Sermon for February 5th 2006

I started my preparation work for this service and sermon, while the 72 men where trapped underground in the potash mine near Esterhazy Saskatchewan. As I read the words of Isaiah, reports came that the men were coming up and out of the mine and were slowly returning home. As I read and listened to the accounts of their 24 hours spent in the safety stations 3 kilometres below ground I got to the final verses of Isaiah where he says – “those who wait upon the Lord, shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not grow faint …” I heard those words, listened the reports from Esterhazy and wondered – “what does it mean to live those words?”
What does it mean to be 3 kilometres underground – under 3 kilometres (a mile and a half) or solid rock, huddled in the dark, knowing that the mine is filled with choking deadly smoke … they made phone calls, they played checkers, the men who spoke to reporters said they took the time to reprioritize their lives and decided what is really important … What does it mean in those moments to wait upon the Lord and to rise up with wings like eagles?
I found a story in one of my resources that told of a man and his dog in a training session for the dog. The dog scored a 296.5 out of a possible 300 in the category of training – almost a perfect score - but the author noted that what made this dog unique was not the perfect score, but was the role and tasks that it would have because of its training.
The trainer was in a wheel chair, and the dog – a sheltie – was being trained to be a helper dog for people with disabilities. We know of dogs for the blind, and hearing dogs, but of late, people have been training dogs to do all manner of tasks, in order to help them. And this dog was to become one of those helper dogs that would assist the trainer in his wheel chair.
The author of the text noted that sometimes the moment where we rise up on eagles’ wings is not moment of miraculous healing, but is a moment of time when you are able to accomplish much in spite of the wheelchair … sometimes it is a moment of acceptance and a commitment to live life fully in spite of what others would perceive as limitations.
I would, as an aside, offer the example of Stephen Hawkings as a person who has lived the soaring on eagles’ wings … despite having been limited to a wheelchair for almost 40 years, and being able to communicate through a computer generated voice – Hawkings has plunged (literally) into the depths of the cosmos and has gone intellectually where few dare, or are capable of following … the wheel chair and his disability have become a fact in his life not a limiting factor …

So how shall we rise up with wings like eagles? How shall we soar, when life has seemingly given us a lousy hand?
I would be so bold as to say – we do it all the time, but we simply don’t take notice of those moments because they are sometimes so common place …
The Gospel story today, the healing of Simon Peter’s mother in law is a good reminder that sometimes these moments of triumph just happen. Jesus enacted a miracle without even breaking a sweat. The text tells us he just did it …
And so, that is the call to faith for us when we are seeking that moment when we rise up on eagles’ wings, when we run and not grow weary and when we walk are don’t grow faint.
We can spend all our time calling for that moment – waiting for it … demanding it. Or we can sometimes just put one foot in front of the other and carry one … then down the road in a few days or a few weeks, or even a few months, we will suddenly realize that … hey, we’ve come a long way … we’ve made a great deal of progress … we’ve risen up from that moment and we’re suddenly looking back from a mountain top rather then lingering in the valley bottom ...
This moment of rising up sometimes just happens …

