He was never a great student, had no talent for music and was clumsy at sports. More than once his father told him he would never amount to anything, and that tape has played over in his mind a thousand times.

Do you know what it is to be held captive by a low self-esteem, with the voice of a critical parent holding you back from a joyful life?

There are numerous ways to be held captive in life; to be prevented from living the life we yearn to live. This morning we encounter a story of captivity in the Book of Isaiah on a grand scale. In the sixth century BCE, the Hebrew people had been conquered and taken captive in Babylon. Their lives were shattered as the future they had anticipated had been wiped out. One can only imagine the physical pain, the psychological anguish and the spiritual emptiness they suffered. After several decades in captivity, they struggled with how to make the best of a dreadful situation. Some of the Israelites decided that it was best to let go of their traditions, to abandon their worship of Yahweh, to start marrying Babylonians and to adopt a new culture. Years before, when they had lived in Jerusalem and their lives were prospering, it was easy for them to believe that God was with them each step of the way. However, now that everything familiar had been snatched from them, they felt as if God had abandoned them.

I suspect many of us have experienced similar feelings. When we have had crushing disappointments or experienced the depths of sorrow, we have wondered “Where is God?” The blows of life drag some down into the depths of depression; they turn others cynical. Those who believe that God’s reason for existence is to make their lives run smoothly experience a crisis of faith. They begin to wonder if they had simply imagined that God was at work in their lives.

When the Hebrew people were in exile in Babylon, their dreams crushed, Isaiah warned them not to allow their predicament to blot out their hope for a better future. He said, “Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. (God) is about to do a new thing.” When the people thought they had reached the end, Isaiah reminded them that God is full of surprises.

Sometimes the difficulties we experience in life impose themselves on us from the outside. However, many times we create our troubles. A colleague says that one of the saddest things he hears people say is: “It’s just the way I am.” It comes out of the mouth of a husband who is willing to let his marriage fall apart rather than open up and share his feelings. It is given voice by a lonely woman who would rather hold onto a grudge than forgive. (1) “It’s just the way I am.”

To such closed-minded thinking, Isaiah declares, “Forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history. God wants you to think outside the box and be alert to new possibilities!” Life is swirling with potential. However, many people resemble a horse running in the Derby wearing blinders. Their field of vision is extremely narrow; they are all but blind to other possibilities.

And, it’s not only individuals who fail to step beyond their miserable conditions because they are mired in old habits. Whole nations, whole races, whole cultures do it. How long have Arabs and Jews been killing each other? How many of us have thought at one time or another that the conflict between them defies any solution? “As long as people are bent on revenge, committed to ‘an eye for an eye,’ people will continue to die. As long as people cling to patterns of behavior that have not changed for centuries, continued killing is inevitable. What needs to die is not the enemy, but rather the patterns of behavior that have shaped these cultures for thousands of years. What needs to die is the clinging to old ways of doing things, old ways of explaining things, old ways that result in nothing new except more dead bodies. What is needed is a new way of thinking and understanding and living.” (2)

When we are being held captive and life seems hopeless, God is at work seeking to do something new. For Isaiah’s contemporaries, there would be a new exodus in which they would return to their homeland and rebuild Jerusalem. Like the Exodus from Egypt centuries earlier, this new exodus would demonstrate that God is a liberating God who seeks to free people from whatever chains enslave them.

Consider the disciples of Jesus. They experienced the bottom dropping out when Jesus was crucified. Their lives were thrown into chaos and their dreams were crushed.

However, God is full of surprises, and God did something new in the resurrection. Jesus did not come back to his followers in flesh and blood as they desired, he did not overthrow the Romans or become an earthly king as they had hoped, but he did become a lasting spiritual presence in their lives inspiring in them a new purpose and giving them a new direction.

God does something similar in our lives. When troubles and difficulties have a grip on us, when our dreams are shattered, God shows us new possibilities.

God does not intervene supernaturally. God does not invade the world from the outside, altering the rules of nature or undoing what has happened or exercising total control over the events of the world, like a grand puppeteer. Rather, God is the steady presence that continuously surrounds us and sustains all of life. Through the power of persuasion, God is constantly urging and coaxing - but not coercing – us to venture down new paths, where there had seemed to be only a dead end.

Wayne Dosick says his parents’ notion of the ideal family was a mom and dad and two children. That was their plan, and Wayne was their first child. When he was only eighteen months old, they had their second child - another boy. He was a cute little fellow, but not very healthy. He lived only three months. His death brought indescribable pain to his parents and left an empty hole that was never filled.

I cannot help but wonder about the course of their lives if the second little boy had been healthy and lived. Their ideal family of two children would have been in place, and it is unlikely they would have had a third child. For some time following their son’s death, they were devastated. Life had delivered a blow they never anticipated. But then a couple of years later, they began to see a new possibility, and they had another child. This time it was a girl.

Did she take the place of the second son? Of course not. He could never be replaced. However, if he had lived, it is very doubtful that the daughter would have ever been born. Her whole life, everything she has already accomplished and everything she is still yet to accomplish would never have happened. Her children would never have been born - nor their children. (3)

There are countless ways to be held captive in life. You can be enslaved by your schedule, restricted by physical problems, confined by the expectations of others, inhibited by emotional difficulties, locked into a cycle of destructive behavior, shackled by sadness. But God is full of surprises and seeks to liberate you from whatever holds you captive and to guide you to new ways of living. So no matter how dire your situation, you must persevere and believe that at some point, God will open a new door for you.

NOTES

1. Rich Mayfield, Reconstructing Christianity, (New York: iUniverse, Inc., 2005), p.15.

2. Rich Mayfield, Reconstructing Christianity, (New York: iUniverse, Inc., 2005), p.24.

3. Wayne Dosick, When Life Hurts, (HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), p.78.

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