“Have you not heard? Have you not known?” says the Prophet Isaiah. The answer juxtaposes Creator and Creation. Creation points to the Creator. Both Isaiah and the Psalmist of Psalm 117 look at the simultaneous fragility and glory of Creation to point to both evidence and the revealed power of the Creator. All inhabitants look like grasshoppers to God, and God has complete control over the happenings of the earth. Not only does He have control over its greatest humans in the form of rulers and princes, but he also has control over its vegetation and forests. God merely blows, a simple feat for any human, and the earth itself relinquishes its plants and grass. God has everything numbered, has fixed and ordered all things, and has called all things by name. “Have you not heard? Have you not known?” God lasts forever, does not weary, does not lose strength, and His will over Creation is complete. However, God is a God who not only shows his power over Creation, but is a God who cares and sustains Creation. Isaiah’s God gives strength to the powerless and revives the faint. The Psalmist’s God heals and binds up those in need and causes the grass to grow and gives all creatures their food. Unlimited power is married to unlimited love for Creation in God. Unlimited strength is united to unlimited compassion for Creation in the Creator.
“Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” Just as Creation points to the Creator in Isaiah, the Message points to the Messenger in the Gospel of Mark and Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. The Message was revealed earlier in the Gospel of Mark: “The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Everyone comes to Jesus because he has the ability to heal the sick and drive out demons from those demon-possessed, but this is only part his Mission. His mission is the Message, and the Message points to the Messenger-and-Message-in-One: Christ, the Son of God, saves people through transformation. This transformation happens when one believes in the good news and repents, which in the Greek is Metanoia, which literally means transformation of the mind. This transformation is so powerful that Paul proclaims he himself is not under the law, but under Christ’s law – it is through Christ that Paul is transformed, and able to preach the Gospel, the revelation that Jesus is the Christ, and the Christ saves us from us – but not from us but from our sickness and our demons, so that we may be truly transformed and become whole again, and also messengers to the Message and messengers for the Gospel. This Gospel is for the whole of Creation: for God truly reconciles Creation to Himself through Christ. As messengers of God, let us also love and sustain Creation, human to human, and human to earth, as the Creator also does.
Benjamin Nucum is a scholar, prophet and poet and a member of St. Benedict’s.