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Have you not known? Have you not heard?
On Thursday of this week I was spending some time visiting with Ginny Mattox, whom many of you know well, of course. She is, in many ways, a remarkable woman, smart as a whip, and has made quite a life for herself despite being born legally blind. She met her husband at a school for the blind in Iowa, and he became a successful piano tuner. She had children, worked various jobs over the years, and experienced a lot more heartache in this life than is perhaps fair, but she is, as they say, a persistent woman, and fiercely independent. Ginny joined the church a few years before I arrived, perhaps 8 years ago, after her former United Church of Christ congregation closed its doors, and she quickly found a place here amongst the Women’s Guild, and in the hearts of many of us. She is now 96 and can’t make it to church very often because of her health, but her heart is here, having found a new church home in this place. I asked her permission to share with you part of our conversation from this past Thursday, when she sharing a bit of her frustration at the fact that what little sight she always had has grown worse after a small stroke she experienced some months ago. It’s simply harder now to read things anymore, though thankfully she has an electronic enlarger that gives her some help. Nonetheless, it remains a real frustration, and, like many of us, she had grown upset and perhaps a bit depressed that she simply cannot do what she once did. And that certainly makes sense – we will all experience the frustrations that come with age, if we’re not already experiencing them right now in our lives. Together, we shared our mutual frustrations about the state of our bodies, and the state of the world, and then I began thinking of our text today, the one I knew I was preaching on, about Isaiah’s call to the people to remember, to remember who God is, the creator of all, and to remember all the times God has been indeed faithful, those times when God was there for the people of Israel, and was there for me and for her. “Have you not seen? Have you not heard” the prophet says as he points to God as creator, and to the mysterious ways God actually does move in this world, of how we cannot know the fullness of things. And from then on, Ginny and I found our conversation punctuated with each of us saying to each other “have you not heard? Have you not seen?” with laughter filling the room with the way the phrase could be worked into any topic of conversation. But we also laughed with the satisfaction that came with sharing moments when we once saw the hand of God being present in our lives, even as we sometimes have a hard seeing that very same hand in our current circumstances.
Now, I don’t know who ministered to who on Thursday, but it was a good moment, and a deep reminder of how important it is in the life of faith that we remind each other of what the prophet Isaiah puts before us, that when things become dark, when life becomes stripped of hope, we need to remind ourselves, and to remind each other of who God is and how God done wondrous things not so long ago. The words we just heard are from what scholars call Second Isaiah, that is, a section of Isaiah believed to have been written after the disaster of the Babylon invasion of Jerusalem in 589 (BCE), and the eventual carting off of the best and brightest to the city of Babylon itself, something commonly known as the Babylonian Captivity. First Isaiah warns them about the invasion and then another writer who claimed Isaiah’s name, the aforementioned Second Isaiah he is often called, wrote and spoke to console and to give Israel comfort during that time of collective captivity in Babylon, and then a third person claiming Isaiah/ mantle, wrote after the people have returned from the Babylonian exile in 539. Most scholars think that three different writers took on the name of Isaiah, in order to speak to the people during these three distinct times. What we have before us in this text just now is reflective of a time when Israel had lost hope, when they are still in captive in Babylon, yearning to come back home again, and this Second Isaiah wants to remind them of who their God is, and what this God has done for them in the past, and he does this so beautifully by asking them to remember, to dig deep within their collective memory and remember how God has always been faithful to them.
And Second Isaiah does this asking them this pivotal question, said in a different ways: “have you not heard, have you not seen”—do you not remember the creator, the one who has created all of these things, the heavens that have been stretched out, the rulers of this world that have been scattered by the hand of God? They come and go, these cruel and despotic rulers, and God simply blows them away like grass in the palm of God’s hands. Isaiah says that this is a God who is both near and far, both other and beautifully intimate, so much so that God calls us—each of us, and all of creation—by name. God remembers our names, that is how intimate God is with us, even as Isaiah says that this God is one who metaphorically sits above it all, and sees the inhabitants of this world as grasshoppers—both far and near, is Israel’s God. Have you not known this, Isaiah asks, have you not heard, and always known, that God is here and that God remains present in this world? This is a God who is with Israel in their times of deep trouble, deep despair, as they were in Babylon, and this is the same God who is with us, when all seems lost, and there is no way out, no hope left, and no point to going on.
