"Can
God Forget
You?"
Isaiah
49. 14-18
10/20/2004
When I told one of our
previous seminarians, who shall remain nameless, that we were going to
study the prophets this fall, she said, “That’s an easy study.
All the
prophets say are, “Gloom and doom. God’s really mad at you and
He’s
coming to destroy you.”
Even
though our seminarian, who shall remain nameless, but who is serving a
church in Greensburg, PA, was joking about the prophets, sadly that is
the way many Christians view these books of the Old Testament. I
must
conclude from our low attendance at Bible Study on Wednesday evening,
you are clearly telling me that the prophets are not for you.
But
before we throw half of the Old Testament out the window, let’s stop
and take a look at some of the most beautiful passages of scripture
ever written - written by the prophets. For the next few weeks we
will
be looking at some of the incredible images the prophets use to
describe God’s intense, passionate, never-ending love for us.
Today we
begin with a passage from Isaiah. These verses were written
during a
time of great sorrow for the people of God. They were living in
exile,
far from their homeland. Jerusalem, the capital city, had been
conquerored by the Babylonians and most of the citizens of the nation
Judah had been forced to live in Babylonia.
When they saw their beloved
Jerusalem destroyed - when they wept over the destruction of their
Temple - when they ached to walk the roads of their native land, the
people of God thought that God had forgotten all about them.
Surely if
God had allowed the Babylonians to destroy their nation and force them
into exile - surely God had forgotten all about them.
Look again at verse
14: But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has
forgotten me.”
Have you
ever felt this way? Have you ever felt forsaken by God?
Have you ever
felt that God has forgotten all about you? Maybe you felt this
way when
you lost a baby you longed for. Maybe you felt this way when your
loved
one died. Maybe you felt this way when the doctor told you that
you
were sick, really sick. Maybe you felt this way when the World
Trade
Towers were attacked.
Have you
ever felt forsaken by God? Have you ever felt that God has
forgotten
all about you?
Maybe some of you are
feeling that way right now. Maybe it took every ounce of energy
you had
to be here in worship this morning, because you aren’t even sure that
there is a God out there. You aren’t even sure if God loves you.
My
friends, feeling forsaken by God at times is part of this faith journey.
It was a part of the faith
journey for the Jewish people. It was a part of the faith journey
for
African-American slaves. It has been a part of my own faith
journey.
Sometimes, because of the crisis and cruelty in life, we wonder if God
has forsaken us. We fear that God has forgotten all about us.
At times
like this, we would do well to read Isaiah’s words of comfort. Isaiah
tells the people of God that their time of exile will soon be
over. God
will soon liberate them from Babylonia, just as God liberated them from
slavery in Egypt centuries before. Though they may feel that God
has
forsaken them and forgotten all about them, God has been working behind
the scenes, unknown to them, in mysterious ways, to bring them home
again.
In verse
15, Isaiah says: Can a woman forget her nursing child? Or show no
compassion for
the child of her womb?
Ordinarily the answer to this question is
“no”. Yet sadly many of us in this room know that there are
a few
mothers who forget about their children. All of us in this room
are
horrified to hear on the news of women who bring abusive boyfriends
into their children’s lives or who physically or mentally abuse their
children themselves. I will never be able to understand how a
woman a
few years back, drove her car into a river to drown her precious
children so that she could be all alone with her boyfriend.
Sometimes
in our world, a woman does forget her nursing child. Sometimes in
our
world, a mother shows no compassion for the child of her womb.
But not
God.
Isaiah goes on in the last
part of verse 15 to say, “Even these may forget, yet I will not forget
you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.”
Now I
had to laugh when I learned this week that the Hebrew word we translate
as inscribed or carved, really means tattoo. See God is more hip
that
we thought! God has a tattoo too, only his tattoo is of
you. You
are carved into the palms of God’s hands.
I will never forget when I
first learned that I was tattooed onto the palm of God’s hand. It
was a
time in my life of great despair. A time of deep
depression. I had
watched my brother at the age of 22 waste away and then die of a
hideous terminal illness.
I had gone to seminary with
the hope of helping other families deal with the deaths of their loved
ones, only to find that seminary was a very difficult and hostile place
for me. I cried myself to
sleep
almost every night that year. I felt forsaken by God.
Abandoned by God.
Forgotten by God.
That’s
when one of my hospital supervisor took me aside and gave me this book
mark. On that bookmark were these words from Isaiah: “See! I will
not
forget you… I have carved you on the palm of my hand.” Next to
these words from scripture was a picture of a child nestled into a
large protecting, caring hand. On the back of the bookmark, my
supervisor wrote: “Be at peace, Jan. He has you in his hand.”
Through
this simple act of kindness and her continual love for me, I started to
believe what this bookmark said. I am special to God. I am
precious to
God. I am loved by God. I am carved, inscribed, tattooed
onto the palm
of God’s hand, so that God will never be able to forget me.
Though
the questions concerning my brother’s suffering -though the questions
about my own rejection at seminary remained - I was more at peace with
these questions. I could learn to live
with
them. My depression started to lift. My despair melted away.
My painful grief was slowly
transformed into cherished memories. My call to ministry was
confirmed.
All because I remembered
God’s promise to never, no never, no never forsake me.
So take your hands right
now. Hold them in the form of a cup. Imagine that your
hands are the hands of God. Imagine God holding you tenderly in
God’s hands. You are precious to God. You have not been
forgotten. See how God has carved you in the palm of his
hands.
And please note this.
The hands which hold you so tenderly, so lovingly are marked with the
horrible scars of the crucifixion. God paid a terrible price to
be able to say to us today, “I love you. I will not forget you. I
hold you in the palm of my hand.”
- Reverend Janet Hellner-Burris