Waiting for God to Renew Our Strength—Lectionary Reflection for Epiphany 5B (Isaiah 40)
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Isaiah 40:21-31New Revised Standard Version UpdatedEdition
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?
22 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,
23 who brings princes to naught
and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.24 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.25 To whom, then, will you compare me,
or who is my equal? says the Holy One.
26 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.27 Why do you say, O Jacob,
and assert, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
28 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.
29 He gives power to the faint
and strengthens the powerless.
30 Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted,
31 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.
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To what
degree is God omnipotent, all-powerful, and mighty? These are questions many Christians
are asking. Traditionally God has been understood to have sufficient power to
do what God needs to do. Often, we speak of this divine power in philosophical terms
as God being omnipotent. Biblically, the
word most commonly used in English translation is God Almighty. Lately, there
have been debates as to whether this is truly the biblical understanding of God’s
power. Some, including Tom Oord, have spoken of the “death of omnipotence.” He offers
instead “amipotence,” a word he coined to speak of the power of love. Often the
debate over divine power is rooted in theodicy. That is, the philosophical
attempts to defend God’s goodness in the face of evil. The premise of some is
that if God is truly loving and has the power to rid the world of evil, then
God should do so. If God is loving and doesn’t rid the earth of evil, then
perhaps God lacks the power to do so. That’s a huge conversation. I’ve
participated in some of these conversations. I’ve reviewed Tom Oord’s book The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence, and I’ve raised questions
about his interpretation and that of others. Ultimately, when it comes to
theodicy, I’ve decided that none of them truly resolves the problem. Thus, I
maintain that God is love, that God has enough power to do what God needs to
do, and evil exists. Somewhere in all of this discussion, we have to place
human freedom. In other words, is evil the price we pay for human freedom?
I’m
reading at this moment Sergius Bulgakov’s book The Bride of the Lamb, which
deals with theological anthropology, including human freedom and the problem of
evil. Being that he’s an Eastern Orthodox theologian and not beholden to
Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, or Calvin, he offers a different perspective. I’m
only at the middle part of the book, so there is more to come. Unlike the four
previously mentioned figures, Bulgakov endorses omnipotence but makes more room
for human freedom. At the same time, he embraces a form of synergism that
people like Tom Oord might resonate with. Regarding evil, I will offer this
definition from Bulgakov and leave things there for the reader to pursue
further.
Evil is not a substance but a state of creaturely being. “The prince of this world” is not a god but only a rebellious creature. As it is most commonly defined, evil is an absence of good, sterÄ“sis, privatio, an accident, a parasite of being. In the positive sense, only Good, only God and His power in creation, exists. Ontologically, evil does not exist, but is a phantom of nonbeing. [Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb (p. 147 - Kindle).
Of course, evil is present in the world. We can’t ignore it
because it makes itself present daily in the violence and vulgarity we see
around us and perhaps participate in. Turning again to Bulgakov, I will leave
this addition to what I posted above:
Evil arises in time, just as it has its end in time. One can say that, in a certain sense, evil is created by creatures (both angelic and human), but, of course, not “out of nothing” (which is the character of God’s creation). Rather, it is created out of the creatures themselves, who are created by God. In this sense, evil is a parasite of being; it arises in being as its sickness; it gets its strength from being. Actualized nothing becomes a reality. [Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb (p. 153 - Kindle).
Evil is a parasite, a sickness that arises out of creatures
God created. Is God to blame for evil? Perhaps. At least, that God created humanity
with a certain degree of freedom seems to have given rise to evil. Now natural
disasters, that’s a very different question and not one we can deal with here.
