On the Wings of a Goose?

A Sermon Preached by

The Rev. Mike Elliott

August 23, 2009

Text:  Isaiah 40:21-31

     As I just read the Word of God spoken through the prophet Isaiah, they reminded me, in a very bizarre kind of way, of a story that I heard back in my seminary days.  So bear with me here.  It’s a story that shows one possible outcome of the passage we just read from Isaiah.  But it is only one possible outcome.  There are other ways, as Paul Harvey would say, that the story can end!  If you were a fan of the first few seasons of SNL way back 20 or so years ago and happen to remember Mr. Mike’s Least Loved Bedtime Stories, no pun intended, then you will love this parable.

     So, the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard used to tell this parable about a flock of geese.  A very religious flock of geese, I might add.  Not only that, but they were apparently Presbyterian, since their pulpit search committee had called a very eloquent and lofty preacher goose to serve the goose congregation.  Each Sunday morning the geese would gather in the shade of the barn to hear their preacher preach about their glorious destiny as God’s chosen geese.  He would describe, in great detail, about the grand purpose for which they had been created, that is, flying.  Week after week they were enthralled by his messages about soaring above the clouds.  Week after week they would dream about flying out there in the wild blue yonder.  Soaring weightless and free as, well, as free as a bird!  Effortlessly and tirelessly and joyfully soaring among the fluffy white clouds.

     Unfortunately, they never did any more than just dream about taking to the air with their own wings.  As a result, the geese were getting more and more plump each week until at Christmas time they were eaten one and all with none of them ever experiencing the exhilaration of real flight.

     Kierkegaard called this tale "The Domestic Goose.“  For us who are domesticated Christians, for us who have been long-term members of the church, sometimes it can get a little difficult to do much more than talk about our excitement over our faith.  Maybe its the result of too many committee meetings or stints as deacon and elder or a few too many all church lunches under our belts that can make us slow to act on our faith feelings.  The words of Scripture we hear or read can become so well known to us that we no longer hear them in fresh and life changing ways.  Our life can become more talk and feeling than action.

     Ears that can no longer hear God’s Word freshly and actively is nothing new to God’s children, although the reasons for becoming too “domesticated” may differ.  To the people that God was speaking to through Isaiah, there was a real inability to hear God’s Word in ways that could stir them to action anymore. 

     In verse 27 of this passage from Isaiah, God, in the middle of a long speech where he is describing how big and powerful he is, stops for a moment, takes a deep breath and poses a question to Israel:

“Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the LORD; my cause is disregarded by my God"?”

     It’s like God suddenly realizes that while what God is saying is nothing but the truth, God realizes that He is losing His audience.  God’s words are beyond comprehending and beyond meaning and beyond moving these people of God. 

     You see, the people of God had been sent into exile in Babylon.  Israel had deliberately forgotten whose child she was.  She had become an orphan with no sense of her past.  She had wandered so far away from God over the many years she spent in the Promised Land.  The land of milk and honey.  The land of the easy and restful life.  She wound up becoming plump and lazy and useless.  She only dreamed of her identity as children of God.  Kind of like those geese.  All talk, but no action.  Or, more correctly, they knew God’s Word but chose to do otherwise.  They knew who God wanted them to be but they chose to do what they wanted to do.  They knew who God is, but had chosen to remake God into what they preferred God to be.  They knew they were called to rise up on the wings of an eagle but chose instead to waddle around the barnyard on the feet of a goose.

     So there Israel sat for 70 years in a foreign land.  And they were miserable.  But most of all they were just plain old tired and worn out with their sorry lives.  They should have been soaring like eagles, but here they sat like those church geese the day before Christmas!  And there wasn’t even a chance that they would be soaring anytime soon!

     Then just at their most uncaring and unfeeling and unmotivated moment, Isaiah shows up with a message from God.  And as Isaiah talks, verse after verse, telling about the wonders of God, the people can hardly even comprehend the words.  They’re too tired and bored.  And then along comes verse 27 to hit them between the eyes and wake them up out of their slumber. 

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?”

     Now that’s just a fancy Biblical way of God saying:  “How can you say that I don’t love you or care about you anymore?  How can you say that I have forgotten you and don’t care to see your sorry faces again?  Do you think I will forget you just because you have let our relationship grow stale and boring?”

