Isaiah 40:21-31
Before I read our scripture for today, I want to give you some background. This passage was written during the time of the Babylonian exile. Jerusalem had been defeated, the temple had been destroyed, and everybody with any status had been deported to Babylon. They saw this defeat either as a sign of God’s judgment upon them, or as proof that Marduk, the god of the Babylonians, was more powerful than their god.
At the time of this writing, the people had been in Babylon quite a long time, probably 40 years or more. Isaiah is now telling them it is time to go home. It is time to return to the lives they’d left behind, to their religious and cultural center. But life in Babylon isn’t so bad. They have significant freedom. No, they can’t live in the land they believed God had promised to them. But they can still own land and start businesses. No, they can’t rebuild the temple; but they can continue their worship practices. To return to Jerusalem, they would have to leave the new lives they had built. Many of them didn’t even remember Jerusalem. And they didn’t really remember God.
So Isaiah responds by telling them about the greatness of God. Listen to Isaiah 40, beginning with verse 21.
Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.
Let me pause here for a moment, to make this clear. Isaiah is reminding the people that God is the greatest god, the only God. God is the Creator of all that is. “God is high. We are low. God is lofty. We are scurrying bugs. God plays with the stars. We make mud pies. We must be all-but invisible, all-but inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. What other conclusion can one draw?”[1]
And then Isaiah makes a grand leap. Let’s look at one more verse, verse 27. Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”?
“Why do we say that??? Well good grief, you just backed us into a corner where we could draw no other conclusion! If you want to bolster our confidence that God can see us, then don’t set us up by making our smallness so vivid and undeniable!”[2]
But Isaiah continues:
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. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those 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.
See, there’s the beauty! God is the Creator of heaven and earth, and we are tiny by comparison, AND God sees us and knows us and loves us. And the God of incomparable strength shares that strength with us.
This reminds me of the 18th century rabbi who told his disciples: “Everyone must have two pockets, with a note in each pocket, so that he or she can reach into the one or the other, depending on the need. When feeling lowly and depressed, discouraged or disconsolate, one should reach into the right pocket, and, there, find the words: ‘For my sake was the world created.’ But when feeling high and mighty one should reach into the left pocket, and find the words: ‘I am but dust and ashes.’”[3]
Yes, we are creatures of dust. We are little more than grasshoppers. And we are of infinite worth, loved by God. Have you not known? Have you not heard? Well, we have heard. But there is a big difference between hearing and knowing.
A friend of mine from college—I’ll call her Sharon—had a very rough childhood. She did not grow up in a caring, loving family. Her father’s punishments were harsh and abusive. Her mother was alternately emotionally absent and verbally cruel. And then, when Sharon was ten years old, she was molested. And then, when she was twelve, she was attacked again. Sharon decided somewhere along the way that it was safer to give herself away than to be taken by force. She also discovered that alcohol deadened the emotions, at least for a while. And the two destructive behaviors fed upon one another.
Sharon was sixteen when she got pregnant. She knew her father would beat her if he found out, and I think she earnestly believed he would kill her. The father of the child was in no position to help, and Sharon had no safe place to turn. She chose the only solution she could envision, and she got an abortion. A few years later, when she was in college, she was still tormented by the decision she’d made. She had vivid nightmares fueled by anti-abortion posters and protestors. Every anti-abortion message she heard was an anti-Sharon message. I remember trying to talk to her about grace, about how she did the best she could at the time, about how the trauma in her life had led her to this point. None of it mattered. In her mind, she had sinned, and although she had heard that God forgave her she could not accept it. She did not know it.
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
Years ago I knew a young man who had been taught that he was an abomination. He was told that his feelings were unnatural—even though they felt natural to him. He was told that his “lifestyle” was incompatible with Christian teachings and so he felt incompatible to Christ. He struggled terribly, trying to decide which part of him would win—the part that longed for God, or the part that longed to be loved the way he felt born to love. In the process of the struggle, he made some bad choices, but ultimately he found a wonderful man and I really thought they would live happily ever after. But one of those careless choices born out of his inner turmoil led to becoming HIV+, and he decided his family was right—it must have been God’s punishment. And so he left the one who loved him. I don’t know what became of him, but I still wish I could say to him: Have you not heard …that God loves you? Have you not known …of God’s grace?
