The One Who Can Renew Our Strength
Isaiah 40.21-31
Epiphany 5B, February 4, 2024
One of my favorite seminary professors was E. Glenn Hinson. Dr. Hinson taught classes in Christian Spirituality. He is one of the holiest people I have ever met. If by the time I die I have come to know God half as well as he does, I will have done very, very well.
I took several classes with Dr. Hinson, so I remember more than one occasion on which he begin to talk about the vastness of the universe. I cannot remember his exact words, but I well remember the conclusion which brought home his point. The talk went something like this: The planet we live on, which seems so large to us, is actually a relatively small hunk of rock, one of eight planets and several planetoids circling the Sun. The Sun is but one of billions of stars within our galaxy, the Milky Way. Our galaxy is but one of millions spread out across the immeasurably vast expanses of space. The God who created all of that must be of incomprehensible power. When I then consider that this great God cares for little ole insignificant me, all I can do is… [drop jaw and widen eyes in amazement]
Now, you have to see Glenn Hinson do this to get the full effect, but the point is clear. He was floored by the thought that God, a being of unimaginable magnitude and power, would care for such a tiny creature as himself.
Hinson’s jaw-dropping amazement is a really good commentary on this morning’s reading from Isaiah 40. These words are jaw-dropping reassurance, awe inspiring comfort, for a people facing extreme crisis. They speak of a God who is far removed from us, far above us, and yet as near as our heartbeat; a God who is holy, categorically other than us, beyond us, and yet is love; a God who attends to the birth of stars, and yet lifts up fallen human beings.
It is a message that desperately needed to be heard. The people of Judah to whom Second Isaiah was addressed were deportees, exiles living in a strange and hostile land.
In the year 598 BC, the Babylonian Empire defeated Judah and deported many of the kingdom’s best and brightest to Babylon. In 587, Babylonian armies destroyed the city of Jerusalem and deported yet more people. In 582, a third deportation took place. Psalm 137 paints a picture of exiles sitting by the rivers of Babylon and weeping as they remembered Jerusalem (v.1) Their homes, their society, their Temple, even their faith are in ruins. How, they wondered, could they sing the Lord’s songs in a such circumstances? It seemed to many of the Israelites that God had abandoned them, that their way was hidden from God, that God had disregarded the promises made to their ancestors (Is. 40.24). As they assessed the situation, it must have seemed that the Babylonian king and the Babylonian gods were more powerful than the Israelite God.
The prophet is determined to counter this idea and remind the exiles of the truth. “Don’t you remember?” he asks rhetorically. “Have you not known? Haven’t you seen? Weren’t you told? Don’t you remember who and what God is?” And then he reminds them of who God is: not a mere tribal god, not one deity among many, but the one God, the Creator, the Supreme Deity who has no equal. Marduk and the other Babylonian deities are mere fictions, nothing more than man-made idols. King Nebuchadrezzar and his nobles, so puffed up with power, so self-important, are nothing (v.23). Beside God, they are but tiny little insects, “who strut and fret their hour upon the stage and then are heard no more.” All their plans, all their works are tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, but, compared with God’s works, signifying nothing.
To cinch the argument and drive home the point, the prophet directs his audience’s attention to the creation. God is seated far above the earth, so that humans appear as grasshoppers. God stretches out the sky like a woman measuring out a length of cloth. God is everlasting, the Creator of all that exists (v. 28). God is not a creation of the human mind, God is not a part of the universe. God transcends the universe, for its God’s creation; God is the author and source of all that is.
Perhaps the most powerful part of the prophets argument comes in verses 25 and 26, when he switches to the first person and speaks directly for God: “To whom will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One.” Look up at the night sky? Who created the stars, who brings them out each night and calls them each by name? The questions again are rhetorical. The answer is obvious: it is God and God alone who does this.
This would have been a powerful argument to the Israelites, for their Babylonian overlords believed the stars were gods. Second Isaiah flatly denies this. They are not gods. They are creatures, creations of the one true God. God calls them by name, and to name something is to have power over it. Thus, God has power over Babylon and its so-called gods.
