Near the end of the 40th chapter of Isaiah we get
a picture of the kind of lament that Israel is giving voice to in the difficult
time of their exile in Babylon.
They longed to return to their home, their place, to be restored
as a community.
But they also felt that God had done them wrong, that God
had promised them blessing
And here they were experiencing what felt like curse.
Here’s the picture we get:
The prophet writes:
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”?
This was their lament.
God does not care what I do—God does not care if I get what is fair or
what is unfair.
This lament is honest and authentic. And it is a prayer that people raise out of
the pain of their own experience and experience of their neighbors, their
community.
Where are you God? It says.
This is something that the people felt more and more I
imagine as the years turned into decades and the decades into a generation and
exile from their homeland became more and more a permanent reality.
It felt more and more that either God couldn’t see the
suffering of the people.
Or God didn’t care.
And it’s into this experience, this lament, which is honest
and true,
That the prophet brings God’s promise.
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.
The people have become faint and weary, they are exhausted
young and old.
But, the prophet reminds them,
God does not become faint or weary or exhausted.
God’s word outlasts all things.
“The grass withers, the flower fades;
but the word of our God will stand forever.”
And so, those who wait in hope will be renewed in strength.
Those who listen with tenacious endurance, will hear again
the promise,
And will see again in their own hearts and in their own
place,
God’s presence where they only felt absence.
In the midst of our lament, God speaks a word of promise.
It is an ancient word, ever new.
A word as old as the response of the Creator to the
creation, saying “Very good.”
I believe that God speaks,
into individual lives
and into communities.
This is what is called revelation, or prophecy.
And this is why we still have chapter 40 of Isaiah.
Because this chapter records a moment when the people of God
heard the word of God through someone in the community.
I think it’s interesting that when God speaks to the people
of God in the scriptures.
It’s always through a prophet, through some embodied person
in the community who has received a word and struggled with whether or not and
with how to say it to the people that person felt they were being called to say
it.
And the word is very often a word of reminding.
This goes way back.
Abraham receives a word of promise from God. It is a renewal of the blessing of creation –
Abraham’s children will become a fruitful family who will bring blessing to the
creation.
And Moses who receives the promise of God – it is a promise
of liberation from bondage – for what purpose?
To live into the blessing of creation for which God had
formed them.
And yet suffering has a way of causing us to forget the
promise of God that has given strength and vision to communities ancient and
modern.
And this was the case for the community in exile for whom
Isaiah’s words came like light to eyes well-adjusted to darkness.
Sometimes this is how we hear promises. They make us squint or want to close our
eyes.
Isaiah’s words ring: “Comfort my people.” “God will feed his flock like a shepherd; he
will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead
the mother sheep.”
The people squint and some turn away, having lost their
ability to hear good news.
These are the two ways of hearing promise, of remembering
the blessing of God.
Squinting and turning away.
It is because a people squinted towards hope and peace that
we still have Isaiah chapter 40 in our Bibles.
And it is because a people squinted towards the promise that
the people were able to return to the land.
Why do we squint?
Because we have gotten so used to the tall mountains and deep valleys in
our hearts and have made it very difficult for the word of God to bring us
renewal.
The image the prophet gives of the coming of God’s promise
on earth as it is in heaven is a fundamental remodeling of the terrain of our
hearts and our life together:
“A voice cries out: "In the wilderness prepare the way
of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill
be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a
plain.”
The image of a road being made through the wilderness is
meant to inspire the people to remember that God can make the impossible
possible.
We squint because what is being suggested as possible, our
hearts have become used to feeling impossible.
We’ve become used to the greed and violence and self-seeking
intentions of human individuals and communities that we squint at the
possibility of God’s redemption of individuals and communities.
But nothing less is God’s promise in the midst of our
lament.
A way in the wilderness, the valleys of those who suffer
will be filled and the hills of those who prosper at the expense of the most
vulnerable will be brought low.
We hear the promise and we squint.
And John stands by the Jordan river. Camel hair, leather belt, unkempt eating
locusts and honey.
And he stands as one in the wilderness offering a way.
He stands as a prophet in the tradition of Moses, of Elijah,
of Isaiah, and the rest.
And proclaims the word of promise, the memory of God’s
original blessing of creation,
And the people squint.
Forgiveness, he preaches, for those who speak truthfully to
themselves and to God about themselves and about their world – those who find
the posture of gratitude and lament and remember and reinhabit their
relationship with the Creator.
Forgiveness is the new start, the new beginning.
New creation – Forgiveness comes after we squint.
And perhaps squinting begin to remember ourselves as beloved
of God, our land and people as made by God as loving creator.
And the promise takes hold, and we move squinting into the
waters,
And as we embrace the promise, again we know the everlasting
truth of God’s presence with us and for us.
We remember that as true as our mistakes and failings are,
truer still is our identity as children of God the Creator and Lover of earth
and people.
As true as the mess is that we made, truer still is the
blessing of God that no mess can destroy.
“The grass withers, the flower fades;
but the word of our God will stand forever.”
And in the fullness of time of the word became flesh and
dwelt among us.
And as those who have received this promise by the power of
the Holy Spirit,
We are called to be a people of the promise.
God speaks a word to us today.
A promise which is a reminder of who God is and who we are
in relation with God.
God longs with us for a renewal of creation. And God does not long as one who is absent,
but as one who has called us into being as a people of the promise,
To “fill the world with love divine.”
John shows us how we move from squinting to hope and peace
with God and with one another.
It comes from remembering who we are and who God is,
And rejoicing in the unending grace which sustains us
through every time in our life.
May we lament, may we be grateful, and may we remember again
and again when we forget, that God is an everlasting God. And God speaks comfort that we might bring comfort
to a world with the comfort with which we’ve been comforted.
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