     Pretty harsh thoughts that God knows Israel what was thinking.  Because to Israel, in exile, that’s exactly what the situation must have seemed like to them.  That God no longer loved them or cared about them.  That they were totally abandoned and forgotten by God.  At least by the image of God that they had created and cultivated and still believed in after 70 long years of exile.  But so it is with false images.  Either false image we hold of ourselves or of God.

     The famous actor Humphrey Bogart once went to watch a hot young comedian who had gotten quite the reputation for doing a very good Bogart imitation. Bogart sat in the audience during his performance and was later asked what he thought of the young comedian’s imitation of him.  His only comment was, “Well, one of us stinks.'"

     You have to wonder sometimes how many times God, while watching us reshape the God, who we may have come to know now in a longer exciting and refreshing way, into our own image, sits back and says: "Well, one of us stinks."  Only difference is that God probably adds…”And it isn’t me!”

     It was time for a reality check for Israel.  Time for a new image both of God and of themselves.  Time for them to wake up and smell the coffee.

     Sometimes it’s not physical healing that we need from God.  Sometimes it’s not a disease of the body or the mind that we need to have healed.  Sometimes it’s a distorted self-image of who and what we are and a distorted image of what we have allowed our God to become that needs to be changed.  Sometimes our life as a domesticated Christian becomes stale and predictable.  Sometimes we are dying just to be moved and inspired by something, anything Holy again.  Our image of ourselves and of God can become a little blurry and confused.  And, frankly, it can just plain old stink.

     And then the doubts creep in.  “Maybe God doesn’t love me anymore.  Maybe God doesn’t care about me anymore.  After all, what am I to God, the creator of all?  God is so big and I am so little.  Maybe God’s just forgotten about me.”

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?”

     Those words that God spoke to Israel in her captivity and trouble are just as much our words so many times in our life as well. 

     “How can you say that I don’t love you?  How can you say that I don’t care about you?  Look around you.  Everywhere you turn, anything that you lay yours eyes on, you see the wonders and the joy of everything that I have created.  Yet, despite all of that, there is not a leaf that falls, not a blade of grass dies that I don’t know and care all about it.”

     “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.  He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.  Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 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.”

     “Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  Wait, just wait on me.  If you would just stop and listen, you will hear me speak again.  If you will just open yourself to me, I will be there.  Because that is who I am.”

     Those are reminders.  Reminders from God.  In case Israel forgot.  In case we forget.  They are reminders to us that God will answer our prayers.  That God does hear us.  That we have not been abandoned, or forgotten.  And God will renew and restore us.  God and God alone will reshape us and take away those poor excuses for God that we have created and show us Who God really is.  Not that poor impersonation that we keep doing that really stinks.  But God Almighty will show us who God really is.  If we are willing to let Him in.  God will give us new strength and new vision and new hope.  So, we learn to develop the spiritual side of ourselves and wait on the Lord to learn how to listen for and be patient for and to recognize God’s voice calling to us in the midst of all the other voices that vie for our attention.  Recognizing the real thing and not some poor imitation for God.  So we learn to wait on the Lord.  Just like those geese did.  Well, maybe not exactly like those geese did. 

     But waiting upon the Lord doesn’t mean just sitting around doing nothing and waiting for the Lord to suddenly appear in the clouds or to perform some great miracle.  Waiting for the Lord doesn’t mean that we do nothing but make ourselves suitable for nothing more than Christmas dinner.

      So, what does it mean to wait on the Lord?  More than anything, to wait means that we develop our spiritual eyes and ears so that we can see and hear what God intended for us to be.  That we can see how God has so richly blessed us.  That we can see in ourselves nothing but the beauty that God sees in us.  To wait on the Lord means that we forget what we thought we knew about who God was and allow God to surprise us with who God really is.

     Waiting upon the Lord also means to wait on the Lord like a waiter serves a guest at a table; taking their order and following their directions with patience and graciousness.  That is the other side of waiting on the Lord.  To serve the Lord with gladness and with thanksgiving.

     We have been set free to soar on wings like eagles.  Not geese, but eagles.  We who have been given the Word of God to cherish, to transform us and to fill us with hope.  Not to dream of being transformed.  Not to hope that we will be transformed, but to actually allow it to happen in us and through us.  Through the fresh and exciting, no, make that exhilarating Word of God.

     In Jesus Christ, we have already been made new again.  Believe the Good News of the Gospel.  Open your hearts and waddle on the feet of a goose?  Make that soar on the wings of an eagle! 

Amen