Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Selected readings from the daily lectionary: Is 40:25-31; Ps 103:1-10;  Th 1:1-12; Mt 11:28-30

A late fourth- or early fifth-century marble relief from the Byzantine and Christian Museum
in Athens, Greece Zde via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 2.0

“To whom will you compare me?
    Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One.
²⁶ Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
    Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
    and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
    not one of them is missing.

 

²⁷ Why do you complain, Jacob?
    Why do you say, Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord;
    my cause is disregarded by my God”?
²⁸ Do you not know?
    Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
    and his understanding no one can fathom.
²⁹ He gives strength to the weary
    and increases the power of the weak.
³⁰ Even youths grow tired and weary,
    and young men stumble and fall;
³¹ but those who hope in the Lord
    will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
    they will run and not grow weary,
    they will walk and not be faint.

                                          
                              Isaiah 40:25-31

 

The first time I read this passage, I immediately decided against writing about it. In truth, I resented how it ended. There is a lot happening in my life. There is a lot of suffering happening in the world. I try to hope in the Lord, but I am tired. Due apologies to Isaiah, but I do not particularly feel like I am being given strength or increased power. And I do not particularly feel like filling a reflection with trite platitudes about how if you believe enough, you will be filled with more energy and goodness than an influencer halfway through a sponsored juice cleanse. 

 

And then this passage did that thing that Scripture does sometimes, and started poking at me.

 

So I am going to propose that one of the keys to the conclusion to this passage is actually its beginning. We are told that our God is “He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name./Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.” God knows the name of each star. And each star is called forth to shine by the power and strength of God. In other words, they are because God knows them.

 

In fact, this whole chapter of Isaiah is filled with gorgeous descriptions of the specificity of God’s relationship with the earth. Verse twelve says: “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand/or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?/Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket/or weighed the mountains on the scales/ and the hills in a balance?” God is a physical presence interacting intimately with the earth; he knows the very measure of the sky. And through that knowing, the earth exists.

 

 We humans, too, are part of this creation. So if God knows even the weight of the mountains and the names of the stars, then he must really know us. 

 

This is easy to say, and not always easy to experience—for me, and I suspect for many of you. More often, I experience being fully known in my closest human relationships. And when someone looks at me, and sees my glories and my failings, and still loves me fully, I do feel strength. 

 

Now, this strength will not let me off the hook for my December time management failures and pesky need for sleep: it is not the power of dominion. But it is a power that lets me push back against the inhumanity and temptations that swirl around us every day—consumerism, despair, violence—and keep on slowly and imperfectly trying to build a different kind of kingdom.

 

God, through whom we are and are known, has therefore also given us a version of this same gift: we can empower others through knowing them. But it is very difficult to fully know anyone (including oneself). It requires a lifetime of practice. I think this is one of the reasons we have church; we have to practice extending and receiving full knowledge of each other. 

 

This all may sound dissatisfying and abstract. We are told God will give us strength, but then he outsources this task to us—not a great look for an omnipotent being. But this is a reflection to celebrate Advent. And as we look towards the story of Christmas, we look towards the day that God came down to earth to know his people first-hand—but also, for the first time, to be known by them. In this child, born to a family buffeted and presumably exhausted by the inhumanity and temptations encircling them, we are invited to truly know the God who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand. And through our knowledge of him, and his knowledge of us, we can trust in a power that will conquer death itself.

 

by Rachel Robinson

 

 

"O Magnum Mysterium" Morten Lauridsen

performed by VOCES8