Homily: “Renewed Strength: Rising Strong”
Rev. Christi O. Brown
FPC Women’s Retreat
Jan 30, 2016
Isaiah 40: 28-31
28
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his
understanding is unsearchable. 29He gives power to the faint, and strengthens
the powerless. 30Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall
exhausted; 31but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they
shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they
shall walk and not faint.
The word of God for the people of God.
Thanks be to God.
Prayer for Illumination
Lord, open our hearts and minds by the power of your Holy Spirit, that we may
hear with joy your words for us today, Amen.
Sermon
Today we’ve been talking about our strengths, using our God-given gifts
for a greater good. It’s one of my favorite topics. I truly believe God wants us
to use our unique gifts to help others and the world. But this passage we just
read from the prophet Isaiah reminds us that sometimes we don’t feel strong at
all. Sometimes we feel faint, weary and exhausted, like the Israelites in this
passage, who had lived in exiled captivity for 45 years.
45 years is a long time. Stop and think about your own life for a minute.
Imagine that Christians in the US had been exiled to a mostly non-Christian
1 land 45 years ago, somewhere like Bosnia for example. For those of us
younger than 45, that would mean we would have never lived in our own
homeland. That the only thing we would know about the US was what our
parents and elders told us. There would be no place for us to truly call home.
For those of you over 45, it’s a little trickier, because you have to actually do
the math and subtract 45 from your age. But whatever that age would be,
imagine being forced to leave the US at that time. What would that mean for
your life and your family to leave the only home you’d ever known, to go live
in a foreign land with a foreign culture under foreign rule?
And because we’re all women here, imagine what it must have been like
for the Israelite women back then. To relocate your family under dire
circumstances, and have to leave your homes behind, likely never to return to
them again. How would you choose what was best to pack, not knowing
anything about where you were going? How would you provide the best
environment you could for your children to thrive in captivity in a foreign land?
What would you be able to cook for your family, and how would you educate
your children? How would you keep your spirits up when you didn’t have a
stable home? How would you deal with the unknown of if you’d ever return to
your homeland?
These are the people and context to whom Isaiah was speaking. They
were worn out and at their wits end, completely overwhelmed with their
circumstances. They doubted their status as God’s chosen people and even
doubted the sovereignty of God.1 Up until this point, the prophet has
confronted, chastised and warned them about punishment to come from God.
But finally, after 45 years, they begin to get an encouraging word from Isaiah.
1 Susan Ackerman. “Isaiah.” The New Interpreter’s Study Bible. Walter J. Harrelson, gen. ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), p.955. 2 This chapter begins, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak
tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, and that her
penalty is paid.”
At this point the prophet seeks to assure the exiles that God still has
compassion for them and has not abandoned them at all. The Lord will soon
allow them to return home. They will be redeemed by God and restored to
wholeness. Those who don’t give up but wait expectantly for God, will find
renewed strength.
I’ve been reading a book lately called Rising Strong. The bestselling
author, Dr. Brene Brown, is a professor of social work. She says that over her
years of researching, she has come to believe that we all want to show up and
be seen in our lives2, and that this means, without exception, we will all
struggle and fall. And that our character is not defined by our failings or
fallings, but rather in our rising from them. As Winston Churchill said,
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that
counts.” And Brown states that spirituality is a critical component of rising
strong, providing us the resilience to overcome struggle3 and even to thrive.
This is exactly what we see in this passage today.
It says even the young will fall exhausted. The literal translation of this
phrase is “stumble badly”. Notice the exaggerated point Isaiah makes: It’s not
just falling down, it’s falling down coupled with exhaustion. It’s not just a little
trip-up, it’s stumbling badly. No matter our age, we’ve all had these fallings
and failings in our lives. We’ve fallen in our relationships, our careers, our
vices, and sometimes life has just given us hard knocks, like extreme illness or
injury or the tragic death of someone really close to us. We’ve all fallen hard,
sometimes on our faces—those times when it happens so fast and so furiously
2 Brene Brown. Rising Strong. (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015), xiv. 3 Brown, 10. 3 that it’s hard to even throw out our hands to catch us. We’ve come out of these
falls with bumps, bruises and scars, reminders of the pain we’ve endured.
It reminds me of running in my 20’s. For most of that decade, I ran a lot.
There were a few years in a row, where without exception, I would average one
huge spill a year. I mean face-first spread eagle, worst falls you could ever
imagine. One year, my Walkman flew out of my hands when I fell, went flying
across the road, ending up in several bright yellow plastic pieces. Of course
this happened in one of the most touristy areas of Charleston, with what felt
like at least 1000 people watching me. But I will never forget the elderly ladies
that stopped and scrambled to pick up my Walkman and me, making sure I was
okay. I would rise time and again with scraped hands and skinned knees, but
always able to run again. These falls became such an annual staple, that when
it happened with a running group in Atlanta, I proclaimed, “At least I got it out
of the way for this year!” The prophet Isaiah seemed to think falling in life
would be a sure thing as well.
Notice that this verse about falling is a statement laid out as a fact, not a
“what if” scenario. The prophet is proclaiming, “You will fall, there’s no doubt
about it.” But notice the emphatic statement of the next verse too, “But those
who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with
wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not
faint.” And there’s the hope: that by the grace of God, our strength will be
renewed to the point that we will walk, run and even soar. We will rise strong.
The Hebrew meaning of the word renew means to spring up, to sprout, to go
forward. And the meaning of strength is to have vigor, substance and might.
And to mount up with wings means to arise to new heights. And I love that the
original meaning implies that you are being caused to rise—it’s like God is
literally carrying you up and letting you go, so that you might soar.
4 It reminds me of the women in the movie Steel Magnolias. These
southern women faced a lot of adversity together—crazy husbands, wedding
planning, addiction, separations, running a small business, illness and
eventually death of an adult child. They could hardly bear the weight of it all,
but they did it together and with faith. And it wasn’t always pretty—they
fussed and gossiped, joked and cried. But they also laughed and celebrated,
and most importantly prayed. Even grumpy old Ouiser admitted to praying for
her friends. They fell down pretty hard in life, but with faith and each other,
they rose strong.
Blogger Glennon Melton says that life is brutiful—both brutal and
beautiful. That the brutal can feel unbearable, but that we get to the beauty
through the brutal. Not over or around or under, but straight through, and often
falling down. And we can only do this with our faith and each other.
Brene Brown ends her book with a manifesto on rising strong after a fall.
She says, “We craft love from heartbreak, compassion from shame, grace from
disappointment, courage from failure. Showing up is our power. Story is our
way home. Truth is our song. We are the brave and brokenhearted, we are
rising strong.”4
Like the Israelites who faced years of adversity, when we’re weary and
exhausted and stumble badly and fall on our faces, may we be reminded of the
grace of God who promises to renew our strength. We will fall, we will fail,
but because of our faith, it won’t be fatal. Like steel magnolias, we will rise
strong. With God’s help, we will mount up with wings like Eagles, and with
renewed strength, we will soar to new heights.
All glory, honor and praise be to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Amen.
4 Brown, 267. 5