What those in captivity in Babylon forgot and we seem to so often forget, is that faith, that trust, comes with memory, with remembering who God is, and remembering those moments in our lives when we have seen and experienced God’s faithfulness, God’s movements in our lives. We so often forget our own stories, our memories of those times when God arrived “right on time,” as some of the old African-American preachers used to say, and we forget those ways that God spoke to us through family and friends, strangers, and sometimes, sometimes even through enemies of ours. I know that when I get scared, when I get fearful about the future, about my personal future, or the future of something or someone I care about, or even fearful about the future of this country that I love so much, I know that I am experiencing fear because I’ve forgotten to remember the ways that God has always taken care of me, has always taken care of those that I love and even struggle to love, though not in ways that I always expected, or even wanted. I forget about those moments when I thought there was no way out, there was no hope, no nothing for the future, and yet, here came the future, and it was often more than I could have ever wished for. God arrived “right on time.”
But why do we forget about the past when we are in the midst of our present despair, why do we not ask ourselves and others that key question “have you heard, have you not seen” during our difficult times? Why did the people of Israel forget about God’s eternal faithfulness to them, as they were languishing in Babylon? Was it because they chose not to remember or they simply forgot to remember the God of whom this text speaks, the one who reminds them of who this Divine One is, the one who stretches out the heavens above them, and yet who knows them—and us—each by name? Maybe it’s because we get so wrapped up in the moment, the present, that latest flurry of crazy tweets by our President, or whatever, that we somehow forget that the present moment has not been the ONLY moment in our lives, or in the life of this country or of this world—we forget that we have a history, a memory of the ways God has loved us and held us, and done great and wonderful things in our lives. We become so stressed out about the future—our financial futures, the future of our marriages and our relationships, the future of our children, the future of this country—we are so stressed about the future because we have forgotten to remember, to remember our true stories of the past, and thus it is causes us so much unnecessary pain. Don’t get me wrong – these are troubled times, and some of us are in troubled space in our lives, really troubled spaces, and its important never to pretend or push people past the truth that some of us are actually being held captive in Babylon, are suffering real and profound heartache, if not trauma. But the perhaps the key to life is to balance out that reality with another truth, with another reality, the one where we remember who God is, and has been, and will be, and we remember those other moments in our lives when we were back in Babylon, in despair – and somehow, and some way, God found a way out for us when there was no way out.
So, I invite you to ask yourself this week, this Advent season, this season of waiting, to ask yourself this question, when despair settles in, when hopelessness seems to be your constant companion, to ask yourself these two questions – have you not heard? Have you not seen?
Have you not heard that this past Friday was World AIDS Day, a day some of us remember those we have lost to the other side of the veil, and we remember those dark times when the funerals of young, beautiful men and women came upon us so quickly, and how the world seemed as if it would be wiped by this virus, and the gay male community itself would be wiped out as well, by both the virus and hatred, bigotry and fear hurled at it? And yet, have you seen those who at the edge of death be resurrected to life, of how a demonized and hated community would one day be able to witness what seemed impossible to have happened, marriage equality, only years after some spoke of rounding up gay men and putting them into internment camps? Babylon has fallen and will always fall, will always disintegrate before the mighty power of our God. Friends, have you not heard, have you not seen?
And have you not heard how the Christian church is about to collapse under the weight of its abandonment of justice, because of its acceptance and embrace, in some parts of church, of a predator of children, all for the sake of political power, as the church has so often done in the past? And yet have you not seen the Christian ministers this past week in our nation’s capital speaking aloud the 2000 verses in the Bible that give witness to God’s preference for the weak, the lowly, the powerless, God’s preference for those in captivity in Babylon, and have you not seen these brave ministers being carted off to jail for this act of civil disobedience? The Babylonian captivity of the church will one-day end, soon and very soon, because God will not abandon her children to the hands of King Nebuchadnezzar forever. Friends, have you not heard and have you not seen?
And friends, have you not heard the struggle of parents seeking children of their own, who endured pain and suffering for the sake of those whom they do not yet know, those they have longed for? And yet have you not seen God doing the miraculous, of God promising what cannot be, and that promise being made true, and have you not heard of Love being born in a manger, to parents of no seeming worth, in a poor nation held captive to the Babylon of its time, to Rome? Babylon will hold sway, Babylon will murder Love itself on a cross, but Love cannot be killed, Love cannot be vanquished, Love cannot be buried and forgotten – it will rise, it always rise again. Friends, have you not heard, and have you not seen?
