February 8, 2009 - Epiphany 5 (RCL)
In a world going out of control, who is in charge?
That’s the question
that seems to be behind
our reading from the Old Testament today.
These words from Isaiah were most likely spoken
to the people of God
when they were in exile
in Babylon.
These were the people
who we read about last summer
in our Old Testament readings.
Their ancestor Abraham
had left the city of Ur
over in what we today call Iraq,
and followed the promise of God,
and settled in the promised land,
what we now call Israel.
And then his son, Isaac, and grandson, Jacob,
they too enjoyed
the promised land.
But in his great-grandson Joseph’s time
famine forced them away
south-west into Egypt,
where their descendants lived
for something like 400 years.
And then, when they wanted to return
to that fabled, promised land,
it was a long and bitter struggle
between their leader, Moses, and the Egyptian leader, Pharaoh,
until they were finally released
and began the journey
to what the family stories said
was home.
And even then
it wasn’t easy.
It took forty years
of wandering in the desert
before they entered
that promised land, their homeland,
a generation of tents and dust and uncertainty,
and then the battles with those
who had settled in their home
in the years that they had abandoned it,
until finally
it was home
once again.
And they were like any other nation,
with a judiciary
and monarchy
and cities and farms and villages.
Settled.
Stable.
At peace.
And then
their country
was invaded.
They were taken prisoner
and dragged into exile.
And exile not just anywhere,
but exile to Babylon,
not far from Ur, the place that their ancestor Abraham
had come from.
It was as if
their history
had never happened,
the promise
reversed.
All those long years
of traveling and slavery and struggle
and Abraham might as well just have stayed at home
and had his descendants there in Ur.
They would have been better off.
God should
have just left them alone.
No wonder they felt hopeless.
They wanted with all their hearts
to be home,
back in the land of their ancestors,
back in the land of promise,
their own land, their own homes.
Instead
they were forced into serving
their captors,
told to dance and sing
and serve as entertainment.
Deep down
they must have wondered if
it had all been a fantasy,
and they were where they should always have been
free of the pretensions of promise,
back in the homeland of their ancestor,
dust and toil and sweat
just as they had been promised
in the curse of the Fall.
And they wondered, of course they wondered,
whether God
had abandoned them.
If God even existed.
Or, of God did,
maybe he
was just a minor God,
a good luck charm, but nothing
more.
And then
the prophet
speaks.
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.
Listen up.
God
is still God.
Nothing
that has happened
can change that.
God is the one
who exists beyond all time and space.
God is the one
who was before all things
and will be
beyond all things.
At the very
birth of all creation,
in beginning
God was there.
And God created, God created this world
like a tent.
Tents for us
tend to make us think of camping,
and my childhood memories of that, or at least of one camping trip in particular,
are of feeling drips
when the old canvas leaked,
or terrified as the wind howled
that the ropes would break
and we would all blow into the sea.
But For the people of God in the time of Isaiah,
tents were what you lived in much of the time,
whether you were out with the flocks,
or settling in a new home. Sure, they had houses,
but tents were infinitely expandable
for extended family
and guests.
And a tent was the place
that had housed the presence of God,
all those years wandering in the wilderness
and beyond, in all the years of judges and the early years of kings,
until the time
when King Solomon
built a temple.
That tent
was a holy place,
and the tent of God’s whole creation
encompasses and protects and makes holy
the world that we live in.
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.
Listen up.
God
has not forgotten you. God
is not powerless.
The people who overran you land, the people who hold you in exile,
the people who force you to serve them,
they think they are in control.
But they’re kidding themselves.
God created them,
not the other way round.
Just as God created you
and knows every single one of you.
God is so much, so much bigger
that they
or you
can imagine,
and in the end
it is God
who will be
in control.
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.
When things are bad, we tend to assume
that God
isn’t interested.
That God has abandoned us.
That God no longer - or perhaps never - cares.
It’s not all about us.
This struggle
that you’re having,
it’s not punishment.
It’s not God’s negligence.
There is no God-ly reason for it at all.
There are no easy solutions
to the people’s despair.
What there is,
is assurance.
Assurance that no matter what,
God is still there. God still cares for them,
God will give them strength and power
when they need it most.
All they need to do
is know,
know and trust
that God is God.
The promise to Abraham
has not, will not
fail.
The God who is the creator of all things
will continue to be
their God.
And the God who is the creator of all things
will lift them
and strengthen them
so that they will no longer be bent over, bowed down, carrying a huge weight,
but will walk, run, even fly,
by the grace of God.
And it’s a message for us too.
God is God.
When everything around us
seems to spin out of control,
God is God.
When we are uncertain,
God is God.
When we are struggling,
God is God.
Creator of the world,
so much greater than us, that we are like grasshoppers,
but reaching out, reaching down
to the weakest among us, those of us who have no power, no strength. And lifting us.
And we are God’s people. Called to be faithful,
called to hope, called to worship.
And all of us sometimes need
to be reminded of that.
Of the God who created us,
and the God who holds us up.
A reminder
that is in the words of Isaiah,
and the words of the poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins.
THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
“God’s grandeur”
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2009