イザヤ書40:12-31

目を高く上げ、誰が天の万象を創造したかを見よ。（イザヤ40:26）

本日の聖書の箇所は、外国のバビロンに連れて行かれたユダ王国の人々に対して、神様が預言者を通して語られたメッセージです。神様は、この地上の国々がいかに強い権力をもっているように見えても、世界の歴史の中ではわずかな間だけ存在するものにすぎないと言われます。15節には「見よ、国々は革袋からこぼれる一滴のしずく／天秤の上の塵と見なされる。島々は埃ほどの重さも持ちえない」とあります。「国々」はアッシリアやバビロンのような大帝国を含む古代の国々を指しています。エルサレムの都を破壊して人々をバビロンの地に連れて行ったバビロン帝国の支配は、人間の目から見れば覆すことのできない強力なものに見えたことでしょう。しかし、神様の目から見れば「革袋からこぼれる一滴のしずく」「天秤の上の塵」にすぎないと言うのです。また、「島々」とは、地中海の海沿いで繁栄していた小さな国々のことです。おそらく海上貿易で栄えていたフェニキア人の国々などを指していたのでしょう。それらの国々に至っては、神様からすれば「埃ほどの重さも持ちえない」存在でしかありませんでした。そして、17節にあるように「主の御前に、国々はすべて無に等しく／むなしくうつろなものと見なされる」というのです。

それでは、まことに力をもって存在しているのは何でしょうか？それは、この世界と宇宙をお造りになった神様です。26節には「目を高く上げ、誰が天の万象を創造したかを見よ。それらを数えて、引き出された方／それぞれの名を呼ばれる方の／力の強さ、激しい勢いから逃れうるものはない」とあります。「天の万象」とは、天に輝く星々のことです。「目を高く上げ、誰が天の万象を創造したかを見よ」とは、天に輝く星々を造られた創造主である神様を見なさい、ということです。また、28節には「あなたは知らないのか、聞いたことはないのか。主は、とこしえにいます神／地の果てに及ぶすべてのものの造り主。倦むことなく、疲れることなく／その英知は究めがたい」とあります。すべてのものの造り主である神様は、倦むことも疲れることもない方です。ですから、29節にあるように、造り主である神様は、「疲れた者に力を与え／勢いを失っている者に大きな力を与えられる」方なのです。　　　　　　　（12月15日の説教より）

The life of one person is within the history of the world. And there are persons among the people who are actively involved in the history of the world and try to create a new era. If I were to name someone who tried to create a new era in the contemporary history, I would like to name Barack Obama, who was the president of the United States for eight years from 2009. In a speech he gave in Prague, Czech Republic, in April of the year he became the president, Obama declared his aim to create a world without nuclear weapons. Then, in 2016, he became the first sitting US president to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where he reiterated his call for the abolition of nuclear weapons. While there are both positive and negative assessments of Obama’s politics in the US, his attempt to create a new era of peace should be highly commended. Unfortunately, after Obama left office, the world moved towards conflict rather than peace. In 2022, a war broke out between Russia and Ukraine, and Russia threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine and the countries supporting Ukraine.

However, the persons who are trying to create a new era are a limited few. The reality is that most people are living their lives being tossed about and swept away by the turbulent waves of history. Next to Russia, there is a small country called Estonia, which faces the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea. The novel I will be introducing in today’s sermon, Searching for Lauri Kuusk, is set in this country of Estonia. This novel depicts the lives of young people who were buffeted and swept away by the turbulent waves of Estonia’s turbulent history, but who nevertheless lived their lives to the full.

Estonia is a small country with a land area about 1.2 times the size of Kyushu in Japan and a population of around 1.32 million. The official language is Estonian, which has close ties to Finnish and German. However, around 30% of the population originally spoke Russian. The capital, Tallinn, prospered as a port city belonging to the Hanseatic League on the Baltic coast during the Middle Ages. Throughout its history, Estonia has been ruled by powerful surrounding countries for a long time, but it achieved independence in 1918 at the end of World War I. After that, it was occupied by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during World War II, and in 1944 it was re-occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union to become the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. However, in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, it regained its independence and became the Republic of Estonia, which it remains to this day.

Estonia is known around the world as a leading country in the field of information technology. In Estonia, almost all administrative procedures can be carried out online, with the exception of marriage and divorce registrations. Estonians register and use their personal information in the national information system called “X-Road.” In addition, in preparation for war or disaster, the Estonian government stores backup data of the citizens’ information in Luxembourg, Europe. This storage of citizens’ information is called the “Data Embassy.” That is, even if Estonia’s land is occupied or destroyed by war, as long as the “Data Embassy” is storing the information of Estonian citizens, Estonia will be able to revive as a country. In the novel I am introducing today, the “Data Embassy” is mentioned as follows: “As long as you have the data, you can revive your country anytime, anywhere. It’s like restoring data from the cloud to a new smartphone. It’s a way of thinking that a big country like Russia would never imagine.”

