While browsing through the New York Times best sellers lists,
I noticed that the top best seller for advice books continues to be, ‘The Secret.’
Some of you may be familiar with this book or the movie of the same name.
Further research on the topic revealed ‘The Secret’ to be just another restatement
of an age old theme, the law of attraction, that like attracts like.
The author of ‘The Secret,’ Rhonda Byrne, says,
“we attract into our lives the things we want,
and that is based on what we’re thinking and feeling.
The principle explains that we create our own circumstances
by the choices we make in life.
And the choices we make are fueled by our thoughts,
which means our thoughts are the most powerful things we have here on earth.”
It boils down to three words, ‘ask, believe, receive.’
There is no limit to what you can ask for and what you can receive.
One expert on ‘The Secret’ says that the universe is like a giant order desk.
With the right attitude you can order whatever you want,
you just have to ask, believe and receive.
Jack Canfield, author of the ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul,’ books claims,
“If you think about it, the universe has a conveyor belt of presents lined up for you,
and until you receive the one and fully are grateful for it,
the next one can’t come out of the chute. It’s all lined up.”
Its all lined up.
The secret to abundant life would seem to be knowing how to ask, believe and receive. Gift after gift after gift.
All lined up on the giant conveyor belt of the universe,
just waiting for me to wish it into my life.

One person who posted a comment regarding the impact of The Secret on her life wrote,
What’s so awesome about the secret
is that it’s not anything new to those who are Christians!
All through the Bible it speaks about the law of attraction,
but Jesus refers to it as ‘the kingdom of God.’
She quotes verses such as Jesus saying that if we have faith as small as a mustard seed, we could tell a mountain to move and it would.
Its really awesome, says the writer,
to see that God has allowed the secret of His kingdom to be revealed to the world.
Then she concludes, actually that’s how my mom got her 1st Mercedes Benz 3 years ago.

Now I don’t want to be too critical here.
After all there’s nothing wrong with having a nice car.
I happen to like well built cars,
in fact for many years I myself happened to own a German engineered automobile.
It was a Volkswagen Rabbit.
It had very advanced features
such as being able to suck in the snow from outside the car on the coldest winter days
and blow it inside when you tried to turn the heater on.
There were many other unadvertised options
which also came with this marvel of engineering.
Perhaps I was just not wishing hard enough.

Just imagine if this were true.
That the kingdom of God Jesus spoke about,
consists of nothing more than the law of attraction,
that the secret to abundant life is all about naming it and claiming it.
But I think most people are more intelligent than that
and I know that all of us here are far too intelligent
to believe that the abundant life is all about getting what we want.
Besides we know, don’t we, that it’s a rare day when we actually get what we want.
Life often disappoints us.
And books like ‘The Secret’ and a whole host of others,
are bound to disappoint us when we realize
that its not just about wishing that things were a certain way.
Wishing it were so doesn’t make it so.
People have known this throughout history.
Certainly the people of Israel understood this intimately.
Our text this morning is part of what some modern scholars call Third Isaiah.
Roughly speaking there are three major divisions to the Old Testament book of Isaiah. The first part of the book concerns the prophecies of Isaiah
in the time leading up to the fall of northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrian empire. The book of Isaiah in this section is concerned with trying to warn the kings of Israel about their impending doom and how to avoid such a disastrous scenario.
Second Isaiah, starting from chapter 40, concerns a different period of time,
the time of the return of the exiles
during the reign of Cyrus of Persia, some 150 years later.
In this section Isaiah speaks words of hope and restoration,
that God will continue to restore and care for his people.
Our text this morning is from what is sometimes called Third Isaiah,
and its primary focus is on being faithful
despite what seems to be the delay in God’s restoration of his people.

Those who returned from exile to what was once called Israel
did not experience the restoration of the old kingdom.
Life did not become suddenly abundant.
Life was still very hard and difficult for many.
God seemed not willing, or not able, to deliver on his promises.
“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God,” begins Second Isaiah.
“Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins…
you who bring good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain.
You who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout,
lift up and do not be afraid,
say to the towns of Judah, Here is your God.
See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power and his arm rules for him.
See, his reward is with him and his recompense accompanies him.
He tends his flock like a shepherd,
he gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart,
he gently leads those that have young.”

