ON EAGLE’S WINGS
The passage I just read from the book of Isaiah ends on a real high note, does it not? It says, “Those who wait upon the Lord shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” Who doesn’t love the idea of soaring above the muck and the mire as the eagle does, looking down on creation below? Who doesn’t love the image of rising above the problems we encounter in life, as if we were resting on eagle’s wings? Yet before we explore life from an eagle’s perspective, I believe the prophet Isaiah invites us to explore life from a grasshopper’s perspective first.
Consider verse 22 in the passage I read from Isaiah. Speaking of God, Isaiah writes, “It is he who sits above the circle of the earth…and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers.” Its inhabitants are like grasshoppers? In other words, Isaiah is saying that compared to God, humans are more like grasshoppers than they are like eagles. How does that make you feel?
I’ve never been too fond of grasshoppers myself. Some of my cousins grew up on farms in Iowa. I can remember wandering through fields of corn or soy beans as a child and being completely engulfed by swarms of grasshoppers. And have you ever had a grasshopper land on the bare skin of your arm or leg? It’s an eerie feeling you don’t soon forget.
As they were to the ancient Egyptians, they were to the Iowa farmer, as well: a plague. Grasshoppers could devastate a field of corn or a field of soy beans and ruin a farmer’s income for the year. Unfortunately, they never seemed to bother the rhubarb. Thus, I was still forced to endure rhubarb pie or rhubarb crisp or rhubarb...you name it. I do not agree with Garrison Keillor when he says in his Prairie Home Companion sketches that rhubarb is a part of the good life.
Grasshoppers have traditionally gotten a bad rap in literature over the years as well. In Aesop’s Fables, the grasshopper is the lazy one who takes it easy all summer long, making fun of the ant who is busy storing up food for the winter. Then, come wintertime, who’s pounding at the door of the ant looking for food? The grasshopper! As I understand it, this then carries over into a movie called, “A Bug’s Life,” where the grasshoppers torment the ants like a street gang. And this is that to which Isaiah compares us? Not very flattering, is it?
Yet grasshoppers do have some positive attributes. They do have wings. While they may not be able to soar like an eagle, they can jump to a height of about twenty times their body length. For a human being, such a feat would be akin to jumping about 120 feet in the air. Imagine how much money the NBA would pay for an athlete who could do that! What’s more, grasshoppers are among the most successful insects on earth. They come in roughly 11,000 different species. Apparently the brighter colored grasshoppers warn birds that they are not good to eat, although my grandfather once said that they were good dipped in chocolate. I think he was kidding.
But here’s the most amazing thing of all. Grasshoppers have five eyes. They have two compound eyes and they have three simple eyes. Part of their adaptability and survival comes from their ability to see everything around them in a great panorama. Perhaps there’s a lesson in this for us as well. Perhaps we need to learn to see not just what’s happening all around us, but what the things that are happening all around us really mean.
If we see only the next blade of grass in front of us, we will not grow or thrive. As long as we remain deeply embedded in the grass, content to look only in front of us, we will quickly become mired in minutia. We will become easily annoyed by the attitudes and behaviors of others. We will forever be caught up in our own selfish struggles. And we will never be able to look beyond what is happening right in front of us…to how God intends to redeem that which is happening.
When I read Isaiah, I hear him saying to us, “Look, grasshopper. Look around you at what’s happening in the world. Behind it all is your Creator, who has the power to redeem creation.” A part of faith is the capacity to look at the vast expanse of the world with a sense of awe and wonder and possibility. Seeing things with the eyes of amazement, and seeing ourselves in the context of being a part of what God is doing to redeem creation…enables us to mount up with wings like eagles. Thus, may we learn to live with an eagle’s wings and a grasshopper’s eyes.
What was the context for Isaiah’s challenging words? Isaiah was prophesying to the Hebrew people during a very difficult time in their history. The Babylonian army, having defeated the Assyrian army that had threatened Jerusalem for so long, invaded the country and destroyed Jerusalem in 587 B.C. Jerusalem’s king, a man named Zedekiah, tried to escape. He was subsequently captured and forced to watch the execution of his sons, and then his eyes were poked out. The execution of his sons was the last thing he ever saw. People could be quite cruel in those days.
The so-called “movers and shakers” of Jerusalem were deported to the city of Babylon. The only people who were allowed to stay in Jerusalem were the poorest of the poor. The deported Hebrew people were not slaves in Babylon. In fact, some of them even prospered. And what they saw in Babylon was eye-opening indeed. Let me try to show you the way the Hebrew people might have seen things by painting a picture that I actually presented to you in a sermon last year.
