Following prayer for Philip and Esther Kitui returning to Kenya and a version of “On Christ the Solid Rock” in Swahili

Ooh boy! Just another Sunday at Bethany! It’s amazing the way that God is turning the 8500 miles or so between Kenya and Seattle…into a matter of inches!

Last week, we read from Isaiah 42, the first of the “servant songs.” These 4-5 passages in Isaiah introduce an intriguing figure. Out of the gloom of Israel’s continual rebellion, and their exile to Babylon…comes this person. The servant. God’s servant. And in that first passage, we noted the description of the servant: equipped by God’s Spirit, quiet, humble, gentle, faithful and committed to the point of death. He watches out for the poor, values the damaged, speaks truth and he comes to set things right.

This morning, we turn to Isaiah 49, the first 6 verses to read more about this servant of God’s. These six verses really are split into two voices. The first is the voice of the servant, and then at the end the voice of God. Let’s read.

“I feel like a failure.”

Maybe those words are familiar to you. We are in a results-oriented world. If you can grow the numbers, if you can get the title after your name, if you have the right degree…you win the game. You are a success. But if not…a failure. (Actually, it’s much more popular right now to use “Loser.” We’re not big on that L-word at our house. Don’t like that word loser. “Non-winners,” maybe.)

“I feel like a failure.”

Ever been a failure? Ever logged the time, done what you thought was right, and the results just weren’t coming?

I was a pretty straight-laced kid, did well in sports and school. But my third year of college was turbulent. So turbulent, in fact, that I dropped out of school in the middle of the quarter. I’d run into people I knew, and they’d ask me what I was doing. Now I couldn’t say “playing ball,” or “going to the U.” It was, “I’m taking some time off,” or “I’m working” or “looking for work.” And I felt like I could see it in their eyes: “non-winner.”

Years ago, Anne and I lived on Queen Anne when I was in business and our kids were very small. We had a house with lots of extra room, and we felt led by God to open it up to kids who’d had trouble and needed to get off the streets. We had great visions of someone coming to live with us, and God using our household to transform them, turn their life around.

The first one, Craig, stayed with us about five months. Craig consistently lied to us, snuck out of the house to break curfew with regularity, maybe even robbed us. Eventually he had to leave. When he moved out, we felt like we’d utterly failed. We’d been faithful, done what we were supposed to do: Why didn’t God act? Where was the result?

The Servant’s voice speaks first in this passage. The first verses are filled with all the evidence of God’s clear favor on the servant, ordaining him, equipping him. But then the voice says:

“I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength for nothing.”

No results. God said,

“I will be glorified in you,”

but it wasn’t happening. The servant almost seems a little despondent. He was ready, thought he was doing his part…so where was God with the results? It might have been the first taste, to this servant…that being God’s Servant may not go totally the way he thought. That maybe there would be some discomfort…that he might be a suffering servant.

Sometimes we have to just do our part, whether or not the results are there. I remember being in business, with my office and our company down in the Fremont district. And I remember many days, but one period of time in particular, where I thought, “Lord, I’m putting a bunch of energy into making sure that auto parts stores are well-stocked, and advertised in their communities…but I’d love to be making a difference for you here. And I don’t feel like I am. I want to share you, want to have somebody’s life changed and I don’t see it. Sometimes we just have to do our part.

Some of you have read A Prayer for Owen Meany, a novel from 1989 by John Irving. One of my all-time favorite books. Owen Meany is this little teeny guy, both very short and very lightweight (I don’t think he ever grew above five feet or over 100 pounds), with a high-pitched voice. The book more or less tells his life story from the perspective of a friend, John.

From early on in the book, Owen and Johnny practice what they call “the shot.” It’s a basketball shot They don’t really play basketball, but over and over they practice “the shot.” Owen says “ready”? Johnny passes Owen the ball, Owen dribbles towards the hoop and jumps up in the air, Johnny grabs Owen and lifts him up and swings him up over his head up to the hoop (remember, he’s very small), and Owen drops it in.

