'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.
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"?
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.'
--Isaiah 40: 21-31
Many
of us probably think of the prophet Isaiah as that guy who predicted Jesus’ birth;
after all, we read a lot from Isaiah around Christmas time, particularly chapter
7. But Isaiah is more than just the guy who predicted Jesus. Did you know that the Book of Isaiah has 66
chapters, making it the second longest in our Scriptural library behind the
Psalms at 150? Or did you know that
scholars have deduced that a single author did not write the whole book? In
fact, we can split Isaiah into three parts:
before the exile in Babylon—chapters 1-39—during the exile—chapters
40-55—and after the Israelites return home from exile—chapters 56-66. There’s a lot in this book, but today we
focus on chapter 40, the beginning of what is called Second Isaiah.
An Orthodox Christian icon depicting the prophet Isaiah.
Picture
this: we are living in a land that is
not our own. There had been rumors about
a great military power that was sweeping through our home, but we figured there was no way
that those folks would come for us. That
was during our grandparents’ generation!
Now, somewhere in the greatest empire on the planet we sit by a river and long for
home. We try to remember the traditions
of our ancestors, the promise of hope that God once gave us, but it’s been
almost 70 years, and we are starting to forget.
Among us, however, is a person who claims the name of a prophet who lived many
years earlier—Isaiah—and he is not preaching a message of gloom and doom as the First Isaiah did, nor
is he blaming anyone for causing this pain and misery. Instead, he is giving us a message of hope and calling us to remember.
The
prophet throws out a bunch of rhetorical questions to get our attention: Have you not known?! Have you not heard?! Has it not been told to you?! Have you not understood?! We're starting to forget that great promise: the one who sits above the circle
of the earth, the one who brings princes to naught and makes earthly rulers as
nothing, is the same one who calls everything by name, including you and me. Great in strength, mighty in power, this is
the one to whom no one and no thing can be compared. We grumble, though, saying things like, “My way
is hidden, and my right is disregarded by God,” feeling as if God has abandoned us, but the prophet, again using a
rhetorical question, bounces back: Have
you not known and heard?! The Lord is
the evelasting God. Everlasting. That means lasting for ever, from before ever, never-ending, never giving in, and
never forgetting. God did not forget us,
says this Second Isaiah—or Deutero-Isaiah, as he is often called—and if we
would just remember that, we will endure, knowing the God who made us, who loves us, who sits
by those waters of anguish with us and holds us when we cry, that God, the everlasting
God, will deliver us. We need only to remember
who we are, and who is our God.
The people who heard this prophecy did remember. They did
endure. And they did know justice and
salvation. It’s amazing what happens
when the children of God remember that they are the children of God. History is full of examples where God’s
people, downtrodden, beaten, and seemingly forgotten, have remembered who they
are, that this God is an everlasting
God, and that justice and salvation are real.
Fitting,
then, that we hear this prophecy at the beginning of February as we
celebrate Black History Month. Each
Sunday this month my congregation will be singing hymns from Lift Every Voice and Sing II, a
hymnal composed by the Episcopal Church in 1993, made of African American spirituals
and old gospel tunes. And as we sing songs like Give Me Jesus, We Shall
Overcome, and yes, Lift Every Voice and Sing, we will be reminded of the faith
of our brothers and sisters who endured the same pains as those to whom the
prophet speaks in this reading today.
And like the folks who heard Second Isaiah preaching, our brothers and
sisters, by the grace of God, remembered God’s promise of salvation, justice,
and hope. Through enslavement in a land that was not their own, black codes and Jim Crow
laws, and every which way that racism continues to rear its evil head, our
brothers and sisters endure and stand tall and proud because they know the love
of an almighty and everlasting God who delivers God’s people now, just as way
back then, from the bonds of injustice. That example continues to inspire all of us, as we work for justice
in our own time, well beyond the month of February.
Lift Every Voice and Sing II, the hymnal out of which all of our congregation songs will come this month.
This
inspiration comes from our God, who manages to always bring a message of hope in the face of
overwhelming adversity. Second Isaiah speaks at the darkest, most despair-ridden
time in the lives of the Hebrew people, and yet his message, the thing that is
brought back to the minds of those who heard, is how precious and irreplaceable
and life-giving God’s word of hope is.
Those same words of the prophet cry out to us even now. When we are feeling shame and fear: Have you not known that God loves you? When we are lost and don’t know where to
go: Have you not heard that God walks
with you? When we cannot escape the
traps of our lives and feel utterly alone:
Have you not understood that you are beloved of God? Our God is a God of
deliverance, a God who never forgets us.
We need only open our eyes and our spirits to see the majesty of God all
around us, reminding us of who we are and whose we are.
I
heard a story last week of a man who was being accosted at gun point. The man showed no fear, and when the gunman
asked how he could be so calm, the man told him, “Because you have no power
over me. I belong to God, and God will deliver me, no matter what you do!” The gunman, as the story goes, walked away,
amazed at the man’s faith. I don't know how true that story actually is, but its point is clear: this is what
happens when you remember, deep down at the core of your being, that you belong
to God. You can face anything because ultimately no force on earth has power over you if you know that! That’s what the prophet was
preaching. That’s the example of faith we honor
this month. That is the Good News for
all of us right here and now.
