Isaiah 40:21-31; Mark 1:29-39
Let us pray: God be in our heads and in our understanding. God be in our eyes and in our looking. God be in our mouths and in our speaking. God be in our hearts and in our thinking. God be at our end and in our departing. Amen.
The reading from the Book of Isaiah offers us a fresh vision of God and creation, of oppression and liberation, of weakness and strength, of evolution and emancipation. Those who read scripture and are familiar with Isaiah know it is a major book of the Bible. It is a long book – one of the longest in scripture -- that recalls the oppression of the Jewish people by the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II, in 586 B.C., to their liberation in 539 B.C. by Cyrus of Persia.
Using the analogy of smallness and greatness, God tells the people that the Babylonians are as small and insignificant as grasshoppers and being like insects they can be crushed without effort. God tells the Jewish people that He is a Great God who called them into covenant and that as, the Creator, there is a vast separateness – that cannot be breached by evil and that the dimensions of God’s understanding are unknowable. “My ways are not your ways,” says the Lord. Yet, God comforts the Jewish people assuring them that they will become like eagles and that their strength will be renewed.
Isaiah’s vision as a prophet allowed him to see the world clearly. He reminds them of God’s words to Moses, “I bore you on eagle’s wings and brought you to myself” (Ex. 19:4). They are not to forget that God carried them from oppression to liberation. For Isaiah and other biblical prophets and sages, the eagle is a symbol of strength, wisdom, and vision.
And this Sunday, I think it is an appropriate occasion to remember two eagles whose strength, wisdom and vision changed the world. The two prophets, who were like eagles, worth remembering this morning are Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln whose birthdays we celebrate later this week.
Darwin and Lincoln were both born February 12th, 1809. They are two 19th century giants who have greatly affected our understanding of history and of human nature. And I believe it is worth a few minutes this morning to reflect upon how these two men offer a pattern of living and can help shape our understanding of how to cope with loss and how God’s redeeming power can heal and strengthen.
This Thursday, we remember the 200th birthday of the British scientist Charles Darwin, who developed the theory of natural selection that underlines the theory of evolution. Studying at Cambridge for the ministry, Darwin was always more interested finding beetles than reading theology.
He jumped at the opportunity to sail the world on the HMS Beagle that lead to a five-year voyage around South America and spending time in the Galapagos Islands. As a curious and astute field scientist, Darwin collected specimens and recorded in journals everything he saw and studied. He drew dangerous conclusions about common descent and natural selection. Because of his theory’s explosive nature about God and creation, Darwin waited twenty years before making his findings public. The Origin of Species was finally published in 1859 and caused an uproar that still reverberates to this day.
The evolution debate continues between advocates of Creationism – belief in the Bible as the scientific text – and Evolution – the thought that empirical evidence proves that the development of all organisms by natural causes comes from other forms of life that were most likely and ultimately much simpler and primitive. Some modern researchers believe that Darwin’s advancement of evolution was not only incubated in his natural scientific curiosity and tireless ability to record everything he saw but also in his opposition to slavery.
In a new book called Darwin’s Sacred Cause, the authors put forth the theory that in Darwin’s search for the roots of humanity, his Abolitionist upbringing and his travels around the world brought him to see man’s inhumanity to man through the slave trade. His belief in the common descent of man implied for him a single origin for black and white of a shared ancestry and led him to search for the roots of humankind. It is an understanding that would come to another boy born the same day in 1809 across the Atlantic in a small modest log cabin.
Abraham Lincoln was no scientist. He was a lawyer. Like Darwin he could write. His words in speeches were like a Parthenon of language conveying in a few words what it took others an hour to say. Neither was Lincoln a traditional Christian. He did not accept denominationalism but took seriously the words of Jesus, “to love one another as I have loved you.” The Civil War shaped him and shaped a divided nation. The content of his character came into full bloom during the war as Lincoln held the Union together in the dark hours when both sides slaughtered a generation of young men.
In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln said, “In a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract… It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion…”
Like Darwin, Lincoln came to oppose slavery seeing it destroying not only a nation but also destroying the souls of both the oppressed and the oppressor. In September 1862, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring that the end had come when one man could live off the sweat of another man’s labor. During this time, it is said that Lincoln sought always to discern and understand God’s will even when personal tragedy struck. Like Darwin, Lincoln lost a child. Darwin lost his beloved 10-year-old daughter Annie and Lincoln lost his 11-year-old son Willie.
How they each responded to their unbridled sense of loss says as much about each man’s faith as does The Origin of Species and The Emancipation Proclamation. Darwin told others after Annie’s death that he was agnostic and did not believe that a loving God could do such a thing. The chasm between Charles and his wife, Emma, a devout Christian, only widened for the rest of their lives. Their correspondence to one another reflects a heartbreaking disappointment that Emma would not be with Charles in God’s kingdom because of his lack of faith. With the death of Willie, some people noticed that Lincoln turned more towards God seeking comfort and consolation in the loss he and Mary experienced so profoundly. To one friend, Lincoln said, “I will go to God with my sorrows…”
How Darwin and Lincoln responded to the world around them and to their personal losses is not something unique but part of our common humanity. In some ways these two remarkable men, who affected the world and history in unsurpassed ways, are not too dissimilar from you and me. When tragedy struck, they both responded in different ways. Darwin pulled away from God and Lincoln drew closer to God. Pulling away from God or drawing near to God: the choice is always ours.
Today, we face tumultuous times. Hard economic realities have come to our doors. The times feel like we are on a battleground being tested and tried like generations before us. We hold in prayer those in need of healing and pray for the anxious, disconsolate, and weary. In the Gospel of Mark, we heard this morning, Jesus’ public ministry begins with healing – healing a family member: Peter’s mother-in-law. Perhaps, like Peter, who inspired Mark’s Gospel, we need to remember that the first place of healing begins at home. Perhaps, there, where we are the most intimate, most vulnerable, we can open ourselves to God’s grace and mercy with and for one another. And if, we lose our nerve, or seem to forget where we placed our faith, we can come together in community, as the church, to reclaim our faith, renew our lives, and find strength for the journey together.
Losing faith in the face of uncertainty is not unnatural. Perhaps, Darwin took a lonely road that led him with the eyes of an eagle to uncover the secrets of evolution. Lincoln took another path that led him, like Moses, to lead the Union to restoration and healing. In his Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln spoke, with the strength of an eagle, of God’s will for the people of the United States to bind up the nation’s wounds.
Darwin and Lincoln: two remarkable men. Let us remember them with honor and how they changed the world in which they lived. And may we also remember how they both faced terrible loss in their lives and how they labored on for the benefit of humanity revealing wisdom, strength and vision. Perhaps the words from the prophet Isaiah are ones we can listen and remember, heed and hear, when we, too, face trials and challenges in our own lives: “God gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youth will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” Amen.
