The Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost (Mother Marisa)

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come to save you.”

Israel needed to hear those words. Early in the 8th-century BC, all of Jerusalem watched as the Assyrian army approached the city gates. Everyone knew what followed that mighty force, and had been reminded by the mouthpiece of the emperor himself, who stood at the base of Jerusalem’s walls and yelled: “Do not let your God on whom you rely deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. See, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, destroying them utterly. Shall you be delivered?”

With the voice o their enemy ringing in their ears, Israel wavered. They were full of fear and did not know whom to trust: the sight of their own eyes? Or the Word of the LORD?

“Be strong, do not fear! [Your God] will come to save you.”

As the armies of Assyria gathered before Jerusalem, the entire nation of Israel fought a preemptive battle — a battle with which we’re all familiar. 

In whom or in what do we put our trust? That is not a question most 21st-century Americans ask. We live in a peculiar time and a peculiar place, historically speaking: Even as war has raged around us, all over the globe, for the majority of the last century, American soil has remained relatively untouched. At the same time, however, the failures of our presidents and the failures of our nation have fostered a pervasive sense of distrust and dissatisfaction that grips us. The average U.S. citizen, for example, is now less likely to believe our government or our schools or our churches are acting for our benefit — and that doesn’t even address one’s faith in God.

We may not be facing the terror of imminent invasion; but that doesn’t mean there aren’t forces arrayed against us. They're just more subtle. A well-crafted image. A tantalizing lead. A quick click of the mouse. We are tempted, and in a way, we are taught to rely on ourselves, to believe the sight of our own eyes and the sound in our own ears and the slant of our own newsfeed. We don’t tend to throw ourselves on God’s mercy because we simply don’t have to; and so it is that when fear or sorrow strikes, we struggle to trust that God’s word is true. Sometimes we struggle to remember it at all. So God speaks again.

“Be strong, do not fear! [Your God] will come to save you.”

In the end, Jerusalem was not conquered by the Assyrian empire. Against all odds, the Jewish people routed the Assyrian army and returned to their city victorious. They remembered that the LORD was on their side — and that made all the difference, for they were able truly to see and truly to hear. They were able in that moment and for that day to recognize God for who he is and what he does. 

As the Psalmist puts so beautifully: The LORD gives justice to the oppressed and food to those who hunger. He sets the prisoner free and lifts up those who are bowed down. God is who he is and will be who he will be. God reigns forever. 

He does not change. God remains the same. From before time began and on past its end, God is perfect holiness. Perfect righteousness. Perfect love. At once unfathomable and inscrutable and also nearer than our very breath. Quick to bind up our wounds, always ready to deliver the one who trusts in him, God saves those who approach in faith and ask him for aid. And we know that definitively, finally because God himself wrote that good news with nail-pierced hands.

“Be strong, do not fear! [Your God] will come to save you.” 

Every time we remember those words, every time we dare to trust, to exercise those spiritual muscles our society neglects, we actually encounter the LORD. We encounter the God who came to right every wrong and amend every injustice by taking the pain and the penalty, the vengeance and the violence on himself — so that we might be free.

Free of the fear and the anger that can so easily control us. Free to see rightly the world around us, to respect our rulers as imperfect servants of the same master, to honor our neighbors as fellow bearers of the image of God, to offer ourselves and everything that we have and everything that we are to the the One who alone is trustworthy. The kingdom of heaven is not simply an otherworldly reality. For those whose eyes have been opened, whose lives have been touched, whose hearts have been moved: we have been given the grace to see God in his Son now. And he does not delay in pouring out his blessing, nor does he hold back his grace from those who ask. God hears the cries of his people — and acts. 

“Be strong, do not fear! [Your God] will come to save you.” AMEN.