Through It All
Isaiah 43:1-7[1]
If you’re like me, when “all’s
right with the world” it seems to be a lot easier to trust in God. When life is
relatively stable, when the family is whole and healthy, when we find joy and
meaning in our daily activities, it’s not hard at all to see God’s hand of
blessing at work in our lives. But when you take all that away, it’s also
fairly easy to believe that God has abandoned us. When unexpected change hits
us squarely in the face, when our family is fractured by the challenges and
changes of life, when life itself seems to lose its joy and meaning, we may
wonder whether there’s even a God at all. Let alone one who actually cares for
us.
This problem isn’t unique to us or
to modern life. Throughout the ages, people who have faced tragedy and hardship
have questioned the love of God. And many have questioned the very existence of
God. For those of us who may have made it through life relatively unscathed, we
may have a hard time understanding this. But I would say that most people
suffer some kind of heartbreak at some point in their lives. And when we do,
it’s a very natural thing to ask the question, “Why?” It’s even a biblical
question. From the Psalms to the Prophets to Jesus on the cross, the question
“Why?” echoes throughout the Scriptures.
Unfortunately, the Bible never
gives us an answer to that question. What it does is to assure us over and over
again that, in whatever circumstances we may find ourselves, God’s love for us
never fails.[2] That is
the message of our Scripture lesson from Isaiah for today. If we look at these
verses by themselves, we may find them comforting to some degree. But I think
the real impact of any passage like this comes when we understand the situation
of the people to whom these words were originally spoken. They were living in
forced exile, far from anything familiar. They were people who had lost
everything—homes, lives, land, and even in some cases family. They had gone through the worst catastrophe
imaginable. They had gone through the
flood, and felt overwhelmed. They had
gone through the fire and felt burned.[3]
Into this situation of devastation
and brokenness, the prophet declared God’s unfailing love. This is no mere glib
promise. The language of the Scripture lesson makes it clear that God’s love
for his suffering people is set in the context of Creation and Redemption, the
actions that define God’s character in the Bible.[4]
When the prophet says, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you
by name, you are mine” (Isa. 43:1), he is speaking of the love that constitutes
who God is. For him to stop loving them would mean that God would stop being
true to himself. For him to stop loving them would mean that God would have to
stop being God.[5]
This is the basis for the prophet’s
assurance to the people: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through
fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you” (Isa. 43:2).
Now, I think we sometimes have a tendency to read too much into promises like
this. From a real-life perspective, you can’t go through a flood without
getting soaked through. And you can’t go
through a fire without at least smelling like smoke, and maybe even getting singed. But the promise is not that we will never
suffer, but rather that these hardships will not consume us. And the reason for
that is that God promises to be with us and to sustain us with his unfailing
love.[6]
And in case there is any doubt
about whether this promise has any teeth to it, God stakes his reputation on
it. Through the prophet, God makes it clear that the basis for the promise of
his unfailing love is the essential nature of who God is: “I am the LORD your
God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior” (Isa. 43:3).[7] No
matter what might come their way, God assured the people that they would always
be surrounded by his loving presence: He says, “Do not fear, for I am with you”
(Isa. 43:5). That, too, is an admonition that echoes throughout the Bible. From
Moses to Revelation God is continually reassuring his people that they do not
need to be afraid of what life may bring their way, because He is with us
through it all.[8] And he
always will be.
In contrast to those who may think
that our faith is unrealistic, time and again, the Bible promises us the
support of God’s loving presence in the midst of the worst that can happen to
us. Our faith is not naïve to the fact that there is a tragic dimension to
life.[9]
Think of it: at this very moment, how many people on the planet are
suffering—suffering the loss of a loved one, suffering the lack of basic
necessities, suffering because they have been displaced by disease or war,
suffering because of the cruel and inhumane way in which we can treat one
another. A faith that promises “everything will be just fine” without taking
full account of the hardships of life would be worse than naïve; it would be
obscene.[10]
But that is not the nature of our
faith. Right in the midst of the worst that life can throw at us, the Scriptures
promise us over and over that God’s love for us will never fail. They promise
that no matter what may come our way, God will sustain us with his presence.