It takes more than hearing to know it. Your story may or may not be as dramatic as either of these. Your knowing or un-knowing may be more subtle. But it is such a common ailment, that you probably have experienced it at some time.
As Christians, we have heard a great deal.
We have heard that prayer changes things, but we may not have seen it happen. We have heard that Jesus is the answer, but we’re not even sure of the question. We have heard “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want;” but we sometimes feel like lost sheep and we have many wants.
We have heard so much. We have heard of God’s grace. We have heard that God loves us unconditionally. We have heard that we were created in the image of God. But we haven’t known it. We haven’t known God’s grace—for if we had, we would give ourselves a little more of it. We haven’t known God’s unconditional love—for if we had, we would love without “if’s,” and “when’s” and “maybe’s.” We haven’t known that we were created in the image of God—for if we had, we could never look at another person and not see that they, too, were created in the image of God. We have heard, but we haven’t known. We haven’t internalized it; we haven’t lived by it; we haven’t believed.
But what if . . . what if we only needed to hear something once to believe it? What if you could tell your spouse just once that you love them, and that was enough, and they would never doubt it and they would always feel it? What if you could tell your children just once that you think they’re awesome, and that was enough, and they would never doubt it and they would always feel it? What if I could tell my parishioners just once that God loves them, and that was enough, and they would never doubt it and they would always feel it?
Well, for starters I might be out of a job! Or maybe my job would be transformed, because maybe, if we really knew it, we could move on to other things. But instead it’s a message we need to hear again and again.
Bill Moyers once asked Archbishop Desmond Tutu “What was the worst thing about apartheid?” Tutu replied, “Ultimately, it’s the way it makes you doubt that you are a child of God. When you are subjected to treatment [like] that . . . you begin to say, ‘Hey, maybe they are right.’ Language is very powerful. Language does not describe reality. Language creates the reality that it describes. And so when they call you a non-European, a non-this, you might think it isn’t working on you. But in fact, it is corrosive of your self-image. You end up wondering whether you are actually as human as those others. You wonder ‘Does God actually love me, black, as he loves a white child?’ I think that for me it was getting to say to black people, as the black consciousness movement did, ‘God didn’t mistake creating you black. Celebrate who you are. God loves you.’ And that became for me very central in the sermons that I was preaching. Actually, I preach only one sermon. I’ve always preached one sermon.”[4] God loves you.
He repeated that refrain in a class I was privileged to take with him in seminary. He said it again and again: I preach only one sermon. God loves you. He said he preaches it again and again because people need to hear it again and again. Have you not known? Have you not heard? We need to hear it again and again so we can know.
But we also need to do our part to internalize the message. Although I’m responsible for reminding you, you are responsible for believing it. Going from hearing to knowing requires relationship, and relationships don’t happen overnight.
Jackie used to work with women in a shelter for domestic violence. She taught the women to do the relationship hokey pokey. When you meet someone for the first time, you don’t put your whole self in. You put your right foot in. You take your right foot out. Then you check to make sure your right foot is OK. Then you put your right foot back in and you shake it all about! When you’ve survived the right foot, you put the left foot in. You don’t put your whole self in on the first date! In order to trust someone, you need to know them.
So if we’re going to move from hearing about God’s love to really knowing God’s love, God can’t be a distant stranger … or even the nice old uncle whose house we visit a couple Sundays a month. If we’re going to move from hearing about God’s love to really knowing God’s love, we have to spend time with God, talk to God, develop trust in God. We move from hearing to knowing through relationship.
Have you not heard? Have you not heard of God’s love and grace and forgiveness? I know you have. You’ve heard it a hundred times—or at least as many times as you’ve heard me preach, and I’m pretty sure John McCall was no different in this regard. The bigger question is: Have you not known? Have you not known God’s grace? Not just in your brain but in your spirit? I pray you have. I pray you will. Because then you will mount up with wings like eagles. And you deserve to fly.
[1] Hoezee, Scott. Epiphany 5B, February 02, 2015. The Center for Excellence in Preaching.
[2] Ibid.
[3] http://www.soulcoin.com/HumilityandJoy.html
[4] http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/archives/watch-tutu.html