Something That Lasts--Dec. 13, 2023

Something That Lasts--Dec. 13, 2023

"A voice says, 'Cry out!'
     And I said, 'What shall I cry?'

All people are grass,

     their constancy is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades,

     when the breath of the LORD blows upon it;

    surely the people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades;

     but the word of our God will stand forever." [Isaiah 40:6-8]

I know those words aren't very jolly, but we need them--maybe especially in this season.

Nobody wants to be reminded of their mortality in the first place, but this is even worse to hear.  The prophet here in Isaiah 40 isn't just reminding us that our lives are finite; he's also pointing out how fickle and flimsy our faithfulness is.  It's not just our lifespan or our energy that can "wither" like the grass or "fade" like the flower--it's our "constancy."  

We aren't terribly reliable, not as individuals, and not as a species.  We get distracted and detoured by the next shiny thing. We get easily flustered and led to give up on the things (or relationships) that prove challenging.  We break promises and look for loopholes.  We hunt for fine print to get us off the hook for following through on things we don't want to do anymore.  And on top of all that, yeah, sometimes our energy level just tanks and we don't have the stamina to do all that our good intentions planned for. 

I think all of that may be unavoidable in the human condition as we know it, but I also think that we live in a time that amplifies and feeds our short-lived attention spans and fickle faith.  Ours is a culture, after all, that turns disposability from a bug into a feature--why repair that home fixture, car, appliance, or shirt with the missing button, when you could just throw it away and buy a new one?  The makers of technology now bank on our being fooled into getting rid of the "old" simply because it's old, rather than repairing, restoring, or working with what we have.  They lob sales pitches, ads, and targeted messages at us to let us know the very moment a new model comes out, so that we'll start to salivate over the idea of the new-and-shiny, and leave the old in the garbage can.  Manufacturers have changed their business models, too, on all sorts of products: instead of building things that last and cost more (because they are made with more durable materials and workmanship), they build what is cheap and replaceable, and they tell us we're getting a better deal because we get the "new" faster, and for less money (as long as we don't actually do the math to add up how many of the cheap versions it takes to cover the lifespan of the well-made version).  We are collectively being taught not to value dependability and constancy, in favor of a world built on one-time use, single-serving, no-commitment commodities, from throw-away products and packaging to gig-economy jobs to flavor-of-the-month fads.

And yet, I suspect some part of us also feels deeply dissatisfied and empty living lives full of disposable "stuff" (and increasingly disposable relationships and people), and we are longing for something--or Someone--who will not bail out on us.  This is the One for whom we wait and hope.  This is the difference that the God we meet in Jesus makes.

That's the big punch line here in this passage from Isaiah 40.  After all the repeated reminders of how flighty and fickle we humans are, along with the fading flowers and grass of the field, the conclusion points to the difference God makes.  "The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever."  We humans will say one thing in one moment, and then backpedal, spin-doctor, or flat-out deny it in the next moment (in fact, many a successful political career has been built on such "talents"). But when God makes a promise, God will keep it.  When God promises to show up, God will show up.  And when God says, "I will always come through for you," you can count on God to come through for you.  (As an aside, it's probably worth noting that when the prophet says "the word of our God will stand forever," it's not precisely about "the Bible," even though it's tempting to turn this into a claim about the Bible proper.  Obviously the Bible was still far from being completely written when Isaiah 40 was first spoken. But beyond that, the writer isn't so much saying that "Whatever is in our official holy text is infallible and inerrant," so much as he is talking about the reliability of God's promise and the dependability of God's faithfulness--in contrast to human constancy, which is "like grass."  We modern folk have a way of taking the phrase "the word of God" out of context and treating it as identical to "the Bible," but that's not exactly the point here, for the prophet.)

Ultimately, the Word of God that stands forever is Jesus himself--the One we confess to be "the Word" who "was with God" and who "was God" and who "became flesh and lived among us."  In Jesus, we get a glimpse of God's determination to be faithful and constant with humanity, despite our fickleness.  The Christ for whom we wait is the central evidence to us that, as William Willimon put it, "God refuses to be God without us." It is Jesus, in the end, who shows us that God will not bail out on us.  He is the One we have been waiting for, and he is the One worth pinning our hopes on.

Look, we're going to keep facing down all the countless voices of disposability in the course of this day, and I can't make them go away.  But we can keep our bearings straight over against all those sales-pitches by remembering what the prophet wants us to hold onto:  despite the fragility and unreliability of so many things in life from the frostbitten brown grass of the December fields to the throwaway plastic packaging of countless objects in your day today, God remains reliable and faithful.  Even if everything else fades and withers, God's promise endures.  

What we have been after all along is something that lasts.  It just turns out to have been a Someone all along.

Lord God, be your faithful self for us today, and let us place our trust in you rather than the unreliable and disposable commodity culture around us.