Please read this passage before reading the homily.
To a people loaded down with grief, guilt, and all kinds of sorrow, to a people in despair, to people numbed with disaster, God speaks through the prophet to ask if they know who God is! God is not someone crawling on the floor, trying to find the right path. Rather our God soars on high like an eagle, like a well-decorated general off to another spectacular victory, and like an eternal creating God who never grows tired of creating, saving, and doing.
Our God is not anonymous or unknown, one hidden from our lives. Our God, however, is a God of surprises, one whom we cannot decipher, trick, control, or master. The prophet Isaiah may be speaking to a people expecting to return from exile, but he also speaks to the generations after the exile, to people who have longed full relief and redemption before Christ, and to us who have come to know the Christ and who eagerly await to celebrate his birth and to welcome him when he comes again.
The God Isaiah proclaims is the God of strength and majesty. The God who came in answer to Isaiah’s promise is the God who shows strength and majesty by taking on the lowliness of human flesh. The strong God is meek and gentle. The strong God, clothed in the weakness of death and tomb, will rise from weakness into the glorious God of resurrection and new life.
God answers our challenges to God by saying that our ways are not hidden to God, but that God knows our hearts and comes to save us. Grief, guilt and sorrow are not end of our existence because God will come and change our sorrow, guilt and grief into hymns of praise to the one who makes us soar like eagles.