what it takes to keep going

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

            We are, I think, in for an interesting time together for we have an interesting passage, filled with a mystery that we might not be able to unlock.  It may be that we’re not supposed to unlock it.  Maybe the viewer is not supposed to know why Mona Lisa is smiling.  Maybe the reader of today’s Old Testament lesson isn’t supposed to know for sure the identity of the servant.  Today’s lesson is the second in a series of servant songs found within the writings of the unknown prophet, whose writings begin in Isaiah 40.  For convenience, he is given the name “Second Isaiah.”  This unnamed prophet sketches out with the chalk of language a portrait of this mysterious servant of the Lord.  The servant isn’t clearly identified.  Sometimes it seems as if the servant is Israel.  But since the servant’s mission is to Israel itself, it is sometimes concluded that the servant is an individual, perhaps even Second Isaiah.  We can’t be sure.  It is altogether possible that this ambiguity as to the identity of the servant in the servant songs is intentional.  Whether the servant be Israel, Second Isaiah, or both, it is nevertheless possible for us to see through the servant’s lens our own call from God and its related struggles.  For convenience, I will refer to the servant as an individual in the masculine gender.  However, I invite you to picture the servant in the way God leads you.

            The servant in today’s Old Testament lesson reports being called like a prophet.  He reports his call to the whole world.  He declares to the coastlands and far away peoples how he was called to ministry.  The servant didn’t choose his vocation.  “The LORD called me before I was born,” he said, “while I was in my mother’s womb he named me.”  The servant reports a call similar to that of the prophet Jeremiah.  Jeremiah stated, “Now the word of the LORD came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’”  It does sound like the call of the servant of the Lord.  Someone here might be sensing God’s call.  God seems quite experienced in the art of whispering, nudging, or shoving.  God can close doors you wanted to go through and open new doors, the ones that go in the direction of God’s will.  Any of this sounding familiar?  God can send people into your life at just the right moment to counter your objections with the call voiced only louder and directly at you.  When I was struggling with my call in my seminary days, it seems that God sent a preacher to a chapel service who was given the direct responsibility to tell one Richard William Selby that God was indeed calling him.  For effect, when the preacher talked about God’s unworthy servants—my objection—the preacher aimed his powerful eyes right into mine.  The preacher said God can use unworthy servants, and then, as I recall, he aimed those telegraphing eyes right back at me.  I wasn’t knocked off my donkey on way back to my apartment, but I would never be the same again.  When God calls, you know.  You know it’s God.  You know you are being called.  Eventually you even know what you’re supposed to do.  Sound familiar?

            Of course, when one is called, the “callee” frequently objects.  By now, God must be used to all of the objections that have reached the divine ears.  As sure as a rubber hammer applied to the knee triggers a reflex, just so you can count on the one called objecting to his or her call.  “Ah, Lord GOD!” Jeremiah protested to the God who called him.  “Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.”  You think that got him anywhere?  It did not.  Remember what the prophet Isaiah said?  “Woe is me!  I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”  You think Isaiah’s woe got him an exemption?  No, it didn’t.  Oh, you talk about an “I can’t do it” kind of excuse, Moses was chief.  Here’s one:  “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”  No, that didn’t work.  So Moses tried this:  “O my Lord, please send someone else.”  God called him into service anyway.  So, what’s your excuse?  Mine was, “Unworthy!”  And it was a good one.  It was true!  Still is.  What’s yours?  Too young?  Jeremiah tried that one.  It didn’t work.  Too old?  I refer you to Sarah and Abraham.  Whatever your excuse, God has heard it.  Whenever God calls someone, God can count on hearing an objection.

            So, how does God answer all these objections?  God recycles the call.  God says it again.  God reaffirms God’s call.  What’s more, God supplies the one called with all necessary strength, God’s own strength, not to mention God’s supporting presence.  Remember.  Remember that time when you had to do a very difficult thing.  It might have been to care for a sick loved one.  It might have been dealing with all the hurt, anger, and loneliness that follow the death of a loved one.  It might have been your own illness or facing a personal crisis.  You said, “I can’t do this.”  But remember.  Remember.  Somehow you had the strength to carry on.  Where do you suppose that strength came from?  It seems that in life’s greatest troubles, God’s power is most clearly manifest to us.  “Not by my own power,” we confess to ourselves, “Not by my own power, but God has enabled me to make it through this difficult time.”  You hear that confessed over and over.  Given enough time, we see God’s hand guiding us through our life.  Henry Sloane Coffin came up with this:  “At eighty-seven, the philosopher George Herbert Palmer concluded a brief autobiographical statement:  ‘As I see these things rising behind me they do not seem of my doing.  Some greater power than I has been using me as its glad instrument.’”  God answers our objections with a preacher gazing into our eyes, telling us that God can use even us.  God counters our weaknesses with God’s power.  God counters our confusion with divine light.  God closes some doors only to open others.