They promise us that even if we have to go through the flood and through the
fire, they will not destroy us. And the basis for that assurance is the very
nature of who God is: a God whose love for us never fails, a God who is our
Savior in all the circumstances of life, a God who is with us no matter what.[11]
In all of life, we can trust that God’s love will sustain us and bring us
through it all.
[1] ©2016
Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 1/10/2016 at Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltman, The Crucified God, 243, points above all to God’s presence at the cross, where
he says that God “suffers the death of the Son in the infinite grief of love”;
cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Way
of Jesus Christ, 172-78; cf. also Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I
Could Not Be a Christian, 126: “The God embodied in Jesus suffers not only
for the victims of the world; this God suffers like them and with them.”
[3] Cf. Paul
D. Hanson, Isaiah 40-66, 62, where he
says that the people “needed a word of assurance, a promise that there was a
future beyond the baffling suffering and shame they had suffered.” Cf. also Mary W. Anderson, “Who is Like Thee?” The Christian Century (Jan 26, 2000), 87, where she says,
“in the midst of their captivity the people are wondering how their God can be
omni-anything when they are so miserable.”
[4] Cf.
Hanson, Isaiah 40-66, 61, where he
observes that creation and redemption go together in this text: “the Creator
God is the God who enters history to establish a relationship with human beings
and to heal their brokenness.”
[5] Cf.
Hanson, Isaiah 40-66, 61, where he
recognizes the tension between the expression of God’s “wrath” in the judgment
the people have undergone and the affirmation of God’s love here. He says, “Contradictory
as they may seem on the face of things, expressions of divine anger, as
genuinely as affirmations of divine steadfastness, reveal the commitment of God
to authentic, reciprocating love.”
[6] Cf. Karl
Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.1:39, where
he refers to the assurance of the the Heidelberg Catechism (ques. 26) that “whatever
evil he sends upon me in this troubled life he will turn to my good, for he is
able to do it, being almighty God, and is determined to do it, being a faithful
Father” (cf Book of Confessions 4.026).
Cf. also Christopher R. Seitz, “The Book of Isaiah 40-66,” New Interpreters Bible VI: 381.
[7] Cf. Hanson,
Isaiah 40-66, 64, where he says, “only
one word could satisfy the deepest yearning of the fearful heart, a word of
assurance that the Creator of all, …, loves radically
and unconditionally. The reason this defeated people could hope for a
future beyond tragedy is a remarkable promise, a promise filled with the
creative power that belongs exclusively … to love.”
[8] Cf.
Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 24-25: “Neither in presumption nor in despair does there
lie the power to renew life, but only in the hope that is enduring and sure.”
For him, fear is hopelessness that expresses itself either as presumption or despair.
[9] Cf. John
Caputo, On Religion, 118. He says
that “the love of God” is distressed by the question raised by that which is
“loveless” in this world: “Does anyone know or care that we are here?” He puts
it more clearly when he asks (p. 119), “Is there nothing beyond the heartless
and unrelenting cosmic rhythms, nothing loving, kind, or fair?” Ultimately
while he recognizes that he cannot make this “tragic sense of life” go away, he
will not agree that “the tragic is the real truth” of our lives. In fact, he
insists that “faith is faith precisely in the face of the facelessness of the
anonymous” and is always “haunted” by “this specter of a heartless world of
cosmic forces.”
[10] See Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark, 61-62: “Anyone who claims to believe in an all-powerful,
all-loving God without taking into account this devastating evidence [i.e. the
Holocaust] either that God is indifferent or powerless, or that there is no God
at all, is playing games. … If Love itself is really at the heart of it all,
how can such things happen? What do such things mean?”
[11] Cf. Caputo, On Religion,
123, where in the face of the prospect that all that really exists is a
heartless, tragic world of anonymous cosmic forces, he affirms, “The name of
God is the name of the One who takes a stand with those who suffer, who
expresses a divine solidarity with suffering, the One who says no to suffering, to unjust or
unwarranted suffering.”
