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sermon by Torin Eikler
Isaiah 49:1-7   John 1:29-42

Someone once told me that you can tell a lot about a person by the bumper stickers they have on the back of their cars.  And I think that’s true.  Around here, I have seen many, many OBX stickers which I found very confusing.  After I finally figured out that those letters stood for the Outer Banks, I realized that it seems to be a point of pride for those drivers to let people know that they have visited the coast of North Carolina.

There are also a lot of cars that sport stickers proclaiming a certain political bent or try to send a message about certain issues.  That’s a bit more interesting to me, but to be honest, they don’t really make much of a mark on my thinking (unless I particularly disagree with them).  And then there are the cars that seem to be covered with slogans….  They can make for interesting reading when I stuck at a stop light for a while, but the sheer number of them do tend to take something away from the power of any one statement. 

Some of my favorites have been the “Tolerance” sticker that has a different religious symbol for each letter, the ones that say “Seek Peace and Pursue It,” the Ixthus and the Darwin fish kissing, and the one that we have on the back of our blue car that says “When Jesus said, ‘love your enemies,’ he probably meant don’t kill them.”

I am also taken by truly clever stickers like the one I first saw when I was 22.  It says, “Visualize Whirled Peas” (and I think Sue and Terry have one on their car).  When I saw that one, I stared at it for about five minutes and I still didn’t get it.  My friends laughingly told me to say it out loud.  I did … visualize whirled peas …, and I was still at a loss until one of them explained it to me…. (visualize world peace).

But a couple of days ago, I saw one that said, “America Bless God.”  It wasn’t the first time that I have seen that particular sticker, but they do seem to be few and far between.  Every time I see one, it sets my mind on the same track.  First I wonder how can anyone (let alone a whole country) could bless God?  And then, I reflect on how nice it is to have assumptions turned on their head so that we come to understand our thought habits and how they may be leading us astray.

 

The two scriptures that we heard today spark the same two thoughts.  In the first case, I find myself asking John the Baptist, “Really?!?  You really want us to believe that you did not know who Jesus was?”  They were cousins after all, and even more telling than that – John jumped for joy as he recognized the Messiah while he was still in the womb.  How could he honestly say (as he does twice in just a few sentences) “Here is the lamb of God who takes away [sin]! … I myself did not know him….”  It’s just a little bit hard to believe….  But I suppose John might have meant that he didn’t know who the Messiah would be until he saw the Spirit rest on him.

Isaiah’s words, on the other hand, are a good deal more intriguing….  “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity….  And now the Lord says, … “it is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations….”

The first part of that seems perfectly normal to me (if prophetic life can be normal).  Isaiah wrote in Jerusalem during the second half of the 8^th century BCE.  During that time, the part of Israel that had maintained its independence was under threat from the Assyrian Empire which had expanded to absorb Syria and Palestine.  Part of the story of that expansion included a war fought by local kings against Jerusalem because they refused to join a coalition for resistance.

During the following decades, the conflict moved back and forth around Israel and Jerusalem as the empire quelled rebellions.  Eventually, Jerusalem was put directly under siege, and though it was never taken by the Assyrians, it only remained free for a relatively short time before the Babylonians came along and sent Israel’s leadership into exile.

Isaiah’s calling was to serve as prophet to the king and country during this uncertain time – a king and country that largely ignored his words.  He understood himself to be responsible (though it was not for lack of effort or words that spoke too weakly).  He expressed his sense of despair about the future he saw coming and his own failure with those words – words that are not so different from things that I have thought myself at times.  So, I do feel like I can understand what he must have been feeling as he lamented his “wasted” effort.

 

God’s response, though … God’s responsive is surprising.  Isaiah comes with the weight of failure dragging him down, and God does not criticize him.  God doesn’t even offer words of encouragement and send him back out to keep plugging away….    No, God turns around and gives him an even bigger task to work on.  God seems to trust Isaiah beyond reason.  God has faith in the prophet, and she gives him the most important work that he could have.  “You’re thinking too small,” she says. “Don’t worry about the wayward people of Israel.  I am sending you as a light to the nations.  Go and bring the news of salvation to all my children.”

 

I don’t know about you, but that is not the kind of message that I get when I am unable to complete a task.  No one has ever responded to my failures by giving me even more important, more challenging work.  I certainly don’t do that with other people.  When my children are struggling with something at home or at school, I may set them to work on the same thing again (so that they can learn to master that particular skill), but I do not respond to badly broken eggs by setting Sebastian loose on a soufflé!  That’s just not how things work … at least in my experience.

 

I did know one man who had something of the same experience.  He was a medical student at the hospital in Indianapolis – one of the rare professionals there who asked to speak with the chaplains – and he had screwed up on one of his first hands-on surgeries.  It wasn’t a big surgery, and it wasn’t a serious error (not life threatening or anything like that).  But he was sure that he was going to get told off in a big way by his supervisor when they reviewed the case.

“It didn’t happen like that, though,” he told me.  “Dr. Francks didn’t yell at me at all.  He just sat down and asked me what happened.  I told him what I had been thinking and how I had cut the wrong artery before I even realized I had the wrong one.  He said, ‘all of us make mistakes like that sometimes.  Don’t worry about it.  There was no lasting harm done.’  Then he told me that he wanted me to take charge of the emergency splenectomy that had just come into the ER.”

It was an unexpected assignment after his last mistake, and as I listened to the young surgeon, I discovered that he had been less anxious going into the operating room that second time.  He hadn’t ever done a routine splenectomy before … let alone an emergency removal, but the faith that Dr. Francks had shown in him encouraged and studied him.  And that surgery (which was a complete success) gave him a sense of confidence and self-worth that he had been lacking.

 

God’s response was an amazing reversal, too.  It turns the way we usually think of as faith around … makes it about God’s faith in Isaiah … in us …  instead of our faith in God.  It goes beyond trust earned or confidence justified.  And these scriptures tell me two things.  Often … maybe most of the time, we don’t understand how God is working around us … not really … not clearly.  And, God has a faith in us that we do not have in ourselves.

Perhaps it was just coincidence that Carrie went off lectionary last week to talk about accepting and embracing our own imperfect struggles for perfection.  Perhaps it was what a friend of mine calls a “God-incidence” – the working of the Spirit among us in ways that we don’t perceive until after the fact.  Either way, her message to us is confirmed by these readings today.

 

You can tell a lot about a person by how they decorate their cars.  And you can tell even more about them by how they choose to live their lives … how they treat people … what they do and how they respond to success and failure….

 

All of us, here, have chosen to live lives that follow Christ.  Many of us have felt calls to particular works of service.  Most of us have failed along the way.

 

Take comfort from Isaiah.  You are chosen ... just as he was.  You are loved.  You are wonderful.  God has faith in you.