By the Rivers of Babylon [Epiphany 5B - Isaiah 40:21-31]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Isaiah 40:21-31

 

By the Rivers of Babylon

Zion Episcopal Church, Morris, NY

 

They sat, forlorn, by the rivers of Babylon.  And they wept.  Their tears fell in torrents from the dark clouds around their souls and was absorbed by the hostile land.  As they cried, they were assaulted by the smug looks and barbed taunts of their tormentors.

 

They sat by the rivers of Babylon: eyes burnt with sorrow, tongues pressed hard against the roof of their mouths.  Because there simply were not words.  Just a suffocating grief, a searing pain, a heart-break that felt eternal.

 

Even in Babylon, they were haunted by the memories.  The ghosts followed them into exile.  Once there had been good days, but they now the memories felt like thin remnants of a past life.  The first sign of their impending doom were the terrible rumors.  Then brought to life by the pulse of distant war drums.  And then the siege happened.  It filled the land with starving children and desperate parents.  The water dried up and in its place emerged the slow misery of death.  Anguish cast its dense pall of despair over the entire city.  And then, as if weakened by the slow drip of torture, the walls of Zion crumbled.  And the Temple fell and fire engulfed the Holy City.  Violence stained the streets.  And the survivors, those who were left to shoulder a world of grief, were chained and marched to Babylon, a foreign land far from home.

 

And so they wept – because what else was there to do?  There was no erasing the past.  And they could find no hope in the future.

 

By the rivers of Babylon they grew numb.  And their will to live withered.  They were the dry bones of Ezekiel’s vision.  They needed something to bring them back to life.  What they got was the rousing word of the prophet: a man planting seeds in the scorched earth, believing in life beyond the tyranny of death.

 

The prophet Isaiah disrupts their silent despair with a series of questions:  Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  And then, when he has their attention, he speaks a powerful word about God, their God.

 

Now, generally speaking, most grieving individuals are not looking for a theological lecture.  Heartbreak is typically not healed by poetic reprimand.  But this speech is not intended to be scolding; it is confrontational inspiration – a kind of gentle tough love, in the sense that the prophet is gently reminding his people that love is tough.  And that, despite the evidence to the contrary, God does not scare easily.

 

But they were in chains and where was God?  They felt forgotten, forsaken, alone.  In that place of utter hopelessness, it felt impossible to believe in a better possibility.  The entire nation was traumatized; the trauma was all-consuming; it was etched into the deep lines of every face; every song became a lament; every story a tragedy.  They had just lived through a nightmare.  And it was haunting them.  The memories were inescapable, overwhelming every happy thought, drowning out the old, old story of their faith. 

 

It was understandable, of course.  Their despair was understandable because their trauma was true; their pain was real.  But just because something is true does not mean it is the whole truth.  Isaiah understood that there was more to their story because there was more to THE story.

 

Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  They had left the future for dead but the prophet resuscitates that future with a question.  The question is intended to jar the soul, to jog the memory.  To remind them that the same God who was their help in ages past is the hope for years to come.  Despair does not have the final answer – it never has and it never will, not in the past and not this time. 

 

When their ancestors were exiled in Egypt, in chains, crying out for help to the God they thought had forgotten them, they were not alone.  God heard their cries, split the sea, and saved them.  That was their story.

 

And it would be their story again.  Sitting by the rivers in Babylon, they wept.  And God heard them.  They felt forgotten but they were not.  God was with them.  God heard their cries and saved them.  God renewed their strength, gave them wings like eagles, and led them back home.  Despair was not their story.

 

The hope that the prophet preached was contagious and they caught it.  That hope sustained them; that hope kept them alive during their exile.  And that hope came true. 

 

They sat by the rivers of Babylon.  And they wept.  But God was close enough to dry their tears.  There was hope when life seemed hopeless.  There was healing when life looked shattered.  That was their story.  It was a story they had heard.  It was a story that they knew.  They just needed someone to remind them.

 

Like we all do, at times.  Despair is not our story; it is not your story.  Yes, life can be hard; sometimes it hurts.  Hearts are more breakable than they should be.  Pain, unfortunately, is just a part of this.  Bad stuff happens.  And the bad stuff is true but it is not the whole truth.

 

Because our God is still at work in this world: drying tears, healing shattered lives, mending broken hearts, holding the lonely.  Our God is addicted to hope and refuses to cede the future to the forces of despair.  God does not shield us from the struggles of this life but God does not leave us alone in the struggle either.  In a world that deals in Good Fridays, we serve an Easter God. 

 

This is our story.  This is your story.  When you feel alone, God is with you.  When you cry, God hears you.  When it feels hopeless, it is not.  The whole truth is: with our God, there is always hope.