Sweating the Small Stuff

“To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? [Isaiah 40:25-26, NRSV].

In the text that begins with the 40th chapter of Isaiah, the prophet has been commissioned to perform a difficult task. Yahweh has called upon him to proclaim hope to a people who only know despair. Yahweh charges Isaiah to tell the exiles in Babylon that Yahweh is going to deliver them from their captivity. He doesn’t say how, and He doesn’t say when. Isaiah’s task is problematic because his message must be delivered to the captives at a moment in which many of them have begun to believe that that they have been abandoned by their God. Discord fills the minds of many. How can they be the chosen people and a demoralized people at the same moment?

Isaiah takes some considerable risk in the manner in which he crafts his homily. On the one hand, at just the moment in which many of the exiles have come to see their God as powerless–perhaps, at best, just one of many gods in a pantheon of deities–Isaiah argues that Yahweh is alone the creative, reviving force in the cosmos [Isaiah 40:21-31; Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany, RCL, Year B]. On the other hand, the prophet appears to discard his role as a “caring pastor” by reminding the people that, when compared to the expanses of the universe and the fullness of the heavens, they are as significant as grasshoppers [Isaiah 40:22]. Yahweh is BIG. Israel is not.

How big is Yahweh? Well, according to Isaiah, as we look upward into the heavens, we see an endless array of stars and yet each of those shining, celestial orbs was placed there and named by Yahweh. Moreover, because of Yahweh’s power, not one of the stars ever goes missing. With Yahweh’s great power, He alone stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent within which He lives. It is Yahweh alone who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing [40:23]. Isaiah’s not-so-subtle message: in Yahweh’s own good time, He will dispatch the Babylonians, the Persians–anyone–including the Israelites, if that be Yahweh’s plan and pleasure. And what of us? As noted above, Isaiah says that we’re grasshoppers.”

In the middle of this week’s OT reading, there is a pivotal rhetorical question. Yahweh asks, “To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” [Isaiah 40:25].

There is a sense in which, of course, this very question is the one that got the Hebrew nation in trouble, resulting in their deportation to Babylon, in the first place since, in point of truth, it is all too common for human beings to compare themselves to God. That was the downfall of Adam and Eve. That was true as well for their son Cain. Their sin was that they wanted the freedom to second-guess Yahweh. How’d that work out?

Moreover, it isn’t just in wanting our own way that we compare ourselves to God. For example, we often compare how we would order the cosmos, if we were just given the chance. That desire to craft our own universe is at the heart of theodicy. We ask, “Why do bad things happen to good people? Alternatively, “Why do good things happen to bad people?” What we’re really saying is that if we were in charge, rather than Yahweh, things would be different, even better that under His rule. For those who lived in the time of Isaiah, the question might be posed as follows: “What do we know of a God who will let God’s people fall into slavery at the hands of the Babylonians, a people who kneel to another god, Marduk?”

No doubt some of the Hebrews held captive in Babylon thought, “Can such a God be trusted by a people who have grown weary and exhausted?” [Isaiah 40:29]. Pull the questions into our so-called modern context, we might inquire why, for example, has COVID-19 taken such a terrible toll on humanity? Why do young children suffer abuse at the hands of adults? Why do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? If God is so all-powerful, then why did God allow some 70 million persons to be killed during World War II? Or perhaps we might quip, “Sure, Isaiah, you say that Yahweh brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of the world to nothing. But, have you been to Venezuela lately?”

“If I was in charge, there’d be a cure for cancer.”

“If I was in charge, there’d be no housing shortage.”

“There’d be no hungry stomachs, if I was in charge!”

The problem, of course, is that you and I aren’t in charge. We’re grasshoppers.

The universe is so vast that it is completely overwhelming (at least to me). Particles of light have been traveling at 186,000 miles per second for billions of years and yet, they’ve only crossed a portion of the cosmos that can be measured by our instruments and computers. Yahweh seems to be fascinated with things that are big–with stars and galaxies. Yahweh’s continuing, creative powers forge a universe that is as mysterious as it is ever-expanding. And we are grasshoppers, at least according to Isaiah.

And so, Yahweh’s question still is before us: “To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One. If only I was in charge.

I’m convinced that it’s a good thing that we can’t compare ourselves to God. That is to say that if God arranged things our way, it would be a disaster. There is no equal to the Holy One.

I’m reminded of a book published some 24 years ago by Richard Carlson, Ph.D. It was a huge best-seller. A self-help book entitled, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and It’s All Small Stuff, Carlson sold more than 15 million copies. I didn’t buy or read it, but several friends and colleagues raved about it. As implied in the title, Carlson advised us to forget about all the small things in our lives, to concentrate instead on the “big stuff.” With not a little irony, it should be noted that Carlson died of a pulmonary embolism in December 2006, at the age of 45.

I think if it was up to us, we’d probably follow Carlson’s advice and concentrate on the vastness of things. We’d specialize in “the BIG.” We’d forget about Isaiah’s insignificant grasshoppers who inhabit the “third rock from the son.” We wouldn’t “sweat the small stuff.”

But thanks be to God, that is not the way of our Creator. As Isaiah proclaimed, and as the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ proves, our gracious God creates all things, controls all things, and loves all things. Indeed, to our amazement, Yahweh sweats the small stuff. In His universe, there are no untended corners. God thought enough/thinks enough of us to send His Son to die for us, in order that we all might live. That’s big!