The Rev. Dr. Hilary B. Smith
St. Paul’s on-the-Hill
Winchester, VA
Our Strength
Jesus was very busy. He healed the sick and expelled many demons. There was so much work for him to do. Those in need of help just kept coming. In the morning, very early in the morning, Jesus got up to pray. He needed that time with God his Father. Jesus could have been praying with the words of Isaiah that we heard today. “[God] 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….”
Even the strongest among us, spiritually or physically, need to wait for the Lord –need to depend on God. Jesus knew that. These words written for those in exile provide comfort to all who seek to follow God.
The portion of Isaiah read today is directed to those in exile. The Jewish people in captivity in Babylon during the 6th century BC, needed a word of hope. There is a time for calling people to account—for naming sins and assigning responsibility, which is what we find in the first part of the book of Isaiah. The first 39 chapters of Isaiah were composed some 200 years before chapters 40 through 55, when Israel was under threat from the Assyrians. But by the time we get to the 40th chapter of Isaiah, the focus shifts from the culpability of the Israelites for their destruction by foreign powers, to the compassion of God for God’s people. The focus shifts to God’s ability to save the people and bring them back home from exile. Chapters 40 through 55 of Isaiah is often called the “Book of Consolation.”
How does God console us? How does God console you? How do we connect with that aspect of God? Isaiah chapter 40 begins with those well-known words: “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.” God seeks to comfort us, to care for us, to save from spiritual exile—from being distant from the ground of our being.
When the Jews were in exile, during the Babylonian Captivity, that was the time when they reclaimed and developed spiritual practices to remind them of their true identity as children of God, and to keep their faith alive in a foreign land. Their practice, for example, of observing the Sabbath, gave them a distinctive identity among those who did not believe in the one true God. Not having the temple in which to pray, they gathered in groups known as synagogues (meaning assemblies). So in some ways, being in exile was not all bad—it strengthened their relationship with God in a place that did not encourage their faith—which had lasting benefits beyond the time of exile.
At times, we can feel that we are in exile as we fight to claim our relationship with God in an environment that may not encourage our spiritual growth. In the welcome letters we send to those who visit our church, I describe our church as an oasis of love in a world that is often so busy that it is hard to connect with God and each other. The many demands on our time can make it difficult to find time for prayer or simply a moment to reflect on our experiences of life, which is a good way to start connecting with God. In some ways, we too are in exile. As citizens of the God’s kingdom, we share in the life of the kingdom now, but we do not yet experience the kingdom fully. We need those moments of prayer when we wait on the Lord.
Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon’s book on this topic, Resident Aliens, notes that we no longer live in a Christian land. There were days that some remember when you could not really shop on a Sunday because the stores were closed. The church was the only show in town. In a sense, the culture encouraged spiritual practices. This is far from true now. While we might be sad that kids’ sporting events happen on Sundays, rather than wishing things were different, we can learn from the exiles before us.
We are given the gift of not taking our faith or our spiritual practices for granted because we have to carve out time and space for that which connects us with God. St. Paul’s on-the-Hill is an oasis of spiritual nourishment; we are like the colony of those in exile described by Hauerwas and Willimon: “a colony is a beachhead, an outpost, an island of one culture in the middle of another, a place where the values of home are reiterated and passed on to the young, a place where the distinctive language and life-style of the resident aliens are lovingly nurtured and reinforced. (Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, Abingdon Press, 1989, p. 12)” We do this for each other. We remind each other that God desires to connect with us to give us peace, consolation, and strength.
The disciples told Jesus that many people were talking about him. They could have stayed and spoken with the admirers, but there was more to do. The time that Jesus spent in prayer was absolutely essential for his continuing mission. God seeks to console and to strengthen us for our own benefit but also for the mission to which we are called. We need times of connection with God.
Jesus gives us the model of a faithful life. Being fully human as well as fully divine, Jesus had moments that were difficult, moments when he was tired, moments when he wondered if he could go on with what God seemed to be asking him to do. As that was true for Jesus, we can imagine how much true it is for us. We are not always strong or as strong as we wish to be. But it is in our weakness that God’s strength is made known. When we wait on the Lord – when we pray, we are renewed. Our ministry is truly God’s ministry when we are open to God’s on-going care for us.
“Glory
to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or
imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in
Christ Jesus for ever and ever.” Amen.
Ephesians 3:20, 21