The main character of the novel, Lauri Kuusk, was born in the village of Bochnia, which is about an hour’s drive from the capital, Tallinn, at the beginning of 1977. He has always been very interested in numbers since his childhood. His father was Estonian, but he worked as a Soviet mechanical engineer. In the spring of the year Lauri was five years old, his father brought home a broken computer from the factory where he worked. His father repaired the computer and taught Lauri how to program it in the programming language BASIC. Lauri learned how to program the computer under his father’s guidance, and in the winter of the year before he started elementary school, at the age of six, he completed a small program that made snowflakes dance on the screen.

When he started elementary school, Lauri was not good at Estonian language. When Russian language was added to the curriculum in the second year, he became even worse at Russian. There was a shrewd student in his class called Aaron, who disliked Lauri for his poor Russian and bullied him. When they all played football together after school, Aaron, who was leading the group, wouldn’t let Lauri join in. Lauri, who had nowhere to go, went to the Catholic church at the entrance to the forest on the outskirts of the village. At the time, churches were viewed with suspicion as places that did not obey the government. However, the church in this village was looked after by a lazy priest called Riho, and although it was not a healthy place, it was not dangerous. Lauri began to go to this church after school to pass the time.

However, when he started his third year and the information science class began, Lauri’s heart began to beat faster as he thought, “This is my favourite one. Maybe I’ll understand this…” The computer used in the class was a KUVT made by Yamaha in Japan. The KUVT was a computer that ran on a programming language BASIC, the same as the computer that Lauri’s father had brought home from the factory where he worked. Lauri immediately wrote a program and made a game where a dragon went down the screen and avoided the flames of obstacles. His classmates were delighted and all played the game. The teacher saw this and called Lauri to the computer room after school. He told Lauri to write a programme, and Lauri immediately made a car game. In this game, one control the car left and right, and if one hit another car, the game is over. The teacher, who had seen Lauri’s talent, said, “If it’s you, you can ride this elite course of the Soviet Union. You can go to a university in Moscow and the Cybernetics Research Institute.” In this way, Lauri, who had been having a difficult time at school, began to have a goal for the future. And after finding his goal of going to a university in Moscow, Lauri began to work hard at studying Russian, which had been his weak point.

In his fourth year, Lauri made a game out of the service activity of collecting scrap iron, and it came third in a programme competition held in Moscow. In this way, Lauri’s talent gradually began to bloom. With the recommendation of his teacher, Lauri entered a Russian-language junior high school and high school in Tartu, a city in southern Estonia. A boy called Ivan, who had come first in the programming competition, was also enrolled at the school. Ivan had heard of Lauri through the programming competition and had transferred from Leningrad to become friends with Lauri.

At the junior high school and high school in Tartu, Lauri and Ivan became very close. In addition to this, they became good friends with a girl called Katja, who was good at drawing pictures on the computer. The three of them always spent time together at school, and during the summer holidays they would go to the holiday home of Katja’s family. Although the word “holiday home” sounds elegant, Katja’s father was an activist for the Estonian People’s Front, a movement to gain independence for Estonia from the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Ivan’s father was a member of the Communist Party in Leningrad. In the summer of 1990, when the three of them were enjoying a pleasant holiday at the holiday home of Katja’s family, the Estonian People’s Front won a landslide victory in the elections, and the movement towards independence gathered pace. Meanwhile, the Russian-speaking population launched a campaign to stay in the Soviet Union. This campaign was called Interfront. The Interfront movement grew, supported by the Soviet authorities. In this way, the conflict within the country became more and more decisive.

That autumn, Katja joined the Estonian independence group at school and began to take part in independence demonstrations. On the other hand, Ivan returned to Leningrad at the behest of his Communist parents. Lauri, who was Estonian but was aiming to study at a university in Moscow, joined the pro-Soviet members of Interfront after some hesitation. While many of the citizens were aiming for independence, the Interfront citizens were becoming more and more violent. One Sunday, the Interfront demonstration that Lauri was taking part in turned violent and tried to take over the city hall. The two groups clashed as the independence-minded citizens tried to defend the city hall. And Katja, who was among the independence-minded citizens, was injured in the spinal cord by the violence of the Interfront demonstrators and became a paraplegic. In this way, the friendship between the three of them was destroyed. In August 1991, Estonia declared its independence, and the President of the Russian Republic, which was the most powerful of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin, recognised the independence of the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Then, in December of that year, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus left the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union, which had boasted of its great power, collapsed.

