YOU RANG?

A Sermon by Bill McDonald from Isaiah 52:7-12

July 6, 2008

Isaiah 52

⁷ How beautiful upon the mountains

are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,

who brings good news,

who announces salvation,

who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

⁸ Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices,

together they sing for joy;

for in plain sight they see

the return of the LORD to Zion.

⁹ Break forth together into singing,

you ruins of Jerusalem;

for the LORD has comforted his people,

he has redeemed Jerusalem.

¹⁰ The LORD has bared his holy arm

before the eyes of all the nations;

and all the ends of the earth shall see

the salvation of our God.

¹¹ Depart, depart, go out from there!

Touch no unclean thing;

go out from the midst of it, purify yourselves,

you who carry the vessels of the LORD.

¹² For you shall not go out in haste,

and you shall not go in flight;

for the LORD will go before you,

and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.

You know the scene from dozens of old movies. The stuffy, arrogant, disinterested butler responds to his master’s call. Entering the room, with a touch of peevish irritation in his voice, the butler says icily, “You rang, sire?” Well, yes, he rang. There was something the butler needed to know. The same scene is repeated when the doorbell chimes and the sour-faced servant opens it and says to the messenger, “You rang?” And here we are, Christians operating out of a commission by Jesus himself to go into all the world and teach everything that he has commanded us, and the world responds to us with boredom and arrogance, “You rang?” It makes you want to spin on your heels and walk off. “Huh, to heck with them; let them suffer the consequences. Who cares if their lives are miserable and off the mark? I’ll just tell the folks who are responsive to my message and we will live in a kind of gated Eden, Christians taking care of our own, shaking our heads and our fingers at the ignorant world.”

But there is only one problem with that: Christians can’t flourish inside gates or walls. Christianity doesn’t have a very long shelf life; it is meant to be shared and spread and consumed, not hoarded. And Christianity without the Great Commission is a religion without a cause, a movement without a leader, for Christ does not bless our faith while we are sitting on it. We are messengers, not museum-keepers. We are theological telemarketers in a slam-the-phone-down society. But we were not instructed to go only to friendly doors and welcoming hearts; we are to climb the mountains of rejection, to cross the heights of resistance, to scale the ragged peaks of indifference. And, as Isaiah says, how beautiful are the feet of the messengers who make this effort.

Now, feet are not notoriously beautiful parts of the human body. Last week my granddaughter Dory was playing with a ball of slime she had made at Vacation Bible School. When she dropped it on the floor, her father Casey simply reached over with his bare foot, picked up the slimeball with his toes and held it out to her. “Aren’t you going to take your slime?” asked Gram. Dory took one look at the gooey substance wedged up between her father’s toes and said, “Yeech, no way!” No, feet are not innately attractive. But, oh, we do have beautiful feet when we bring a life-changing message to our children and our families, a message that will transform our community, that will change the way the peoples of the world see each other, that will turn our world from its dark path and direct it into God’s light. We are the messengers. And what is our message?

⁷ How beautiful upon the mountains

are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,

who brings good news,

who announces salvation,

who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

God’s messenger announces peace. Not “hopes for it”…or “prays for it”…or “believes it might someday happen,” but announces that it is a present reality. It is a viable option now, not some pie-in-the-sky daydream. A couple of weeks ago Julie and I along with Texas friends walked the Freedom Trail in Boston. Okay, I confess that we walked the Freedom Trail until it took us by the Italian restaurants in the North End. There I was sidetracked by the La Famiglia Special—chicken and veal sautéed with onions and mushrooms in an alfredo-pesto sauce, served over tri-colored cheese tortellini. Mmmm…. But what was my point? Oh, yes, in Boston it hit me how there were monuments for battles and soldiers, but there were just as many remembering great statesmen and uplifting ideals such as the site of the first public school. The point was that freedom is forged not just by militaristic means but by the minds and spirits of the people. I hope that we can remember that as well. We honor our soldiers best when we carve a worthwhile life for all citizens from the pure granite of our soldiers’ sacrifice. Will the world ever find peace? Only if we open our eyes, for God’s peace lies right here, at hand. It is an ideal whose time has come. Don’t be afraid to proclaim that in all times, even when peace isn’t popular.

