God Remembers

Sermon for January 17, 2010
Based on Isaiah 62:1-5

All eyes have been on Haiti this week. The images streaming day and night from this island nation are scenes of absolute destruction and devastation. Miles of buildings that have completely collapsed, people sleeping in the streets, the injured in need of medical care, thousands of people in desperate need of food and clean water, and, of course, the tens of thousands who have died. In the last few days we’ve all discovered our own connections to Haiti – either family or friends that are from there or were there at the time of the quake. My family learned that a long time family friend was in the process of adopting two children from Haiti when she showed up on the nightly news and in the Associated Press. Our collective hearts ache for the people of this country that is not so far from our own. The outpouring of generosity has been overwhelming, even as the urgent need continues. We feel the need to do something because these images are so shocking and so hard to comprehend. It is nearly impossible for us to grasp the magnitude of this kind of disaster, this kind of crisis. And as we look at the pictures we find ourselves whispering words like “horrible,” “complete desolation” and maybe even “God forsaken.”

The people who lived in the time of the prophet Isaiah knew something about living in desolation. In the year 586 BC the Babylonian army marched into the land of Israel. They swiftly captured the northern part of the country that had been under Assyrian rule and then continued marching south into the land of Judah. They entered the capital city of Jerusalem and began their campaign of destruction. Homes were burned, people killed in the streets, and buildings torn to the ground. Even the great and mighty temple, the center of worship and power was burned and destroyed – not a stone was left on stone. The Babylonian army then gathered up the Israelites and took them into exile. As the Israelites left, their last image of home was one of destruction and desolation -- crumbled stones, fire and smoke, the wails of women and children still ringing in their ears. Later, by the waters of Babylon, the people hung up their harps and wept, the psalmist writes. They wept because they feared that they truly were God forsaken, that at last God had broken the covenant God had made so long ago with their ancestors, Abraham and Sarah. For generation after generation God had acted toward them with steadfast love and faithfulness, despite their rebellion. For generation after generation God had kept the promise and commitment always to be their God and that they would always be God’s people, despite their faithlessness. But now, at last, in the midst of this most terrible desolation, they feared that God had finally abandoned them. That, at last, God had grown tired of forgiving them, tired of their running after other gods, that God had lost patience with the ways they continued to oppress the weak and abuse the poor, that God had finally decided that enough is enough and had broken covenant and left them for good.

Now, one must be very, very careful when making any connection between sin and destruction. Over this last week some people have felt a need to make sense of the Haitian tragedy by seeing it as punishment for sin. That is a dangerous, irresponsible business. To link this disaster to the sin of the victims is not only bad theology, but it adds to the needless suffering of a nation. What’s more, this attempt to blame the victim is, more than anything, an effort to deny the culpability we all share for what has happened. This earthquake was as devastating as it was because Haiti is as poor as it is. Poorly constructed buildings collapsed, a virtually non-existent infrastructure kept supplies from where they needed to go, a lack of resources in the country as a whole became glaringly apparent when they were needed the most. And I cannot help but wonder how things might have been different if the world had paid this small nation just a percentage of the attention it is paying now years ago; how things might have been different if rather than respond to a disaster of an earthquake, we had been as motivated to respond to the disaster of systemic poverty just off our own shores. If this disaster is to be linked to sin in any way, it must be linked to the sin of us all. And if we were to name that sin, it wouldn’t be making a pact with the devil; it would be that we forget.

All eyes are on Haiti now, but if things run as they have before, soon the TV cameras will be in another part of the world and even this disaster will fade from memory. As we watch these images we tell ourselves we have never seen anything like this before – forgetting we have seen scenes just like this many times before: the earthquake in Pakistan in 2005 that killed 75,000; the earthquake in China in 2008 that killed another 70,000 and left 5 million homeless. How many of us remember the destruction caused to the fragile economies of Honduras and Nicaragua by Hurricane Mitch? When I was with the youth group in New Orleans this past summer, I was shocked by what I saw – places of the city that looked like Katrina had come through only weeks before, not years. And I, honestly, had long since forgotten. Long since grown weary of the coverage. And yet while we were in New Orleans we could not forget. And the message we heard over and over again as we walked through the streets of St. Bernard Parish, as we ate in the restaurants and talked to workers in our hotel, one after another they thanked us for being part of the 40,000 young people who had come to New Orleans that week, to thank us not only for taking the time to serve, but for letting them know that were not forgotten. It gave hope beyond hope to know that someone remembered. That is why some friends of mine go to Haiti every year – and happened to be there this week. That is why other friends go to Honduras every year, to remind their brothers and sisters that it really is true and not just words in a speech that they are not forsaken; they are not forgotten. .

God sent the prophet Isaiah to the people living in the desolation of the exile with this message, “You shall no longer be termed Forsaken, and your land no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight is in Her and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you, and as a bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” Despite their desolation and destruction, despite their sin and their shortcomings, the God of Israel had not abandoned the people. Despite their forgetting God and forsaking one another, God had not forgotten nor forsaken them. God had claimed them as God’s own. God had committed God’s very life to them and for them. God had entered into a covenant with them that no failings of theirs could ever destroy. And so God would return to them and God would return them to the land, and they who had been called Forsaken, would now be called God’s delight. The land that been called Desolate, now would be named Married. Because God had not forgotten; and God would come to reclaim them with the love and delight of a young groom for his bride, God would come and reclaim them with a faithful, covenanted love that would never let them go. Even when we forget, God remembers.

Most of us will probably never experience anything like what we have seen on the news this week. Yet all of us have, in our own way, experienced what it means to be desolate or forsaken. Each of us has at one time or another hung up our harps and wept, believing ourselves to be abandoned, forgotten. And yet, as we heard last week, we hear again today: the promise that God made to the people of Israel through the prophet Isaiah is the same promise God made to the world in Jesus Christ and it is the very same promise God sealed to each of us in the waters of baptism; it is the same promise God has made to the people of Haiti and Pakistan and Central America and New Orleans – and it is the promise that even when we forget, God remembers. The God of steadfast love and faithfulness whispers into the rubble of our brokenness and desolation calling us Beloved, Married, My Delight is in Him, My Delight is in Her. I have called you by name. You are mine. And even when others forget, I will always remember. Amen.