Now, we don’t believe the stars are deities. We know a lot more about the universe than the ancient Israelites and Babylonians. Rather than reducing our wonder, our greater knowledge may actually make the night sky more awe-inspiring. Scott Hoezee illustrates this possibility by telling about the astronomy presentations a friend gives: My friend Deborah Haarsma is an expert on galaxies and on astronomy generally. Sometimes when she makes a presentation for adult education classes she will conclude her talk by showing a slide of a typical night sky. On one part of the picture there is an area of sky that appears empty—there are stars all around but some parts of the sky don’t contain any visible stars. So Deb zooms in on one of those apparently blank patches of darkness but then superimposes on it what the Hubble Space Telescope saw in that very “blank” patch when it really cranked up its magnification. What the picture reveals always draws gasps from all who see it because in that seemingly “empty” part of the night sky the Hubble photographed hundreds and hundreds of not stars but of whole galaxies. And since each galaxy may contain upwards of 1 billion stars, it soon becomes apparent that even the seemingly blank parts of the night sky actually look out onto clusters of stars that number in the trillions. (http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/epiphany-5b-2/?type=old_testament_lectionary#sthash.EIdUwC0W.dpuf )
That’s jaw-dropping stuff. But, if our scripture stopped here, it wouldn’t be good news. The prophet has told us how great and powerful God is and how small and insignificant we are. By itself, this could be a counsel of despair. We all know how great power can be greatly abused. Just think of Vladimir Putin. Like a modern day Nebuchadrezzar, he uses his power not to bind up the wounded but to increase his domination. If the prophet stopped at verse 26, we would be left with a picture of a far off, distant, transcendent God who views humans in much the same way we view insects, a god who at best is too preoccupied to notice us or care for us or at worst wields their immeasurable power like the cruelest of tyrants.
Fortunately, the prophet doesn’t stop here. All of this talk of God’s transcendence has been in preparation for the main point. God is not only far beyond our understanding, creating and governing all things. God is also the One who comes near to us in mercy and compassion; God comes near to us to deliver us from all that oppresses us. The prophet says to the exiled Israelites and to us, “Do not doubt God. If God has the power to create the stars, you can be sure that God is able to give power to the faint and strength to the powerless, to gather the outcasts and bring them home, to heal the brokenhearted and lift up the fallen.”
Yes, God can and will do these things, because God is faithful, full of compassion and God’s steadfast love endures forever. But, we must notice something important. The prophet tells us that it is those who wait upon the Lord who shall renew their strength. To say we must wait is to say we must trust in God’s goodness; have faith in God’s care; hope in God’s steadfast love. God will come near and God will help, but we must have faith that God sees our plight and must be prepared to wait knowing that God, whose understanding and “knowledge can’t be grasped” [Ps 147.5, CEB], will act in God’s own ways in and God’s own time. Because we know God is unfailingly gracious and abounding in faithful love, we can be sure that those who wait upon God shall mount up with wings like eagles, shall run and not grow weary, shall walk and not faint.
A couple nights ago, I saw an interview with Civil Rights pioneer Ruby Bridges on a late night talk show. [The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Feb. 2, 2024; rebroadcast of Jan. 22, 2024 episode] She’s currently promoting her new children’s book, Dear Ruby, Hear our Hearts, which is a collection of letters to Bridges from children and youth and her responses.