Friends I have seen and I have heard. Have you? And when the waiting for the birth of our Lord seems to be too long, too painful, when the waiting for the end of Babylon seems like it will never come, let us gather together in places like this, and ask ourselves, “friends have you not heard, have you not seen?” And let us respond with the truth, with truth we’ve buried away while we were in despair in the dungeons of Babylon, and that truth is this: we have seen, we have heard, and because of that we shall do as the prophets Isaiah says we shall do. We shall wait for the Lord and she shall renew our strength, and we shall shall mount up with wings like eagles, and we shall run and not be weary, and we shall walk and not be faint. Blessed be our God, forever and ever. Friends, have you not heard, and have you not seen?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
On Thursday of this week I was spending some time visiting with Ginny Mattox, whom many of you know well, of course. She is, in many ways, a remarkable woman, smart as a whip, and has made quite a life for herself despite being born legally blind. She met her husband at a school for the blind in Iowa, and he became a successful piano tuner. She had children, worked various jobs over the years, and experienced a lot more heartache in this life than is perhaps fair, but she is, as they say, a persistent woman, and fiercely independent. Ginny joined the church a few years before I arrived, perhaps 8 years ago, after her former United Church of Christ congregation closed its doors, and she quickly found a place here amongst the Women’s Guild, and in the hearts of many of us. She is now 96 and can’t make it to church very often because of her health, but her heart is here, having found a new church home in this place. I asked her permission to share with you part of our conversation from this past Thursday, when she sharing a bit of her frustration at the fact that what little sight she always had has grown worse after a small stroke she experienced some months ago. It’s simply harder now to read things anymore, though thankfully she has an electronic enlarger that gives her some help. Nonetheless, it remains a real frustration, and, like many of us, she had grown upset and perhaps a bit depressed that she simply cannot do what she once did. And that certainly makes sense – we will all experience the frustrations that come with age, if we’re not already experiencing them right now in our lives. Together, we shared our mutual frustrations about the state of our bodies, and the state of the world, and then I began thinking of our text today, the one I knew I was preaching on, about Isaiah’s call to the people to remember, to remember who God is, the creator of all, and to remember all the times God has been indeed faithful, those times when God was there for the people of Israel, and was there for me and for her. “Have you not seen? Have you not heard” the prophet says as he points to God as creator, and to the mysterious ways God actually does move in this world, of how we cannot know the fullness of things. And from then on, Ginny and I found our conversation punctuated with each of us saying to each other “have you not heard? Have you not seen?” with laughter filling the room with the way the phrase could be worked into any topic of conversation. But we also laughed with the satisfaction that came with sharing moments when we once saw the hand of God being present in our lives, even as we sometimes have a hard seeing that very same hand in our current circumstances.
Now, I don’t know who ministered to who on Thursday, but it was a good moment, and a deep reminder of how important it is in the life of faith that we remind each other of what the prophet Isaiah puts before us, that when things become dark, when life becomes stripped of hope, we need to remind ourselves, and to remind each other of who God is and how God done wondrous things not so long ago. The words we just heard are from what scholars call Second Isaiah, that is, a section of Isaiah believed to have been written after the disaster of the Babylon invasion of Jerusalem in 589 (BCE), and the eventual carting off of the best and brightest to the city of Babylon itself, something commonly known as the Babylonian Captivity. First Isaiah warns them about the invasion and then another writer who claimed Isaiah’s name, the aforementioned Second Isaiah he is often called, wrote and spoke to console and to give Israel comfort during that time of collective captivity in Babylon, and then a third person claiming Isaiah/ mantle, wrote after the people have returned from the Babylonian exile in 539. Most scholars think that three different writers took on the name of Isaiah, in order to speak to the people during these three distinct times. What we have before us in this text just now is reflective of a time when Israel had lost hope, when they are still in captive in Babylon, yearning to come back home again, and this Second Isaiah wants to remind them of who their God is, and what this God has done for them in the past, and he does this so beautifully by asking them to remember, to dig deep within their collective memory and remember how God has always been faithful to them.
And Second Isaiah does this asking them this pivotal question, said in a different ways: “have you not heard, have you not seen”—do you not remember the creator, the one who has created all of these things, the heavens that have been stretched out, the rulers of this world that have been scattered by the hand of God? They come and go, these cruel and despotic rulers, and God simply blows them away like grass in the palm of God’s hands. Isaiah says that this is a God who is both near and far, both other and beautifully intimate, so much so that God calls us—each of us, and all of creation—by name. God remembers our names, that is how intimate God is with us, even as Isaiah says that this God is one who metaphorically sits above it all, and sees the inhabitants of this world as grasshoppers—both far and near, is Israel’s God. Have you not known this, Isaiah asks, have you not heard, and always known, that God is here and that God remains present in this world? This is a God who is with Israel in their times of deep trouble, deep despair, as they were in Babylon, and this is the same God who is with us, when all seems lost, and there is no way out, no hope left, and no point to going on.