Sounds like an abundant life if you ask me.
But the problem was that for the returning exiles,
these promises seemed so unfulfilled.
And so they complain, they complain to God.
Earlier in chapter 58 the people ask,
“Why have we fasted and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves and you have not noticed?”
These are questions perhaps we also have asked of God.
You promise us life, and life abundantly.
But our lives are far from abundant.
We know too much need, we know too much pain, we know too much strife.
The things we think will bring us peace and rest,
we don’t seem to be getting from God.
Where is the healing, where is the provision, where is the abundance?
The people of Israel asked the same questions.
But God is ahead of the game.

If we are frustrated in our desire for abundance in life,
it may be due to at least a couple of things.
Isaiah speaks clearly about what the first reason might be.
“Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
Raise your voice like a trumpet,” says God to the prophet.
“Declare to my people their rebellion and to the house of Jacob their sins.
For day after day they seek me out,
they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
and has not forsaken the commands of its God.”
Its quite the indictment.
For day after day they seek me out,
they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what it right.
As if.
Part of what might frustrate us in our search for abundance
is that we have not been faithful.
Israel thought it was being faithful, but God clearly isn’t buying it.
As if.
Why don’t you see our fasting, why don’t you notice our humbling ourselves?
As if, says God.
“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers.
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife and in striking each other with wicked fists.
Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?”

How can we know anything of God’s abundance for us
if our worship of God is rooted only in formalities?
Its not that the people of Israel are not religious,
that would be easy to condemn, says one commentator.
No, they are hyper correct in their religious observances
and delighted to exhibit their piety,
but in their very exercise of religion they miss the essential point,
God’s order of compassionate justice. (Paul D. Hanson. Interpretation: Isaiah 40-66)
We ought to be asking ourselves,
has our faith become mired in the exhibition of our piety?
Have we converted our faith into private acts of study and ritual,
exempting the entirety of our social relationships from the practice of our faith? (Hanson)
How does what we do on Sunday translate into Monday through Saturday?
What does the living out of our prayers and our confessions
look like outside the walls of this sanctuary?
Does God look upon us and is he pleased with our faith or does he say, as if?
You want abundance, you seem to seek me out, eager to know my ways,
as if you really wanted to have me come near you, God might be saying to us.
But are we truly honest in our desire for God to come near us,
for God to move with us from Sunday to Monday?
Do we really want to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
Will we share our food with the hungry
and provide the poor wanderer with shelter,
clothe the naked and not turn away from a brother or sister in need?

The first part of the secret to abundant life
is to be honest in the assessment of our faithful response to God.
Is our faith one merely of words or is it one rooted in action?
Do we merely confess or do we live out what we confess,
no matter that it might be difficult in many situations?
A few weeks back I said that God has created us in such a way
that the only way we can be rich toward God is to be rich toward people.
We cannot say we love God, who we cannot see,
if we don’t love the brother or sister who we can see.
And so Isaiah continues in the words of our text this morning,
“If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger,
the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.”
Isaiah moves us from as if to if.
If we will do what is right in God’s sight,
which can only be translated into how we treat people and God’s creation,
then God does promise us abundance in life.

But here is the second part of what might be frustrating us
in our search for the secret to abundant life.
If we show our love for God by loving the people God has placed in our lives,
and if we show our richness toward God by being rich toward people,
then it might mean that our conception of what constitutes abundance in life
may have to be reevaluated.
If you give of yourself, if you work for justice, for mercy and compassion,
if you share your food, your time, your resources,
then your light will rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your need in parched places
and make your bones strong and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water whose waters never fail.
Abundance, in God’s kingdom, is not about naming it and claiming it.
Abundance, in God’s kingdom,
which is a kingdom about far more than just the law of attraction,
is not about what kind of car we drive,
what kind of home we live in,
what kind of clothes we wear,
what kind of food we eat
or the size of our bank accounts.
In our search for the secret to abundant life,
our society has gotten it so twisted.
Abundance is never about what we can acquire for ourselves.
Abundance is all about being able to share and give and serve.
And my friends, the truth is that all of us,
no matter how wealthy or poor we think we are,
can know this abundance in our lives.
We can know it because God is the one who gives it,
who will make our light rise in the darkness,
who satisfies our parched places and makes our bones strong,
who makes us like a watered garden, a spring whose waters never fail.

