SOAR! (Isaiah 40:21-31)

The Super Bowl was last week. How many of you are football fans?

Not me. I mowed the lawn, walked the dog, and went shopping (it’s a great time to find a parking spot at Trader Joe’s). I got home and did see the last quarter, which was fun to watch, except for the brawl…

You know what my favorite part of any football game is?

The coach’s halftime speech.

In a real game, you don’t get to see the coach’s halftime speech. Instead, you see things like Katy Perry and dancing sharks. But in a football movie, you do.  And it’s the best.

The team is down by a seemingly insurmountable spread. They’re exhausted. They’re sore. They’re done.

And then the coach delivers a rhetorical masterpiece that renews their hope and their confidence. They don’t just run back onto the field – they soar on the field, they soar to the sky – and win the game.

I wish my sermons could be as inspiring as the halftime speeches given by football coaches in the movies.

The people of Israel needed a great halftime speech. They were down. Captured by a foreign nation, forced to leave their homeland, they had given up hope.

So God calls the prophet, and says to the prophet: “Comfort, comfort my people! Speak compassionately to them. Tell them the time is almost here to return to their homeland. The time is almost here to run back out on to the field and win the game.”

The prophet’s not so sure. “What should I say to these people?” he wonders. The people are like grass, and grass withers, dries up, and dies.

God says to the prophet, “Come on! Get up on a high mountain, and raise your voice! Shout to the people, ‘Here is your God, coming with strength, with a triumphant arm, to rescue you!’”

So the prophet speaks. The prophet says: “Look: the nations are like a drop in a bucket. The nations are like dust on a scale.”

Now, who pays attention to a drop in a bucket? If you are pouring out a bucket of water, and there’s one drop left – just one drop – so what?

And if you are measuring things in a scale, are you going to pay attention to a speck of dust? Is that speck of dust really going to make any difference when you weigh whatever it is you are weighing?

The prophet says the nations are like locusts and grasshoppers, while God – God is infinitely great in comparison. Just look at the stars and galaxies. Look how infinite the universe is. Compared to all that, we humans are nothing.

Nothing.

You know, for a halftime speech, this one isn’t getting off to a very good start.

Besides, the people of Israel already felt as though they were nothing. They didn’t need a prophet to tell them.

Imagine if you have a friend, a brother or sister, or a fellow scout who is feeling really down and in need of some encouragement, and someone – some prophet – comes up and says, “You’re nothing. You’re a bug, a blade of grass, a speck of dust.”

But the prophet isn’t done.

The prophet says, “Yes, you are small.  Yes, you are dust compared to God. But…

“You are precious. The dust is precious! You are a beloved child of God. God calls you by name. God calls dust by name? Yes! You – even though you are dust – you are more precious to God than a certain ring is to Gollum.

Imagine someone stopping the maid who is cleaning the house: “Wait! Be careful of the dust! It’s precious!”

There are times in everyone’s life when they feel like dust. Insignificant. Worthless. Ready to be swept away.

If you’re young and you haven’t felt this way, you will one day. It happens.

You’ll wonder if anyone really likes you. You’ll wonder what’s the point of everything. You’ll wonder why you get up every day, why you’re even alive.

But the prophet says: you are precious. You are a beloved child of God. God will strengthen you. God will give you the power to SOAR on eagle’s wings.

Even dust is beautiful. Have you ever been in a darkened room with one small ray of sunlight coming in, and shaken a blanket and then watched the little specks of dust catch the light as they float through that ray of sunlight?

I remember when I was a kid, thinking how beautiful that was! All those little sparkles looked like stars and galaxies floating in space, SOARING through the universe.

That’s YOU, in God’s eyes. Beautiful sparkles in the sun.

Did you know two of the main ingredients in dust are space rocks that have burned up in our atmosphere, and you – little pieces of dead skin? It’s you and the universe, combined as one. I think that’s cool. It’s beautiful. And precious.

You are beautiful and precious.

And God will give you the power to SOAR on eagle’s wings. God will give you the strength to run and run and run and never be tired.

How’s that for a halftime speech?!

Centuries later, in the time of Jesus, people still felt like dust. They still felt like bugs. In the time of Jesus, the Roman government was like a giant whose evil breath stank up the whole world.

And in that evil breath were unclean spirits – demons – that took control of people’s lives.

You don’t have to take these demon stories literally to recognize that there were forces in the world that kept people from living fully, that there are forces today that keep people from living fully… forces and powers that keep people from SOARING to their full potential.

In my sermon last week, I talked about Jesus’s encounter with a certain demon in the synagogue at Capernaum, and how the people were astounded by Jesus’s authority and the way Jesus controlled this demon.

Well, word got out, and people from all over started bringing to Jesus those who were sick or demon-possessed.

And then Jesus goes from village to village, healing people and casting out demons, setting them free to SOAR, and proclaiming his message that the kingdom of God is NOW.

In a world that beats you down, knocks you down, limits you and enslaves you, Jesus says you can SOAR.

You can SOAR above all that. You are free. Free to be the person God created you to be.

Even today, the world tries to define you and tell you who you are and what you should be. The world limits you, and keeps you from soaring.

Sometimes the people who tell you this are well-intentioned. They may think they are helping. They’ll tell you what they think you need in order to be happy.

But maybe they’re wrong. Maybe you don’t need anything. After all, you have life.  You have your breath.

Take a breath… You feel that? That is a miracle. It is a miracle to breathe. It is a miracle to be alive.

The wisest among us have found that one’s breath is enough to be happy. In the Bible, there is one word – ruach in Hebrew, pneuma in Greek – that means both breath and spirit. Translators have to pick one of those words when translating it to English, but I like to think that the other meaning is always present.

Where there is breath, there is the Spirit. Where there is the Spirit, there is breath.

Inspiration and respiration: see how those two words are related?

Now the world tells you that there’s so much more you need to be happy. How many people think that if they can just have an iPhone 6, they’d be happy?

Guess what? As soon as you get that iPhone 6 – or whatever it is that you really want – the world will show you something else – like a new truck – that you just have to have in order to be happy.

And happiness becomes a goal that you can never ever reach. It’s like the mechanical rabbit that the greyhounds chase. I’ve never been to a greyhound dog race, but Fred Craddock preached a sermon about them once. He said he never went either, but saw it on television once, and there’s this mechanical rabbit that the dogs chase around the ring.

And Fred Craddock said he had a conversation once with one of these greyhounds that had gotten too old to race. He asked the dog, “Why did you quit?”

And the dog replied, “I discovered that what I was chasing was not really a rabbit, and I quit. All that running and running and running and running and what was I chasing? It wasn’t even real.”

We’re just chasing rabbits that aren’t even real. We’re chasing what the world tells us will make us happy, and this pursuit of false happiness keeps us from SOARING.

You already have what you need to be happy.

When his followers were ready, Jesus sent them out with authority over the unclean spirits and demons. He gave them the task of helping people get rid of what was keeping them grounded, so that they could SOAR. And what did he tell them to take with them?

Nothing.

They didn’t need anything.

No money, no bag, no extra shirt or sandals.

They didn’t need any special equipment; they were the equipment.

All that they needed to SOAR, they already had. All that they needed to help others SOAR, they already had. They had their breath. They had the Spirit. It was enough.

Because as long as you have breath, as long as you have life, as long as you have God’s Spirit, you have the power and the strength to SOAR.