Through Fire, Through Water

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

Rev. Dr. David Williams;

Scripture Lesson: Isaiah 43:1-7

LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:

There comes a time, in every life and in every endeavor, when it all just totally comes off the rails.  You had a plan.  You had a vision.  You knew what was going to happen, and you could see your life mapped out as clean and clear as could be.

And then you couldn’t.

I was reminded of this truth, in a simple way, as my extended family returned from what had been a generally delightful vacation.  We were a fatigued herd, after days upon days of journeying and hiking through the beauty of Costa Rica, half of the family tired, and the other half getting by only with the generous application of Pepto Bismol and Imodium, the sale of which is apparently a staple of most Latin American economies.

But the return trip was set, and all was planned and clear and easy.  Extra super easy, because we’d been upgraded to business class for the last leg of our trip, which was a nice little moment of luxury to end our journey.  There’d be doting stewardesses.  Wide comfortable seats with tons of legroom.  Hot meals and champagne and those steaming hot towels to freshen our faces.  Home was just a few comfortable hours away.   Just fly out of San Jose’s airport, have a two hour layover in Miami, get on another plane, and boom.  We’d be back.

Only, well, journeys often don’t work like that.  The flight out was delayed by twenty minutes, then forty, then an hour.  Then, we were airborne, and things were lovely, but that loveliness was tainted, because we were anxious about getting home.  There was weather in Miami, low-hanging clouds over which the plane circled and circled, as the hum in the cabin about missed connections got louder and louder.  Then, fifteen minutes taxiing, from one end of the airport to another, after the landing gate was reassigned.

Anxiety increased, that stressed out snappishness that comes with a combination of uncertainty, long lines, and bowel discomfort.  The outgoing flight, blessedly delayed by forty minutes, meaning that the plane home was on the ground awaiting when we stepped out of our aircraft.  

All we had to do was negotiate Miami Dade International Airport customs and immigration in slightly over an hour.  Which is technically possible, in the same way that winning the Marine Corps Marathon without having trained first is technically possible.

Things began to go south quickly.  First, with the automated immigration machines, which flagged both me and my son for further scrutiny in a long line.  And the delay in getting the plane unloaded.  And thirty minute line to have your stamped immigration papers checked a second time.

The process went on and on, and the window to catch our plane departed, and we realized all ten of us were stuck in Miami.  “Just go to the American ticket counter, and they’ll rebook you,” the weary guard suggested.

And there,  we encountered the last line, at eleven o’clock at night, a line stretching the entire length of the terminal, a line so long you couldn’t see the start of it from the end of it, snaking around one corner, and then another, literally thousands of souls long.  The wait time, at least two hours, and the word that there were no flights available for at least two days.

Among the tribe, tempers were fraying, despair setting in.  Hope had evaporated.  School would be missed.  Work would be missed. There was no way out.

And it is hope that rises bright from the snippet of Isaiah we heard this morning.  Isaiah is up today, because Isaiah is my very favorite book of the Bible, tied with Luke and John and the Letters of Paul and Job and the stories of the Samuel-Kings cycle and Proverbs and Psalms and...OK, well, maybe favorite is not the right word.  I love Isaiah in the same way you love a child, meaning it’s my favorite in the way that both of my sons are my favorite son.

It’s a marvelous book, rich with poetry and vision, but also utterly practical.  It soars to the heavens, but it also cares about how we live right here and now.   It’s also a book that adapts to the time in which it was written, changing its tone and focus to meet the needs of the people.

This portion of Isaiah is found in what is often called “Second Isaiah,” meaning that the majority of scholarship suggests it was most likely not written by the same individual who composed chapters 1 through 39 of the Book of Isaiah.  It was, most likely, written by a disciple of the Jerusalem prophet, one who fully understood the essence of his teachings, and was equally connected to the One who spoke through them both.

That first section describes and relates to the kingdom of Judah in the eighth century before Christ.  As those who are in the adult education class heard this morning, it is full of challenge, challenge directed particularly against the wealthy and powerful in Jerusalem.  It’s a book of rebuke and challenge, to the complacent rich, to the predatory powerful.  

This section, on the other hand, speaks to a completely different context.  Running from chapter 40 through to chapter 55, it is primarily about reconciliation, grace, and restoration, and appears to be speaking to an Israelite audience living in Babylonian exile nearly two hundred years later.

This was a people who had no hope.   Unlike the proud and the powerful who lived in Jerusalem and lazed luxuriantly on the fat of the land, this was a people who had been torn from their land and forced into slavery.  They had watched as their places of comfort had been destroyed.  They had watched as their temple, the holiest of holies, the place where they communed with God on earth, they had watched as it had been razed and looted.  Their experience was of nothing but flood and fire, of having everything they had known torn away.

At this point, the One who spoke through the prophet no longer spoke words of judgment.  Where the first thirty nine chapters speak in some pretty harsh language, what we hear throughout this section of Isaiah is God’s commitment to healing and rebuilding those who are broken.  In the face of the suffering experienced by the people, the words that the prophet had to share with them were not rebuke, not condemnation, not mocking and rejection.  

Instead, they heard words of reassurance, and of endurance, and of the commitment of God to be with them.  “You will get through this,” Isaiah proclaims.  “God is with you, even though the fire rages and the flood roars and American Airlines can’t find it’s behind with both hands.”

Well, maybe not the line part, but had Isaiah seen that line at Miami airport, he might have slipped that one in.

Hope, hope was what the people needed, and Isaiah gave it to them.  God does not abandon human beings in times of trial.  Because in the absence of hope, nothing can be accomplished.

And in the presence of hope, life becomes a different thing.

“We could rent a car and drive home,” my older son suggested, as we stood despairing in a line without end.  And boom, there was a way home.  So, the rush to the rental counters, where a 12 passenger van was procured for the thousand mile non-stop overnight drive from Miami to DC.

Ten people in a Ford Transit van for 17 hours of straight driving up 95 is the farthest thing from business class, but there’s a funny thing about that part of the trip.  Despite the notable absence of stewardesses and legroom, and despite the fact that the champagne was replaced with huge cans of Monster Energy Drink, that ride was not just bearable, but good.

We knew it was going to work out.  We knew that the path home was harder, but we could see it.

That’s what hope does, in both simple things and the hardest parts of our journey.

Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.