They practice and practice “the shot,” but they’re never quite sure why. Honing it and drilling until they can do it in under eight seconds, then seven, then five, finally under four seconds…but it seems like just going through the motions. It never gets them anywhere, no results.

Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night he is arrested. We don’t know everything that went through his mind. The Garden is perhaps the hardest place to try and sort out the idea that Jesus was both human…and divine. Man and God. Here, in the garden as his sleepy followers snore just a little ways away, Jesus is distressed, he’s agitated. Lonesome. I suspect thoughts flood his mind, memories of fabulous healings and profound conversations, of people changing. Yet somewhere in the background, aware all along that he would die. Praying here …that it wouldn’t happen. Despondent. Doing what he was supposed to do, and yet the desired result seems so far away.

“Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me…”

What do you do when it seems like it’s just not working, that you are trying to do what God wants…and you’re doing it, but the results seem to say “Failure”?

Well, first we might try what the servant tries…revisit the assignment. Do I have it right? Did I hear right? The Servant says,

“I was formed long ago to be God’s servant.”

And the mission?

“To bring Jacob back to Him, and to gather Israel to Him.”

Let’s check our calling. Sometimes we need to go back to the scripture, to our prayers, to our community and verify that we heard God rightly. The Servant does this, and it’s affirmed that his job is to draw people to God, a specific group of people.

Second, we may just have to keep at it. We may have to endure, we may have to make it through some dry times. It may be the time to just plain old be faithful, to keep praying or stay in relationship or looking for opportunities to connect people to God. We are in a day when we not only want results, but we want them right now. Everything is built upon it, whether it’s business or weight loss or church growth. If it’s not happening right now, there must be something wrong. Endurance, faithfulness over the long-run, are well-ignored virtues in our day.

Third, we need to be attentive to God.

“God has become my strength,”

the Servant says. God is the one at work. We spend so much time plotting, planning and visioning…sometimes we’re in danger of missing what God is doing. God doesn’t quit working.

Not long after I complained to God that nothing was happening through my witness in my business environment, a salesman named Roger knocked on my office door. He came in, shut the door, plopped down in a chair and looked at me and said, “Dan, my life’s falling apart. Can you listen?” And I listened. And we ended up back in a corner of the warehouse, surrounded by spark plugs and fuel pumps and air filters…praying for him, for his marriage, for his kids. No matter what I’d felt like, God had been at work all along.

Owen Meany and Johnny practice the shot for years and years without a single result, into adulthood.

Now, I’m going to talk about the end of the book. If you don’t want to hear it, cover your ears for a minute. I’m thinking that if you haven’t read the book by now, 15 years later, I can’t be held responsible for ruining the story for you!

But at the end of the book, the day comes. Owen has been in the military during the Vietnam War. Johnny meets him at the Phoenix airport. They’re asked by two nuns to escort a group of small boys to a restroom. And suddenly a deranged maniac bursts into the bathroom with a grenade. Owen calmly says to Johnny, “We’ll have just four seconds.”

Sure enough, the disturbed man pulls the pin on the grenade as the children scream. He tosses it in Johnny’s direction, who catches it. Owen says, “Ready?” and is already moving towards Johnny. He hands Owen the live grenade, and picks him up and swings him up in the air just like they’ve done a thousand times before (remember, he only weighs 100 pounds), and Owen is lifted up and pins the grenade on an upper concrete shelf where it can explode (which it does) without hurting any of the kids (which it doesn’t).

Sometimes you just keep doing what your part is, and you trust that God is at work.

But it’s not just that God is at work. It’s that his work is so often surprising, and far bigger and deeper than we had ever dreamed. God’s Servant retraces his steps, and remembers that God had commissioned him to bring Jacob back to him, to gather Israel. But now that he is attentive to God, he notices God’s voice speaking…the mission has become much larger:

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

Actually, many of the translations have God saying, “You will be my salvation…to the ends of the earth.”