As we move toward the conclusion
of the season of Epiphany (Transfiguration Sunday follows), a season of revelation
and enlightenment, we hear this word from Isaiah 40, which invites us to lift
up our eyes toward the heavens where God sits enthroned. As this reading from Second
Isaiah suggests, God is high and lifted up, sitting above us, looking down on
creation. It’s a vision of reality common to the ancient world but very
different from our own. As the first Russian cosmonaut observed, heaven doesn’t
seem to sit above the earth. He is correct, the universe is vaster than anything
an ancient Jew like Isaiah could imagine. Our ability to hear this word from
Isaiah is hindered if we wish to read it literally. I’m not sure even Isaiah
meant us to read it completely as “fact” rather than as a theological
declaration. That is how I read it. It is a theological word, not a scientific
one. The message then is one of transcendence. In whatever form God exists, God
transcends our reality. When I say that I’m comfortable with the idea of
panentheism (the world in God and God in the world) but not pantheism (God and the
world are identical).
The passage begins with a question. Don’t you know, haven’t
you heard what has been known from the beginning, since the foundations of the
earth were laid, that God sits above the circle of the earth and looks down
upon us, such that to God we look like grasshoppers. When God sits on God’s throne
and looks down, we’re but tiny little entities. At least at this point, Isaiah
doesn’t call ants. But the point is we’re rather small. It’s a lesson that
Isaiah couldn’t learn but we have since we entered the space age. When you head
out into the solar system and look back at the Earth, our planet is rather
small.
Now that we have heard and now know how small we really are
we can attend to what follows. The first word goes to the people who really
think highly of themselves, that is the princes and the rulers of this world,
who are nothing in comparison to God. This was a message that the Jewish
recipients would have taken to heart because Second Isaiah writes to exiles.
God is bigger, Isaiah tells them, than the Babylonian emperor. It also serves
to remind us that the God Isaiah represents is not a localized deity. The Holy
One is the God of the Universe, whose love for creation leads to a concern for
those whom God has created. So, when God blows on them, like newly planted
foliage, they whither. The tempest, the windstorm, blows them away like rubble
or maybe even tumbling tumbleweeds. The call that goes forth here is to put our
trust in the God who transcends all things. Yes, to whom will we compare this
God whom Isaiah reveals to us? Who is God’s equal? After all, God is the creator
of all things. As such God has great strength and power. Should we use the word
omnipotent? I leave that one to you, though it does sound as if, in Isaiah’s
mind, God has a lot of power.
As I
noted, this message goes to exiles living in Babylon. They no longer have a
kingdom or a temple. They’ve lost their ability to determine their future. It
may seem as if God has forgotten them. As Isaiah reveals, they had been
complaining to God, suggesting that their way was hidden from Yahweh and that
God was disregarding them. In other words, living in exile they felt like God
had abandoned them. Perhaps you have felt that way at times. At this moment in
time, for many people of faith, it seems as if things are stacked against us.
Churches are struggling to survive. Seminaries are pulling back, even the big
ones. Many of our congregations are aging and wondering if there is a future
for them. I’ve watched as the congregation where I was married has closed, the
church where I was ordained has closed. The first congregation I served as
pastor has essentially closed, though a ministry has emerged from it.
Nevertheless, they have left the building. My denomination is much smaller
today than when I was ordained nearly forty years ago. These are common
experiences. At times, we feel as if we are living in exile. We wonder, is God
paying attention?
The concluding message is an
invitation to lean on God’s empowering presence. Isaiah reminds us that while even
youths will faint and grow weary, “those who wait for the LORD shall renew their
strength, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not grow faint”
(Isa. 40:31). While we may look like grasshoppers when God looks down from the
throne, at the same time Isaiah suggests that God calls us by name (Isa. 40:26).
So, maybe we’re not as small as it seems, at least in the eyes of the God who
knows our names. While God is powerful, God does not act alone. Remember God is
the one who empowers us. As Ron Allen and Clark Williamson note: “Isaiah does
not promise that God will do everything for the people; God will empower them
to cooperate with God as God’s covenant people in bringing life and well-being
to light. God is not a tool that we may use to meet whatever needs we have. God
is the One whom we are to love with all our selves and on whom we may rely to
do for us everything that it is appropriate for God to do” [Preaching the Old Testament, pp. 135-136].
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