Back in 1960, Bridges, as a six-year-old, became the first African American child to integrate an all-white public elementary school in the American South, New Orleans’ William Frantz Elementary. To say there was a great deal of resistance to her presence at the school would be an understatement. Crowds gathered to protest. Every morning and every afternoon for much of that school year, she had to walk the gauntlet escorted by federal marshals. As she entered and left the school building, folks shouted horrible racial epithets at her. On the second day of school, a woman threatened to poison her. As a result, the marshals would not allow her to eat anything that wasn’t made by her mother. On another occasion, a woman positioned where Ruby was almost certain to see her held out a small wooden coffin in which lay a black doll. [“Ruby Bridges,” Biography.com, updated Feb. 23, 2021, accessed Feb. 3, 2024]
Life inside the school was only somewhat better. Most of the students were pulled out of the school by their parents. The majority of teachers refused to teach her. Only Barbara Henry, a new teacher and Boston native, volunteered to teach her. Mrs. Henry became a source of strength and affirmation and a lifelong friend; Bridges has called her a second mother. [Late Show interview] But since the white parents didn’t want their children in class with a black child, Bridges found herself in a class of one—just her and the teacher. The reason for this was made clear later in the year after Mrs. Henry went to the principle and demanded, on the grounds of both the legal order to desegregate and Ruby’s mental health need to be with other children, that she be allowed to be in class with other first graders. The principal managed a compromise in which a few children would join Ruby in Mrs. Henry’s classroom for a part of the day. It was during one of these class times with other children that a little boy told Ruby that his mother told him he couldn’t play with her because she was “a n[egro]”—which is not the exact “n” word which he used.
Yet through it all, Ruby Bridges was incredibly strong, presenting a stoic, dignified face to the world. One of the marshals marveled years later over her courage, saying “She just marched along like a little soldier.” [“Ruby Bridges,” Biography.com.]
One source of Bridges strength and courage came from following the advice of her mother. She encouraged Ruby to pray while on the way to school. One day, Ruby forgot to do so in the car and so she stopped as walked in, stopped in the middle of that maelstrom of hate, quietly said a prayer and then walked into the building. Her teacher thought she was talking to herself and mentioned this to Robert Coles, a psychiatrist who, concerned about Ruby’s mental health in the midst of such stress, had volunteered to work with Ruby.
When Dr. Coles asked her about stopping to talk to herself, she told him she “I was talking to God and praying for the people in the street.” Coles wondered where she learned that. Ruby said that she learned it “From my mommy and daddy and from the minister at church. I pray every morning [when I come to school] and every afternoon when I go home.” [Peter W. Marty, “When Ruby Bridges prayed for her enemies,” The Christian Century, printed in the March 29, 2017 issue as “A Child Leads;” https://www.christiancentury.org/article/editorpublisher/when-ruby-bridges-prayed-her-enemies ] Coles asked what said to God. Ruby responded, "I pray for me, that I would be strong and not afraid. I pray for my enemies, that God would forgive them.” [https://www.cbn.com/special/blackhistory/undergod_rubybridges.aspx; Excerpted from Under God by toby Mac and Michael Tait] Probing deeper, Coles said, ““But Ruby, those people are so mean to you. You must have some other feelings besides just wanting to pray for them.” “No,” she said, “I just keep praying for them and hope God will be good to them. . .. I always pray the same thing. ‘Please, dear God, forgive them, because they don’t know what they’re doing.’” [Marty, “When Ruby Bridges prayed…”]
Here was the source of Ruby Bridges strength and courage in the face of hatred, insults, rejection and threats of violence. Her religious faith, taught to her by her parents and modeled for her by her church, sustained and empowered her. She was able to walk into and out of that school everyday because of the love and care of her family, church and teacher and because the God to whom she prayed did not dissert her but renewed her strength so that she could endure and overcome. Her problems did not suddenly evaporate; her challenges were not immediately resolved. But God took her by the hand and walked with her, lifting her up above despair and fear.
We too need strength for the challenges of life. Knowing God is for us, gives us strength, even if we do not know what will happen or when it will happen. Come what may, we can trust God has not abandoned us, trust that God is nearby, and trust that God has the power to deliver us.
That is the message the prophet declares to the exiled, dispirited Israelites and to us. The God who transcends the whole universe is also the God who knows us by name and cares for us. The God who created all things, is also the God who loves us. The God who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, arranging them like a tent to live in, becomes flesh in Jesus, pitching a tent to live among us [John 1.14] and share in the joys and sorrows of human existence. The God who is far beyond our ability to understand, comes near to us in Jesus Christ, bringing forgiveness and deliverance, bringing healing and hope. This is indeed jaw-dropping Good News.