“I have labored in vain,”

the servant moans just a few verses back. And God answers,

“You will be my salvation to the ends of the earth.”

The servant has his part, but God, in God’s time, brings the results.

In these last years, I’ve found out more about “the ends of the earth.” I grew up on Queen Anne, you know, and lived most of my life here. Then God decided to shake us up, and moved us to New Jersey, of all places! Then Minneapolis, of all places!

Then In 2002 I stood in drifting flakes of snow in a courtyard between small houses in Inner Mongolia, China. Never dreamed I would stand in such a place. The old woman who motioned us into the house was a Christian, maybe the only one around for miles and miles. Friends, I believe with all my heart that God sent his servant, seen most clearly in Jesus Christ, just for her.

In 2003 I stood in a village just off the equator in Uganda, Africa …in a small house parented by a 14-year-old girl because her parents and adult relatives had died of AIDS. I believe with all my heart that God sent his Servant Jesus Christ for Justeen and her little brothers. Salvation, for the ends of the earth.

One of the biggest problems the world has with Jesus is that the claims are too big.

“I am the way, the truth and the Life…no one comes…”

“Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

“For God so loved the world.”

If we would just make Jesus smaller, reduce the size of his claims, spread the cause of salvation around to some other figures…then the world out there would feel better about him. He wouldn’t feel so exclusive, so demanding. The problem is…that God goes the other way. His servant and the task becomes even larger. In Jesus Christ His love is deeper than we could have imagined, his grace is for all time, all people. God says,

“I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

Jesus comes and says,

“I am the light of the world, whoever follows me will never walk in darkness.”

One of the problems with Jesus, even in his own day…was that he claimed too much. He could have gone into history as an awesome teacher, a learned wise man, an eloquent preacher, even a miracle worker. But he went just such a surprising amount further. To come as a servant, to come as a servant willing to suffer even unto death to draw people far away…back to God. There’s the mission again, drawing people back to God. When we catch even a glimpse of the scope of what God did in Christ, it staggers us. It quiets us deep inside. Maybe we’ve just been complaining about trying to do our part and we suddenly realize the enormity of what God was about from the beginning.

Thursday morning I went to Christian businesspersons gathering down at Seattle Pacific. The featured speaker was my good friend Jeff Van Duzer, longtime Bethanyite and regular preacher here. I have no qualms in telling you that Jeff is one of my all-time favorite speakers. I always learn things from him, and Thursday was no exception.

Jeff talked about being a Christian in business environments, did a wonderful job of challenging folks to incorporate Sabbath, confession and generosity in our lives. But as he talked, I noticed something really amazing. Two times in those forty minutes, Jeff actually used the name of Jesus. Not “Christian,” not ethics, not the church…but Jesus.

The room was already very quiet as he talked, but at those two points it somehow got even quieter. I felt like the Spirit of God that had been hovering…suddenly enveloped us. In Jesus, God came near to us. Through Jesus, the Servant who came to a cross, we are drawn back to the heart of God, to understand that God’s love knows no boundaries.

And about the time we get a glimpse of this, the enormous work that God did and continues to do, we stumble across Jesus’ final words to his followers in Matthew:

“Go now and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit…and remember I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

The end of the age. The ends of the earth. Go and make disciples of all nations. Jesus will use his followers…you and me…to complete his mission. The U.S. Canada. Mexico. Croatia. China. Honduras. The republic of Seattle, the city of Ballard, the nations of Greenwood and Rainier Beach and Magnolia and Queen Anne. The people of Kenya. Japan. All nations … that God’s salvation might reach to them all.

It sounds overwhelming. It sounds too big. We can’t get our arms around it all. That’s okay. You do your part. And allow this surprising God of ours…to do his. Be attentive to God. Listen once more to the words in Isaiah:

“Listen to me, O coastlands. Pay attention you peoples from … far away.”

Amen.