The secret to abundant life is to stop buying into the fallacy
that our world so persuasively sells,
that everything is about scarcity.
If we share we won’t have enough for ourselves.
Its the false notion of scarcity
which tells us that there isn’t enough food or medicine for all in the world.
There’s more than enough,
if only we can find a way to share without being convinced
that by sharing I’m somehow losing out.
The good news is that many of us are getting it
and are no longer buying into this notion of scarcity,
that we have to look out only for ourselves.
Look at how many people volunteer their time, their resources, their gifts
to help house the homeless, feed the poor, care for the hurting and broken.
I am so heartened by the number of young people
who will gladly pick up a hammer or shovel
and help build homes through mission trips or through Habitat for Humanity.
And they’re doing this not only to pad their resumes,
but because they truly want to make a difference.
They long for community, compassion and hope.
Abundance in God’s kingdom is measured in a very different way.
The fallacy is to think that we can only help others
once we have garnered an abundance in our lives.
When I have enough money I will give to the poor.
When I have enough knowledge I will share what I know with others.
When I have enough time I will volunteer my time for others.
When I know that I won’t be in need, I will give to the needy.
If we take this attitude we will fall into a never ending trap.
Once we buy into the notion of scarcity,
that I have to have enough before I can risk helping,
we will find that we can never have enough money,
we can never have enough time,
we can never have enough energy or what have you.
Abundance, the abundance God speaks of, comes as we give of ourselves.
The secret to abundant life is to live a life which gives, which serves, which sacrifices.

Jim Wallis, director of the Sojourners Community
tells a story of a 19-year-old college student from Howard University,
mentoring an 8-year-old little girl off the street.
That little girl looks at that college sophomore and says,
‘She’s a black woman just like I’m going to be.
And she’s smart. And she likes me.
In fact, she thinks I’m smart and she thinks I should go to college. Maybe I will.’
The little girl thinks, ‘Maybe I will!’
Then that college student looks at that little kid and says,
‘You know, the best two hours of my week are the time I spend with her.
Then my life feels like it has some meaning or some purpose.
I can’t just pursue this road to prosperity and success and be satisfied or happy.
I want to do something in my life that makes a difference in the lives of kids like her.’ (“We all get healed.” The Rev. Jim Wallis, 30 Good Minutes, 2000)
This young woman knows the secret to abundant life.
And there are many more just like her.
I’m pretty sure there’s a bunch of you sitting here this morning
who know this secret as well.
Our abundance is not in gathering, but in giving,
not in stocking up but in sharing with others.
Abundance isn’t in the wishing, in the thinking,
it is in the living, its in the doing.
This world is in desperate need of people, of men and women, young and old,
who will be called the repairers of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
You want abundance in life?
Stop gathering, stop hoarding, stop buying into the false notion of scarcity.
Start spending, start sharing, start giving knowing that in God there is enough for all.

A final word.
Our text serves as a corrective to a faith
that can become merely ritualistic or centered on self piety.
Our faith is about more than mere formalities or mouthing repetitive words.
But just in case we might become mistaken at the other extreme,
Isaiah reminds us, as our passage ends,
that acts of loving kindness toward the neighbour do not exhaust the life of faith.
They must culminate in worship.
Paul Hanson, who teaches Old Testament at Harvard writes,
“The life of compassionate justice comes to its most sublime expression
by taking delight in the Lord.
This completes the all encompassing harmony
characterized by God’s order of justice and mercy.
Even as they live true to the image of God in their day to day life
by imitating God’s acts of loving kindness
and giving expression to authentic community through mutual caring,
God’s people celebrate the origin of all life in life’s source through worship,
by honouring God in a special way on the Sabbath.” (Hanson)
“If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, says the Lord,
from pursuing your own interests on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honourable,
if you honour it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs,
then you shall take delight in the Lord
and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth.
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

My friends, there is no life more abundant
than the life which knows the delight of the Lord.
It is expressed in living out our lives in acts of loving kindness toward others,
but it is always rooted in worship,
worship of the one who gave his one and only son,
so that indeed we might have life and have it abundantly.
May it be so for us all.
And to God be the glory, now and forevermore, Amen.