In Bible Study on Friday we had a conversation on eagles and why Isaiah used an eagle in this particular text. I shared some of my moments where eagles offered a very spiritual encounter in my life and my journey …
This text from Isaiah is quoted in a chorus that was used repeatedly at every single funeral in the native community in Bella Coola. At the wakes following a death, we would sing: “they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not grow faint … they shall mount up with wings like eagles …” Over and over we would sing as a community, that chorus. This week I had some insight as to why …
In most native communities, abuse, poverty, ill health and all manner of suffering are painfully normal. Yet, in the face of this darkness, the people of Bella Coola could sing the sure and certain hope that God WAS with them even in the darkness. Like the miners in the depths of the earth waiting, the people of Bella Coola never gave up hope that it WILL get better. Maybe not right now, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even in their own personal lifetimes – but it WILL get better. And so they could sing …
The other aspect of eagles for the Bella Coola people, is the importance that bald eagles have spiritually in their traditional understanding of the world. At every burial, we looked to the sky for an eagle – and they were there. The eagle came to carry the spirit of the deceased to the spirit world where the ancestors awaited them – at the hall that evening, the spirit dance would symbolically enact what we’d witnessed earlier, with the eagle dancer being the last figure through the hall, representing the soul of the departed.
At Sam’s Baptism, on the edge of the Bella Coola River, a bald eagle flew back and forth over the cold green waters – maybe he was looking for lunch, or maybe, as one of the elders said – “he was there as a guardian.”
Our last afternoon in Bella Coola a Bald Eagle landed in the front yard of our home before our moving van rolled away. A friend said later, that was a good sign – he came to wish you well, and to tell Noahkila (that’s Sam Indian name) that he would be okay no matter where he was …
But, looking back I realize that the moment wherein I realized how important eagles were, came early on in my time in Bella Coola when I was called on to preside at my very first funeral service. The man who died had been killed by his drinking companion in an argument over a bottle of wine …
In the days that preceded the funeral service, the family struggled with a huge variety of feelings – anger, sadness, rage … and so on. The deceased was the second person in his immediate family to die a violent death through someone else’s hand.
When the RCMP had finished with the house, they allowed the family to go in, and retrieve things. I was invited to accompany them. As we wandered through the house, the scene of the murder, over and over we encountered the passage from the Gospel of Luke where Jesus, just hours before his own death said – “Father forgive them for they know not what they do …”
In the victims Bible, lying face down and open to that passage beside his chair … on a plaque on the wall above where his body had fallen … on a book mark stuck to his fridge – over and over we found the words: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do …”
The victim’s mother took all of this in, and inspite of her fragility of health and well being, said – “It’s a message. It’s what we have to do … we have to forgive the man who killed my son …” Daisy had lost two children to murder and she knew that hate was too heavy a burden to carry – forgiveness was her only option.
As we stepped out on to the front porch of the house, … when we stepped into the sunshine … Daisy was still insisting she and her family had to forgive the perpetrator of this hideous crime, and in that moment we saw before us, in the huge spruce tree in front of the house – close enough that we could have reached out and touched it – a beautiful Bald Eagle. He had landed just as we stepped outside. Daisy looked up and talked to him in Nuxalkmc, smiling the whole time. The eagle called out in reply and Daisy said – “It’s Ron, he’s okay. He wants us to know he’s okay and it’s going to be alright …”
The morning before her son’s funeral – Daisy went to inspite of the insistence of a very large RCMP officer that she couldn’t do this – went into the jail cell and forgave her son’s killer …

Sometimes rising up on eagles’ wings doesn’t mean we get what we want … it doesn’t mean we get the miraculous healings … it doesn’t mean things are how we would like them to be … but it means that we’ve learned to run again and not grow weary, to walk and not grow faint and to know that we’re doing all we can to live full lives of faith and care.
I think that’s what Isaiah had in mind when he envisioned the moment when we step from the darkness in our lives and stand blinking in the light of God – we rise up knowing that even in the darkness God is with us, and God will accompany us forward …
We may not be heading where our ego wants us to go, but in time we will see that we’ve climbed out of the darkness and into the sun …

Daisy didn’t get her son back, but having lost two children to violent crime she wasn’t going to let anger and hate destroy her … hate was too great a burden for her to carry … instead she spoke words of love and forgiveness and in her acceptance, she not only found grace, she lived it … and a few months later it was Daisy who stood up on the banks of the Bella Coola River and under the watchful eye of a majestic flying eagle, gave a little boy a very big name …

May we have the faith to run and not grow weary, to walk and not grow faint, and may we have the faith to rise up on eagles’ wings … even if we don’t realize it … It can and WILL happen … may it be so for all of us … Thanks be to God …