From 1942 to 1945, Viktor Frankl endured imprisonment in Auschwitz and two other Nazi concentration camps. Those who survived the filth and hunger and cold survived because they had hope. They had something to live for beyond the barbed wire. But those who gave up on their future were lost. They refused to respond to events around them or take action to maintain themselves. They didn’t survive because they lost the will to survive.

Some 600 years before Christ, Israel was trapped in the barbed wire of Babylon. They were ready to give up and die. They were consumed with despair. The people had real doubts about the Lord’s ability to free them and bring them home. The verses just before our text, Isaiah 40:12-20, announce that the Lord was – and is – the one and only God. He transcends creation and history.

He is unlike the idols of Babylon, and cannot even be compared with anyone or anything else. The Lord is Creator and King who exercises a full monopoly of power and authority. Contrary to the gods and goddesses of Babylon, the Lord is not some national deity or an individual person’s idol. He is the only true God. The people of Israel needed hope, and this is what Isaiah promises.

Now that I’ve laid out the relevant context of our text for today, I want to warn you. What you are about to hear is a fowl sermon. In fact, it’s a very fowl sermon. Just a few weeks ago, someone actually told me my sermons were improving over time, but I dare say that this sermon may be the fowlest sermon you’ve ever heard.

The word fowl that I’m talking about isn’t spelled F O U L. That kind of foul is reserved for baseballs that don’t stay between the chalk lines, words that are less than appropriate, and basketball moves that are illegal. The fowl I’m talking about is spelled F O W L, as in, you know, birds.

People in the ancient Near East often used birds to make a point. In Exodus 19, the Lord tells Moses "You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself." Assyrian king Sennacherib, in his own personal account of his siege of Jerusalem wrote that he shut up King Hezekiah "in the midst of Jerusalem, like a bird in a cage."

That was in the 8^th century BC. Miraculously, Jerusalem didn’t fall. But it did fall two hundred years later to Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. Sticking with the bird theme, today I’m going to use birds to make a point or two.

Isaiah is addressing people who know the steadfast love of God. They knew the story how he delivered their fathers from exile in Egypt. Now they were in bondage again. This time, though, they were in bondage because they had behaved like birds themselves. They had been like a bunch of vultures, attracted to what was dead.

Isaiah 30:1-5 says "Woe to the obstinate children, declares the Lord, to those who carry out plans that are not mine, forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit, heaping sin upon sin; who go down to Egypt without consulting me; who look for help to Pharaoh’s protection, to Egypt’s shade for refuge. But Pharaoh’s protection will be to your shame, Egypt’s shade will bring you disgrace. Though they have officials in Zoan and their envoys have arrived in Hanes, everyone will be put to shame because of a people useless to them, who bring neither help nor advantage, but only shame and disgrace."

They had behaved like peacocks, consumed with themselves. "The women of Zion are haughty, walking along with outstretched necks, flirting with their eyes, tripping along with mincing steps, with ornaments jingling on their ankles." (Is 3:16)

They were like crows who could only carp, complain, and criticize. "They are rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord’s instruction. They say to the seers, ‘see no more visions,’ and to the prophets, ‘Give us no more visions of what is right. Tell us pleasant things, prophecy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel.’" (Is 30:9-11)

And like a bunch of chickens, they were content with the low life. "Woe to those who rise early in the morning to run after their drinks, who stay up late at night until they are inflamed with wine. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight. Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent." (Is 5:11, 20-23)

We can be dirty birds as well. Our sinful nature is attracted to what is dead. Sometimes we flaunt our status and possessions. Like a Pharisee, we thank God that we’re not like other sinners, robbers, evil-doers and tax collectors.

We all think we have something to crow about, we pride-fully think we will be seated in a place of honor at Jesus’ right or left hand in his kingdom. We brag about fasting and giving a tenth of all we get. And God knows that there’s a part of us that loves the low life. But nothing good lives in us. Like Paul, even if we have the desire to do what is good, we just can’t follow through.

To a people in bondage, Isaiah says "wait." Eagles only soar when they position themselves high on a rock and wait for the wind to carry them aloft. Jesus told his disciples to wait. "Stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high." Ten short days later, the wait was over. Luke describes the coming of the Holy Spirit like the sound of a mighty wind. He delivered all the gifts won through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Isaiah wrote how Jesus gave his back to those who beat him, his cheeks to those who pulled out his beard. He didn’t hide his face from mocking and spitting. He set his face like flint, determined to suffer for us, and would not be put to shame. Jesus was lead to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, even though he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth, he was cut off from the land of the living. His life was made a guilt offering.

In today’s passage, Isaiah reminds the people of Israel of exactly who their Lord is. In case they have forgotten, God is the one "who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers … who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness." Isaiah knows that true power is held by the one Lord God. When God blows upon the rulers of the earth, "they wither," promises the prophet, "and the tempest carries them off like stubble."

But there is more to the message of Isaiah than a call to reform — there is also a promise of divine help. "Have you not known? Have you not heard?" asks the prophet. The Lord "gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength," says Isaiah. This is an important point — it is those who wait for the Lord who will find their strength renewed. Since there is always the danger that we will be seduced by the latest trend or temptation, it is essential for us to open our ears to what God is saying to us, and follow the guidance that the Lord wants to give us.

That guidance can also be found in the wind. It pleases the Holy Spirit to blow through the Gospel preached in its truth and purity and through the Sacraments administered in accordance with the divine Word. Where Jesus is forgiving sins, there the wind blows.

And the result? Dare I say it? A fowl sermon, a fowl day, a fowl life. But not just any old fowl. Through the forgiveness we have through faith in Christ, we are free to mount up with wings like eagles.

The eyesight of eagles is legendary. The Lord told Job: "From there, the eagle spies out the prey, his eyes behold it from far away." They say an eagle can see a rabbit from two miles away.

Eagles are some of the most committed of all birds. In Deuteronomy, Moses wrote how the eagle hovers over its young. In fact, the eagle will never forsake her young, doing whatever it takes to teach them to fly. Every day the eagle preens itself. Every day the eagle secretes a liquid from a gland in its moth that waterproofs it feathers. No wonder the proverb writer declares: "Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand: [the first of the four is] the way of an eagle in the sky.

Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians; "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come." And so amazingly, we are no longer vultures or peacocks, or chickens or crows. Sure, we can be dirty birds, but God’s grace in Christ Jesus transforms us to become like eagles.

All this, not by might and not by power, but by the Lord’s Spirit, which blows even now to love and lift us up in the name of Jesus. Amen.