Imagine you were born and raised in Meadville. Never in your life did you venture outside of Meadville, and Meadville was all you knew. You’d be proud of that gleaming college up on the hill. You’d believe that there could be no finer football venue than Barco-Duratz field. And you would know in your heart that the sanctuary of the First Presbyterian Church of Meadville is the most beautiful and glorious and sacred place imaginable.
Then Meadville gets overrun by Pittsburghers…kind of like Conneaut Lake in the summer. Sadly, you find yourself deported to Pittsburgh. There you come to realize that Meadville was not quite all you thought it was. You see the fabulous skyscrapers that dot the Pittsburgh skyline. You sit in Heinz Field and watch the Steelers play. You worship in churches that are literally twice the size of the First Presbyterian Church of Meadville. You come to realize that your previous world view was really rather limited. And then you start to wonder about some of the other things in life you had always believed to be true.
Such was the case with the Hebrew people who were deported from Jerusalem to Babylon. The glorious city they now inhabited made Jerusalem pale by comparison. It was then that they started to wonder about some of the other things in life they had always believed to be true. For example, could it be that their God was not as powerful as they had once believed him to be? The Babylonian god Marduk appeared to have defeated their God quite soundly. The life of faith, it seemed, was an exquisite but fragile flower that had been crushed by Babylonian boots. As far as they were concerned, their God had either failed them or abandoned them. A great many of the Hebrew people then signed on with Marduk – and the unrivaled prosperity and unbridled militarism – of Babylon. They bound themselves to the Babylonian culture, and their faith in God began to wane.
These are the people Isaiah is trying to address. Truth be told, they’re having a real hard time seeing beyond what’s right in front of them. They’re having a real hard time seeing why God would need to redeem a world such as theirs. They’re seeing that they’ve got it pretty darn good right now. Why on earth would they want things to change?
Can we blame them? Like them, we want quick and easy solutions. Why, these days we’ve come to expect life’s greatest mysteries to be resolved in the course of a thirty-minute sitcom or a sixty-minute drama or a two hour movie. What’s more, we’re most concerned with how things affect us directly. “Never mind the greater good,” we say. “What’s in it for me?”
Isaiah calls upon his people to remember. He calls upon them to remember the faith they were taught when they were young. He reminds them that God created the heavens and the earth. He points out that the inhabitants of the world are like grasshoppers before God. But perhaps most important of all, he reminds them that God gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. In other words, God has not forgotten or forsaken you. And what’s important to you is also important to God. God wants what’s best for you. Did you catch that? What’s important to you is also important to God. God wants what’s best for you.
The unfortunate thing for us here is this: God’s greatest gifts tend to emerge from great personal travail. Write that down. God’s greatest gifts tend to emerge from great personal travail. Case in point, the gift of a child. Now I’ve never had a baby, but I understand it can be quite painful. Yet after a while, I suspect, people tend to forget how painful an ordeal it really was. Otherwise no one would ever have more than one child. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to tell you that great spiritual awakenings are much the same. The greatest spiritual awakenings tend to emerge from great personal travail as well.
For example, I have recently had a great spiritual awakening that emerged from great personal travail. I feel as if I have failed in a couple of pastoral care issues. When a minister fails in a pastoral care issue, people can be hurt very badly. And any minister who’s worth his salt agonizes very deeply about that. It hurts us deep in our souls. None of us get into the business of ministry to hurt people. And when we do, inadvertent or not, it literally tears us up inside.
I’ve done a lot of thinking and praying about this. It struck me that in the Presbyterian Church we call the minister of a large church the Pastor/Head of Staff. Most of us tend to emphasize the Head of Staff part because there are others on staff who are called to address pastoral care. Thus, we end up spending the bulk of our time trying to run an institution. Yet in light of the agony I have felt over a couple of pastoral care issues, my great spiritual awakening is that I am going to dedicate myself anew to the Pastor part of my job.
And listen to this. A couple of women in this church were also aware of what happened. They were quick to point out that such things have been happening in this church – and other large churches, I’m sure – for 50 years or more. They came to me to work with me to devise a better system of communication in the church as a whole. That way, there will be fewer oversights. More specifically, there will be fewer pastoral oversights.
The greatest spiritual awakenings tend to emerge from great personal travail. If you find yourself suffering from some great personal travail, put on the eyes of a grasshopper. If we see only the next blade of grass in front of us, we will not grow or thrive. As long as we remain deeply embedded in the grass, content to look only in front of us, we will quickly become mired in minutia.
A part of faith is the capacity to look at the vast expanse of the world with a sense of awe and wonder and possibility. Seeing things with the eyes of amazement, and seeing ourselves in the context of being a part of what God is doing to redeem creation…enables us to soar on eagle’s wings. Amen.
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