What good news do the messengers of Crestwood have for the world? I don’t know about you but I find it way too easy to descend into complaining when someone asks me how things are going. And it only takes one person starting to get an avalanche of negativity rolling. “Hey, what have you been up to lately?” “Well, I went to the doctor yesterday…and I sat for two hours in the waiting room to see her. Why don’t they schedule those appointments realistically? Of course I was fifteen minutes late getting there because of all the traffic on Nicholasville Road. What moron designed that traffic light system? I hit every red light. Besides, those out-of-town drivers just putted along as if they had all day. And why do they let old men still drive when they can’t even see over the steering wheel?” And before you know it, you are sucked into a vicious vortex and everything about God’s great world is negative—even though medical science is just one breath short of miraculous, even though we enjoy paved roads instead of muddy ruts or gravel lanes, even though we are grateful to maintain our own independence by still driving when perhaps we should hang up the keys. And, as the old gospel song says, ain’ta that good news? Our lives are full of it. “Break forth together into singing, you ruins of Jerusalem.” Oh, we have good news to share: God loves you. If you are so surrounded by family and friends that you find love to be commonplace, expected, then stop, drop and pray—stop for a moment, drop to your knees and give thanks. For there are innumerable hearts in our society who don’t feel what you are blessed to feel. For them the idea of a God who loves them is shocking, revolutionary, life-changing. A God who is present not to condemn but to heal, a God who sets aside judgment in order to comfort, a God who understands our pain and soothes our angry souls—that is a message that so many need to hear. Surely we won’t neglect to repeat it to others just because it sounds so natural to us. They might at first say defensively, “You rang?” But this is a message that their hearts are yearning to hear.

God’s messengers announce, “Your God reigns!” Can you feel the impact of that announcement? The God who loves you is in charge! We all have a personal connection to the power behind the universe! In Austin, Emmet Woo-man Lee came to me to ask me to marry him to Sandra Duran. No problem…except that Sandra was an ex-Catholic Hispanic Christian and Emmet was an Asian Buddhist whose father vowed to disinherit him if he married Sandra. Emmet begged me to try to get his father to change his mind. I wanted to help this nice young man but how could I accomplish what he asked? I wracked my brain for possible scenarios of success but came up empty…until Emmet brought his father by the church one day. Then I discovered that his father was one of my Tuesday night volleyball buddies! We were both surprised and hugged each other and the young couple went on get hitched without a hitch. I had a personal connection that made all the difference. Well, guess what? WE have a personal connection. The God who loves us is the Almighty Ruler of the Universe. “Your God reigns.”

Don’t be afraid of what might be said to you as the door opens, just give the message. God has you covered. Once years ago on a youth group trip I crawled through a long, cramped passageway deep underground. I was the last in a line of spelunkers, cave explorers. I wasn’t afraid of what lay in front of me; the guide was up there. I wasn’t afraid of what was around me, because our puny flashlights made the tight walls glow. But I kept looking back at the intense darkness that nipped at my heels. I imagined all sorts of monsters reaching out to grab my ankles and drag me back into that darkness. That has been a weakness in my life. I have always waited pessimistically for the other shoe to fall, for something to interrupt the joy of the moment, for something to reach out of the darkness behind me. In that cave all those feelings rushed upon me and I had to fight the urge to grab the middle school kid in front of me and drag him back to be the rear guard! Instead I relied on Isaiah’s encouragement, as all of us messengers should, “For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight; for the LORD will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.” God has you covered. So keep telling the message: there is reason for joy; God loves you; your God reigns. And have I told you what beautiful feet you have?