Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 4, 2024

Isaiah 40:21-31+Psalm 147:1-12, 21c+1 Corinthians 9:16-23+Mark 1:29-39

The prophet Isaiah is probably one of the most familiar and beloved of the prophets, due in no small part to the number of verses contained in composer George Friedrich Handel's beloved oratorio Messiah. Although the libretto, or text, for the oratorio was compiled by someone you've never heard of - Charles Jennens - the words set to music are from the bible, and more than forty verses are from Isaiah.

Isaiah was not just one person, nor was this 66-chapter book of the bible written at the same historical era throughout. The part known as First Isaiah ends at Chapter 39, and most of the action takes place before the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians late in the 8th c. BCE. There is a shift forward in time, however, to the Babylonian invasion and exile, and it is here, in Chapter 40, that God's promise of deliverance is told.

Handel's Messiah begins with the words that launch Chapter 40:

         Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. 

Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD'S hand double for all her sins.

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:

And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. (Isaiah 40:1-5)

This morning’s reading from Isaiah picks up sixteen verses later, after detailing evidence for the greatness of God, and the writer brings his point home:

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning? 
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? (40:21)

God's power and might are known to you. Do you imagine that God will abandon you to this exile, this desolation? Surely you have not forgotten God's goodness towards us.

...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. (40:31)

In the earliest days of this thing we call Christianity, those who set out to tell the story hearkened back to the prophets, including Isaiah, as pointers to the messiah who was to come. No longer were Isaiah 40's words of comfort meant for a people still in exile. They were words of comfort to those living in the prison of sin and death, people walking in darkness awaiting the coming of the light.

The evangelist who wrote down the earliest account, the one we know as the Gospel of Mark, starts out with "the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" (1:1) and immediately launches into the prophetic words of Isaiah, applying them to John the Baptizer, the one crying in the wilderness to prepare a way. We are not yet to the end of chapter one, and we have seen what this Good News that Mark has announced actually looks like. Jesus is baptized and called Beloved, endures temptation in the wilderness (which we will get to in a couple of weeks), has called disciples who drop everything and go, taught in the synagogue, cast out a demon, caused astonishment and amazement among those who have seen and heard these things, and now he has gone to the home of his friend Peter, cured Peter's mother-in-law, and then healed crowds who came to him for help.

In a single day, he teaches and preaches and heals into the evening. Is it any wonder that the next morning he slips away for some time to be silent and pray? And Mark tells us that Simon Peter and the others hunted for him (1:36). But rather than telling them to leave him alone (which, in all honesty, is probably what I would have done), he says, "Let's go. Time's a'wastin'. There are people out there who need to hear what I have to say and to have their demons sent packing" (1:38-39).

...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. (40:31)

That little time away was, for Jesus, a time of waiting for God, of eagerly seeking God. His strength was renewed, and he was ready to run and not grow weary. He knew that there were people who were waiting on him.  

This week began the annual national observance of Black History Month. The great African American historian, Carter Woodson, launched Negro History Week in February 1926, selecting a week that included the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Woodson believed that highlighting the contributions of African Americans not just to the United States but to civilization would serve to end the prejudice and racism that limited opportunity and prosperity. The week was expanded to a full month in 1976 by Gerald Ford during the nation's bicentennial year and the 50th anniversary of the creation of Woodson's weeklong observance. Ford exhorted people to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history."[1]

Those of our neighbors whose ancestors were brought to the shores of this land in chains know something about waiting on the Lord, about promises unfulfilled, and hopes dashed. Like the people of Israel exiled two and a half millennia ago to those oppressed by the might of Rome and its collaborators in Jesus's time, to African Americans in our day, prophets still bring a word of hope that people need to hear.

We are the prophets. We are the apostles. We are the ones called to serve like Peter's mother-in-law, to make real the Good News that came in the person of Jesus Christ.

We know from our history that many enslavers would not allow those they held in bondage to hear parts of the bible that talked of liberative power of Christ, but I can't help wondering if they should have left out Isaiah with its hopeful promise of God's salvation. Waiting on the Lord and rising up like eagles sounds pretty risky. Maybe that's why they sang, "Walk together, children, don't you get weary, there's a great camp meeting in the promised land."

Jesus knew that there were people in all the neighboring towns and villages waiting on him. there are people in all the towns and villages in our time waiting for us to do our part, too, even if where we begin is in examining our own biases and prejudices and the way our lives and choices negatively impact others.

James Baldwin said that "It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror."[2]

Looking at ourselves in a truthful mirror might be a good place to start in our journey through African American History Month...as we wait for the Lord.

[1] https://www.blackhistorymonth.gov/About.html

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1960/09/this-morning-this-evening-so-soon/658022/