“A Fowl Sermon”
Epiphany 5
January 29, 2012
Rev. R. Lessing
Peace Lutheran Church
Oxford, MS
Isaiah 40:21-31 . . . 21 Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; 23 who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. 24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows on them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. 25 To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One. 26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing. 27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? 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. 29 He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. 30 Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; 31 but they 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.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Introduction
This is a warning. What you are about to hear is a fowl sermon. In fact, this is going to be a very fowl sermon. I dare say this is going to be the fowlest sermon you’ve ever heard.
But, let me clarify things first.
The fowl I’m talking about isn’t, underscore isn’t, spelled F-O-U-L. That kind of foul is reserved for baseballs that don’t stay between the chalk lines, words that are less than becoming, and a football cheap shot that referees call a personal foul.
No. The fowl I’m talking about is spelled F-O-W-L as in, you guessed it, birds.
People in the ancient Near East often used birds to make a point. In Exodus 19 God, Yahweh, tells Moses: “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself” (Ex 19:4). Recorded in texts outside of the Old Testament and during Isaiah’s time the Assyrian King Sennacherib says he shut up Hezekiah “in the midst of Jerusalem, like a bird in a cage.”
So today birds will also be used to make a point, or two.
In our text, Isaiah is talking to those who know the exodus Eagle’s steadfast love just as when He delivered their ancestors from bondage in Egypt. The prophet is also speaking to those who would know the bird-cage of captivity; not bound in the eighth century BC by Sennacherib and Assyria, but rather held captive in the sixth century by Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon.
These exiles cry out in Isaiah 40:27, “My way is hidden from Yahweh, from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God.” In answer to this complaint Isaiah boldly and beautifully announces that Yahweh is the Holy One, transcendent over all nations, governments, and rulers. And then he dares to write in 40:28, “The Lord, Yahweh, is the everlasting God.”
The exiles need this God, desperately, because they had been dirty birds. Israelites had hovered like vultures drawn to a rotting carcass. And rather than living according to the ways of God, the ways of the Law, they had bowed down to the ways of Babylon, trusting in them rather than in the Lord. And, as a consequence, we hear the prophet cry out against them in Isaiah 31:1, “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots.”
And not only had they disregarded God’s Law, but they had reveled in the ways of Babylon. God’s people had lived like peacocks, strutting their stuff. In Isaiah 3:16 we find, “The women of Zion are haughty, walking along with outstretched necks, flirting with their eyes, tripping along with mincing steps, with ornaments jingling on their ankles.”
Instead of eagles the elect nation had lived like chickens, grubbing for worms and content with the low life. Isaiah confronts them with, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (5:20).
They were enjoying life as exiles, so Israel had plenty to crow about, and they didn’t want to be bothered with all of this Law of God stuff. So in Isaiah 30:10-11 they speak out against the prophet, “Speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions . . . stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel.”
You and I can be pretty dirty birds as well. We make unholy alliances with false lovers and pseudo-saviors, being fatally attracted to what is decadent and dead. Like peacocks we love to show off our prestige and call for people to look at my unique and exalted position. Regularly, we grub around in the dirt, ignoring the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. And talk about crowing. Why, we carp about him, her and them; and we just love to complain about all of those people. This kind of foul living sends us straight into exile; right here, right now, alienated from ourselves, cut off from each other, and far away from the Father.
So what does Yahweh do with people who are spiritually blind and deaf, locked in the bird cage of captivity? He appoints His Suffering Servant to be “a light for the nations so that salvation may come to the ends of the earth” (Is 49:6).
But this light and salvation comes at a high price; a very, very high price.
He “offered [His] back to those who beat [Him], [His] cheeks to those who pulled out [His] beard; [He] did not hide [His] face from mocking and spitting” (Is 50:6 NIV). And because of that, “his appearance was . . . disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness” (Is 52:14). He was led like a Lamb to the slaughter which, by Roman design, took human beings and turned them into screaming, bloody meat.
Yet miraculously, marvelously, wondrously, and eternally . . . Jesus is alive. After His resurrection He tells the disciples: “Stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (Lk 24:49). And ten days later the waiting was over. Luke describes the coming of the Holy Spirit like the sound of a strong wind delivering all the gifts won through Christ’s death and resurrection.
And the world was never the same again.
Isaiah 40:31 also calls us to wait, “But those who wait for Yahweh will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles.” Eagles take to flight when they position themselves high on a rock and wait for the wind. You see, the power is in the wind, beneath their wings.
Jesus once told Nicodemus, “The wind blows wherever it pleases” (Jn 3:8). And it pleases the wind to blow in the Gospel and in Holy Baptism and the Holy Supper. That is, where Jesus is forgiving sins. There the wind blows so you and I soar on wings like eagles.
And the result? Dare I say it, a fowl sermon, a fowl day, and a fowl life; but remember this fowl is spelled F-O-W-L.
And yet we are not just any old fowl. Eagles have the most powerful eyesight of any bird in the world. Yahweh demands of Job: “Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes his nest on high? On the rock he dwells and makes his home, on the rocky crag and stronghold. From there he spies out the prey; his eyes behold it from far away” (Job 39:27-29). From on high in the sky the eagle can see a rabbit from two miles away. The Hebrew writer speaks of old eagle eye Moses: “By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible” (Heb 11:27).
Eagles are also the most committed of all birds. Moses says in Deuteronomy that the eagle hovers over its young. In fact, the eagle will never forsake her children, doing whatever it takes to teach them to fly. That’s why Isaiah maintains that we “run and not grow weary; we will walk and not be faint.” Eagles never, ever quit.
Eagles also stay fresh, alive, and energized. Psalm 103 says in part: “So that your youth is renewed like the eagles” (v 5). Every day the eagle preens himself, breathing upon his feathers because overnight they become matted and stuck to each other. Every day the eagle secretes a liquid from his mouth that waterproofs his wings so he can fly through the storms. How do you like that? Steam cleaned and waterproofed. Eagle Paul puts it this way: “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day” (2 Cor 4:16 NIV).
No wonder the proverb writer declares, “There are three things that are too amazing for me; four that I do not understand: (and the first of the four is . . . ) the way of an eagle in the sky” (Pr 30:18-19 NIV).
Amazing isn’t it. We are no longer vultures, peacocks, chickens, or crows. “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation: the old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17).
All this is not by might and not by power, but by God’s Holy Spirit that is blowing even now, loving and freeing and lifting us out of our exile, all in the name of Jesus. Amen.