What those in captivity in Babylon forgot and we seem to so often forget, is that faith, that trust, comes with memory, with remembering who God is, and remembering those moments in our lives when we have seen and experienced God’s faithfulness, God’s movements in our lives. We so often forget our own stories, our memories of those times when God arrived “right on time,” as some of the old African-American preachers used to say, and we forget those ways that God spoke to us through family and friends, strangers, and sometimes, sometimes even through enemies of ours. I know that when I get scared, when I get fearful about the future, about my personal future, or the future of something or someone I care about, or even fearful about the future of this country that I love so much, I know that I am experiencing fear because I’ve forgotten to remember the ways that God has always taken care of me, has always taken care of those that I love and even struggle to love, though not in ways that I always expected, or even wanted. I forget about those moments when I thought there was no way out, there was no hope, no nothing for the future, and yet, here came the future, and it was often more than I could have ever wished for. God arrived “right on time.”
But why do we forget about the past when we are in the midst of our present despair, why do we not ask ourselves and others that key question “have you heard, have you not seen” during our difficult times? Why did the people of Israel forget about God’s eternal faithfulness to them, as they were languishing in Babylon? Was it because they chose not to remember or they simply forgot to remember the God of whom this text speaks, the one who reminds them of who this Divine One is, the one who stretches out the heavens above them, and yet who knows them—and us—each by name? Maybe it’s because we get so wrapped up in the moment, the present, that latest flurry of crazy tweets by our President, or whatever, that we somehow forget that the present moment has not been the ONLY moment in our lives, or in the life of this country or of this world—we forget that we have a history, a memory of the ways God has loved us and held us, and done great and wonderful things in our lives. We become so stressed out about the future—our financial futures, the future of our marriages and our relationships, the future of our children, the future of this country—we are so stressed about the future because we have forgotten to remember, to remember our true stories of the past, and thus it is causes us so much unnecessary pain. Don’t get me wrong – these are troubled times, and some of us are in troubled space in our lives, really troubled spaces, and its important never to pretend or push people past the truth that some of us are actually being held captive in Babylon, are suffering real and profound heartache, if not trauma. But the perhaps the key to life is to balance out that reality with another truth, with another reality, the one where we remember who God is, and has been, and will be, and we remember those other moments in our lives when we were back in Babylon, in despair – and somehow, and some way, God found a way out for us when there was no way out.
So, I invite you to ask yourself this week, this Advent season, this season of waiting, to ask yourself this question, when despair settles in, when hopelessness seems to be your constant companion, to ask yourself these two questions – have you not heard? Have you not seen?
Have you not heard that this past Friday was World AIDS Day, a day some of us remember those we have lost to the other side of the veil, and we remember those dark times when the funerals of young, beautiful men and women came upon us so quickly, and how the world seemed as if it would be wiped by this virus, and the gay male community itself would be wiped out as well, by both the virus and hatred, bigotry and fear hurled at it? And yet, have you seen those who at the edge of death be resurrected to life, of how a demonized and hated community would one day be able to witness what seemed impossible to have happened, marriage equality, only years after some spoke of rounding up gay men and putting them into internment camps? Babylon has fallen and will always fall, will always disintegrate before the mighty power of our God. Friends, have you not heard, have you not seen?
And have you not heard how the Christian church is about to collapse under the weight of its abandonment of justice, because of its acceptance and embrace, in some parts of church, of a predator of children, all for the sake of political power, as the church has so often done in the past? And yet have you not seen the Christian ministers this past week in our nation’s capital speaking aloud the 2000 verses in the Bible that give witness to God’s preference for the weak, the lowly, the powerless, God’s preference for those in captivity in Babylon, and have you not seen these brave ministers being carted off to jail for this act of civil disobedience? The Babylonian captivity of the church will one-day end, soon and very soon, because God will not abandon her children to the hands of King Nebuchadnezzar forever. Friends, have you not heard and have you not seen?
And friends, have you not heard the struggle of parents seeking children of their own, who endured pain and suffering for the sake of those whom they do not yet know, those they have longed for? And yet have you not seen God doing the miraculous, of God promising what cannot be, and that promise being made true, and have you not heard of Love being born in a manger, to parents of no seeming worth, in a poor nation held captive to the Babylon of its time, to Rome? Babylon will hold sway, Babylon will murder Love itself on a cross, but Love cannot be killed, Love cannot be vanquished, Love cannot be buried and forgotten – it will rise, it always rise again. Friends, have you not heard, and have you not seen?
Friends I have seen and I have heard. Have you? And when the waiting for the birth of our Lord seems to be too long, too painful, when the waiting for the end of Babylon seems like it will never come, let us gather together in places like this, and ask ourselves, “friends have you not heard, have you not seen?” And let us respond with the truth, with truth we’ve buried away while we were in despair in the dungeons of Babylon, and that truth is this: we have seen, we have heard, and because of that we shall do as the prophets Isaiah says we shall do. We shall wait for the Lord and she shall renew our strength, and we shall shall mount up with wings like eagles, and we shall run and not be weary, and we shall walk and not be faint. Blessed be our God, forever and ever. Friends, have you not heard, and have you not seen?