            And yet, there is another kind of objection.  This one comes not from the one trying to get out of service, but from the one who has tried and feels a failure.  This objection comes from one who has been faithful in service and yet sees no results.  In today’s servant song, the servant says, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.”  There it is!  Some of us have responded to God’s call with spent energy, and yet feel there is nothing to show for it.  You look back on years of teaching Sunday school or leading youth group after boisterous youth group, and you wonder what you have accomplished.  Or you look back on all those musical groups you led, and you ask yourself how all this has added one brick in the building up of the kingdom.  To make matters even worse, you might be fighting against dwindling people, diminishing money, decreasing energy.  So, with the servant of the Lord, you might be ready to declare, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.”  “It all adds up to what?” you may be wondering to yourself after years of faithful service.  You’re sure you have failed.  Or you can’t see the fruits of your labor.  “I have labored in vain,” you say.

            Well, God has an answer even to our certainty that we have failed.  God has an answer to our frustration that we can’t see any results.  God’s answer is exhibited in the report of the servant himself.  Did you notice it?  God answered the frustrated servant by—fasten your seat belts—honoring him.  Oh, sure, that sounds tame.  But how did God honor the servant of the Lord?  By giving the servant greater responsibility.  The frustrated servant of the Lord was honored by getting more to do!  The servant’s initial and frustrating mission was “to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel.”  All this was taking place as the exiles from Israel and Judah were being readied for return to their homeland.  If the servant’s work frustrated him, the Lord answered him by saying, “That’s too light a thing!  I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”  The servant’s role was expanded from being to and for Israel, now to include being “a light to the nations.”  What was that supposed to do for the servant’s morale?  Bring him down?  No!  Have you ever noticed that lesser troubles are forgotten when we face a bigger load?  I remember dimly being in a hospital emergency room in agony with a kidney stone’s stabbing pain.  A nurse, prior to sticking me for an IV, warned that “this might hurt a little.”  Let me tell you, when you are in great pain caused by a kidney stone, no little prick is even going to be noticed.  Lesser troubles are not even noticed when compared to a greater load.  So, how does God answer the frustrations of the servant of the Lord?  God gives the servant more to do!  God tossed off the lesser responsibilities as a trifle.  What is it that you say you can’t do?  In what area of your serving are you frustrated and see no fruit?  Maybe to God that “can’t” of yours is too light a thing.  Maybe your frustration needs to be tossed off as a trifle.  Instead, look for where God is calling you now.  Maybe it looks like you can’t do it.  Well, by yourself, maybe you can’t.  But God can!  Trust God and make the project bigger!  Trust God and set the goal higher!  Don’t complain about what you can’t do or what you think you haven’t done.  Trust God and develop even something larger!  No, don’t just go out and do anything bigger.  Do what God is calling you to do.  Do that unafraid.  Do that without knowing where you’ll get all the people.  Do God’s will without knowing how it will all come together.  Stop complaining, and get busy at what God is calling you to do.  You think you can’t do the smaller job?  Then trust God for guidance and strength, and do a bigger one!

            Of course, this servant business is about obedience.  It is about being a light to the nations.  It’s not about being able to serve God on our own power.  It is rather about God choosing weakness as God’s vehicle for power.  You and I can also perform the role of the servant of the Lord when we focus on God’s power and not on our weakness.  The servant’s business is about obedience.  What is God calling you to do?  Is God calling you to the ministry of the Word and sacrament?  If so, remember:  God can use unworthy servants to serve him.  You’re looking at one.  Is God calling you to continue a ministry that you’re currently engaged in?  Then do it, and even the greater thing God is leading you to do.  You can be obedient, even if you think you don’t have the resources.  Being God’s servant isn’t about what you have, it’s about what God can do through you.  From 1966 to 1976 China engaged in what was called the “Cultural Revolution.”  Li En-Lin remembers that her father was put in prison in those days.  Their home was searched repeatedly by the Red Guard for any signs of “foreign imperialism,” especially Christian materials.  Their books, including their Bibles, were burned.  In 1979 Li’s father reopened his church, but he wondered, “How can I preach without a Bible?”  He could have called it quits.  What would you have done?  After all, he had no Bible, no commentaries, nothing.  But he didn’t quit.  Oh, eventually he received a Bible from a friend in Hong Kong.  But before that, God gave him the members of his congregation.  They taught each other scripture passages from memory, reconstructing the Bible from what they remembered.  If there was ever a person who “couldn’t,” this preacher bereft of his Bible was one.  But he trusted in God and, with his congregation, did what seemed impossible.  They reconstructed the Bible from memory until a new one arrived.  This servant business isn’t about our strengths.  It’s about our obedience.  Being God’s servant is letting God lead and empower us to whatever thing God wants us to do.