Wellspring UMC; Second Sunday after Pentecost; May 25, 2008: “Engraved...”:

-Psalm 131; Isaiah 49: 8-16

If you need me Thursday morning, you won’t find me here. Instead, I’ll be at my son’s school helping out with Field Day. Do you remember Field Day? I sure do. It was one of my favorite days of the year, partially because we weren’t inside doing work, but mostly because we had the chance to play outside in competition with one another.

We played all kinds of fun games. We used to play that relay game where you had to look down and spin 10 times then try to run straight toward a designated line. We’d have a relay where we had to carry an egg in a spoon in our mouths. We had a balloon toss, but always the final game, the topping on the cake, that which gave bragging rights and a trophy to the winning class, was the tug of war.

Oh man, we loved the tug of war! There was great excitement as one class faced another holding onto a thick, long rope in the middle of which was tied a bandana. Each member stared at the no man zone where no body part could pass, and we’d wait, at times jockeying for an edge...waiting for the whistle to blow so we could find out our destiny in the annals of tug of war history.

We were serious about our tug of war, and throughout the year on the playground we’d be sizing up the competition, while also thinking through the placement of where each classmate should be placed on the rope in order to gain the best advantage. We’d distribute the strongest two kids at the front and back sections of our side, while the rest would be spread out down the middle. Some years I was called to be at the front, sometimes the anchor, and sometimes in the middle, but being a somewhat competitive person, I always took my role seriously.

By the end of the tug of war matches I was exhausted. My legs, stomach, and arms were tired, but what was most tired and sore were my hands. In a winning match it wasn’t so bad, it seemed like when we were winning the grip didn’t have to be quite so tight. However in a losing match, our hands gripped the rope with all our might. Our hands clamped down, clutched tightly around the rope, trying with all our might to not fall forward.

After those losses, I remember looking down at my hands. They’d be red as a beet, and in fact I’d find small strands of rope splintered into my palms and fingers. And if I looked immediately after the match, I could actually see a line of indentation running from the crook to the heel of my hands. The rope left an imprint. One result of the tug of war, the wrestling, was that I felt it, and it stuck with me.

Tug of war was a game, and yet in reflecting upon our scriptures and thinking about life, it can hold deeper meaning, for a good tug of war can bring about some powerful analogies for life. The anticipation of things to come, the holding on for dear life, the pushing and pulling, the pain and struggle, even the imprint that is left from the wrestle, it all comes around when we begin to take seriously this walk with God.

So often we find ourselves living our lives juxtaposed to God’s plan. We want this, but God needs that. We don’t want this to happen, but God’s plan calls for a change. We think we know best, but in truth when we let go and let God work, things work out far better than we could have figured out on our own. Life is a wrestle, and it always has been, even among the people of God long, long ago.

This passage from Isaiah comes in the middle of what is known as Second Isaiah, and the focus of chapters 40-55 is the assurance of God’s presence while they are in exile, and the promise of their deliverance. We come into this passage with God doing both – promising presence and deliverance with some wonderful language. God says, “I will answer you, I will keep you, I will make you to be my covenant people. Come out of the darkness! Be free! Shout for joy, for I will comfort you. I will never forget you. See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” What marvelous language. What wonderful grace.

And yet, the Israelites have a hard time believing it. After all that God promises and all God has done, they say, “The Lord has forsaken me. The Lord has forgotten me.” Despite the promises, all they see is the desolation of exile. All they can receive is what they are experiencing – the emotions, the thoughts, the doubts, the pessimism. All they know is that what they believe and what they are experiencing are not congruent.

A couple of months ago I attended an academy where the focus was Isaiah, and our instructor, Dr. Walter Brueggemann, said that Isaiah is a story of death and resurrection. It’s about a nation and people that is called to continually die to self and trust solely in Yahweh in order for new life to come. The whole of the book follows this pattern, and so do section after section after section, even here. Can you see the pattern lived out in these eight short verses?

By this time, the Israelites had been in exile long enough that they were resigned to their fate. They were living out learned helplessness and saw no way out. To be delivered would take a miracle! It would take more than they could imagine! It would take divine power.

Can’t you see the wrestling in their hearts and minds? Can you imagine the tug of war with God? God says, “I will,” and they listen. They wonder, and they dare to hope. God says, “I can,” and they hear, but then they look around and see the painful reality their life has become. God says...but so does their existence, and they can only respond, “You have forsaken and forgotten us!” Does any of this sound familiar?

The Word can at times hit close to home. In hearing the story of an exiled people, we can hear God poking and prodding at the parts of our own lives which seem so unfair or over which we have no control. We know we’re supposed to trust that a pastoral transition is in God’s hands. We expect that God is in the midst of the pain of grief or found in the midst of those whose lives have been eternally changed because of what they experienced as soldiers of war. We trust that God knows the answers, even if we don’t. We hope that God is there in the disease, depression, addiction, and confusion; in the low self-esteem, broken relationships, and abuse; in the mundane, malformed, and maleficent, we know and hope these things, and yet we doubt. We resist. We wonder. We even object, maybe being so bold as to say, “You have forsaken me! You have forgotten me!”

And yet, the Good News for us, the thing we hang our lives on is the response of God found here and all over the scripture, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have not compassion for the child she has borne? Even is she does, I will not forget,” says the Lord, “I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.”

In researching this passage, I was reminded that the Hebrew word for “covenant” is “Berith,” which is translated, “cut.” The essence of this amazing passage is that the God of the Covenant engraves us, cuts us, each one, into the palm of His hand, so as to never forget.

In a tug of war, we pull hard. So hard in fact, that in our determination to win the battle, we’ll hurt ourselves trying – hands and hearts splintered and worn. But the Truth and desire of God is for us to stop the war, stop hurting ourselves, and instead let go, let God win us over, then see that the hands that are to hurt are His hands. In them are found the scars that God cut so the covenant of life, love, and wholeness would be ours.

Whatever the wrestle, whatever the pain, whatever bears down on you, your life is engraved forever upon the hands of the Creator. We can rest in such grace, and we, like the psalmist can say and believe:

My heart is not proud, O Lord,

my eyes are not haughty.

I do not concern myself with great matters

or things too wonderful for me.

But I still and quiet my soul;

like a weaned child with its mother,

like a weaned child is my soul within me.

I put my hope in the Lord

both now and forevermore. Amen.