After that, Lauri was distressed because Katja had become paralysed from the waist down due to the movement he had joined, and he gave up his dream of going to university and started working as a mechanical engineer at a spinning mill. He also stopped writing computer programs. Feeling betrayed by the Soviet Union, he lost all hope in life and became a shell of a person. However, something happened that gave Lauri his hope back again. He then goes on to do important work creating the information systems that form the basis of Estonia. Furthermore, he is reunited with his old friend Ivan and is able to make peace with Katja. You can find out how this happens by reading the novel Serching for Lauri Kuusk.

This story of a person who nearly loses the will to live in the turbulent waves of history and then is reborn has something in common with the message of the Bible. In Isaiah 40:30-31, which we read today, God says as follows.

Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.

In what kind of history were these words spoken? In the ancient Near East, there were two places that are said to be the cradles of human civilisation. One was Egypt, and the other was Mesopotamia. In Egypt, there was a kingdom where the king, the Pharaoh, had great power, as shown by the remains of the pyramids. In Mesopotamia, there was an empire called Assyria that conquered and ruled over the surrounding countries. And in the area between these two powerful countries, there were many small countries. One of them was the Kingdom of Judah, with Jerusalem as its capital.

The Kingdom of Judah was originally part of the Kingdom of Israel. After the death of Solomon, the third king of Israel, the kingdom split into two kingdoms, the southern kingdom becoming the Kingdom of Judah. The Kingdom of Judah was ruled by the descendants of David, the great king of the Kingdom of Israel. Some of the kings descended from David were good, but most were bad and did not follow God’s teachings. As a result, the kingdom was destroyed in 587 BC by the judgment of God. It was the Babylonian Empire that destroyed the Kingdom of Judah. Babylon had originally been a country ruled by the Assyrian Empire, but it gradually gained strength and rebelled against the Assyrian Empire, eventually destroying it. Not only that, but it also destroyed the Kingdom of Judah, which the Assyrian Empire had been unable to destroy. Jerusalem, the capital of the Kingdom of Judah, was completely destroyed by the army of the Babylonian Empire, and 4,600 of the kingdom’s leaders were taken to the Babylonian Empire (Jeremiah 52:30). This is known as the Babylonian Captivity. The people taken to Babylon were not enslaved but were allowed to live with a certain degree of freedom. However, many of these people did not settle down in Babylon, but longed for the day when they would return to the city of Jerusalem.

Today’s Bible passage is a message from God, spoken through a prophet, to the people who had been taken to the foreign land of Babylon. God says that no matter how powerful the nations of this earth may seem, they are only temporary in the history of the world. Verse 15 says as follows.

Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
and are accounted as the dust on the scales;
behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.

The term “nations” refers to ancient nations including great empires such as Assyria and Babylon. The Babylonian Empire, which destroyed the city of Jerusalem and took the people to the land of Babylon, must have seemed to be an unassailable and powerful force in the eyes of man. However, from God’s perspective, they were no more than “a drop from a bucket” or “the dust on the scales.” The “coastlands” are the small countries that prospered along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. They probably refer to the Phoenician countries that prospered through maritime trade. From God’s perspective, these countries were nothing more than “fine dust.” And verse 17 says, “All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.”

So what is it that truly exists with power? It is God, who created this world and the universe. In verse 26 the prophet says as follows.

Lift up your eyes on high and see:
who created these?
He who brings out their host by number,
calling them all by name;
by the greatness of his might,
and because he is strong in power,
not one is missing.

The phrase “their host,” i.e., heavenly host, refers to the stars that shine in the heavens. The phrase “Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these?” means “look at God, who created the stars.” In verse 28, the prophet says “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.” The God who is “the Creator of the ends of the earth” is someone who “does not faint or grow weary.” Therefore, as verse 29 says, the Creator God is someone who “gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.”

There are some entities in this world that seem to have great power. A country is a prime example. In the novel I introduced today, the Soviet Union was just such an entity. And Lauri, who tried to live his life relying on that great power, ended up failing. However, Lauri was able to gain new strength and make a comeback. The novel does not say that he was a man who believed in God. However, perhaps his friendship with a priest when he was a boy nurtured in him a desire for something eternal that transcends earthly countries. The time in which we are living now is a time when world history is changing dramatically. In such a time, let us live by putting our trust in the Creator God, who never changes. And for that reason, I sincerely hope that you will come to know Jesus Christ, who showed us the love of God, the Creator.