Oh, to Know

17th Sunday of Pentecost September 15, 2024

The texts for this message are Isaiah 40:21-31 and Mark 1:29-39

Do you not know? Have you not heard? Were you not told? Is there not in you a bedrock of understanding of the One who sits above? Whose majesty is to us as ours to grasshoppers?

Do you not know? Have you not heard? The heavens above you God spans out like a curtain and it shelters you like a tent.

Do you not know? Have you not heard?

Isaiah poses these questions to a people confused with divided loyalties. They would, as it suited them, raise affirmations of praise to God as they harbored idols in their homes and built pillars to Baal in their fields.

Isaiah poses these questions to a people besieged by upheaval and threat: Syrians to the North, Edomites to the South, Assyrians to the West. Who could blame them if they were tempted to appease the gods of these nations? They were a small population in a vulnerable land, possessors of fertile fields and they were surrounded by imposing forces who were armed with iron and who thundered down in chariots. Were they not just being prudent, were they not being wise to invest a little time and attention to that which fueled the power of their enemies?

But the prophet walks the streets and cuts through the clamor with the question:

Do you not know? Have you not heard? Were you not told? There is only One who sits above the circle of the earth, there is only One from whom all else emanates. There is only One who stretches the heavens and covers you on all sides. Do you not know that all the grand princes and all the mighty rulers of the earth are like withered grass? wisps in God’s wind?

People! people! Isaiah shouts, look up and see. Do not look to the right or to the left. Do not take notice of the threat blowing from the North or the doom firing up from the South. Consider instead the stars.

You know. You have heard who created the stars; who numbered and named them. They are all there and they are so because the One who placed them is powerful enough, strong enough to hold them in place.

Why do you wail and moan? Why do you despair and think God has forgotten you and does not see your plight? Do you not know? Have you not heard? The everlasting, eternal God does not faint; God does not grow weary. You think you are frail, you believe yourselves powerless; have you not heard? Do you not know?

Do you not know? Have you not heard? Were you not told from the foundation of the earth that The Very One has named you as well, and remembers you as well, and will hold you in place as well?

Isaiah tells the people plainly that the dark will indeed overtake them. They will face defeat, captivity and exile. But it will not be forever. He tells them, Do you not know? Have you not heard that God gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless. And those who know, those who have heard, shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Isaiah’s words were a promise meant to sustain them through what lie ahead. The Hebrews faced defeat and exile and the destruction of Jerusalem but they walked into desolation with a promise and the stars overhead to remind them of what they had heard; what they had been told.

And then, one day, a man walked down a congested road; he walked through thick dust kicked up from the road by camels and marching soldiers. He weaved between running children, and he walked past merchants hawking their goods and peasants arguing with tax collectors over the rate of exchange. And one sabbath, he walked to the door of a synagogue and moved from the hot sun to cool darkness. He took the pulpit and preached a sermon that left the illiterate astounded and the theologians speechless.

Then he went to dinner. And in the house of his host he quietly took the hand of an old woman drenched with fever and lifted her up.

Do you not know? Have you not heard? Jesus healed people with incurable illnesses. He released them from torments they couldn’t understand and he freed them from despair they couldn’t name.

Do you now know? Have you not heard? Were you not told from the foundations of the earth that Jesus would come?

Everyone is searching for you Jesus. “Yes, let’s go elsewhere so that I can proclaim the promise there as well.”

The streets are paved now and filled with automobiles and pedestrians moving urgently from here to there and while we don’t give much thought to Assyrians and Edomites, we shudder at the prospect of global warming and school shootings. Leprosy is contained but depression haunts us and suicide is epidemic; we don’t bow to idols but we collect money like it will save us. Stress and fears loom large and cycles of despair and discouragement seem unending. Cultural woes seem insurmountable and beyond answer and violence erupts in small towns as readily as in large cities.

But wait. Lift up your eyes. Look on high and see.

Have we not known? Have we not heard? Has it not been told to us from the beginning? Have we not understood?

Isaiah announced the promise. Jesus put flesh to it. Is it not now our charge to live the Spirit of it?

How is the world to know? How will the world hear? unless we live like people who know. Unless we speak as people who have heard speak? Unless we smile like people who remember the One who sits above the circle of the earth, who spans the heavens, who holds the stars and can blow away as chaff to the wind lead-heavy evil?

The way of restoration and the light of redemption shines from those who know; those who have heard and who comprehend that God not only can but does lift the faint and strengthen the powerless, who enables us to run and not be weary, to walk and not faint.

Oh, to know and then to live like.