Sermon of the Week 

The 7^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 19^th February 2012 – A New Thing

Reading: Isaiah 43: 18-25

“I am about to do a new thing”.

There are times when I open the lectionary and look at the readings for the coming Sunday and I think to myself “Oh God, why have you forsaken me?” This is not one of those times. There are other times when I consider the readings for the week and I feel a bit like Scrooge McDuck. If you remember the cartoons, you’ll remember that Uncle Scrooge liked nothing better than to wallow around in his piles of money. Sometimes our readings offer so many gems that I just want to wallow in them for a while. This is one of those times. We’ve got all these wonderful readings this morning and I could spend a very long time wallowing in them, but I need to choose, and I choose this morning to take us into Isaiah 43, which comes from the so-called second Isaiah.

Isaiah, as we know, is made up of three sets of writings, probably written by different people, definitely written at different times, and quite possibly at significantly separated different times, maybe even a hundred years or more. First Isaiah, or proto-Isaiah if you’re a real academic, is set in the years before the Babylonian exile and focuses mainly on dire warnings to Jerusalem. Third, or trito-Isaiah is written not long after the return from exile which took up much of the 6^th century before Christ, and second, or deuteron-Isaiah, is based in Babylon during that exile, probably towards the end of it.

So what we get today is second Isaiah announcing that God is about to do a new thing. There’s going to be a new Exodus, the prophet promises, from Babylon to Jerusalem, as God creates “a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

We need to try to hear these words as much as we can through 6^th century BC ears. God is promising the end of exile, so surely there is joy in that? These, after all, are the people who lamented when they were taken out of Israel “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” Now they’re being promised a return home, and for some that would have been joyous news indeed, but not for all.

Here’s the thing about exile – there comes a point where it isn’t really exile anymore. Take me; I came to Hawke’s Bay nine years ago and it didn’t take me long to realise that this is a very odd place indeed. People told me how wonderful it is, and how much it would get under my skin, and yes there were wonderful aspects, but there were things I really didn’t like, and I never thought I would really think of Hawke’s Bay as home, and yet here I am. There are still things I really don’t like, but I’ve gotten somewhat used to them, and against all expectations this is home, and it won’t be easy to leave.

It wasn’t easy for many to leave Babylon. For more than two generations they had lived there, some were born there, this was their home, regardless that it wasn’t where they came from or where they belonged, Babylon was what they knew and the prophet was saying everything was going to change, and for many that would have been anything but joyful news.

“I am doing a new thing”.

God is constantly doing new things. If we want to call ourselves God’s people, if we consider ourselves to be followers of Christ, if we take what we find in the scriptures even remotely seriously, we need to hear and understand that God is always doing a new thing. Over and over and over again we hear those words. In Genesis, Kings, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, even in depressing old Ecclesiastes, God promises new things. In Matthew Jesus speaks of new wine in new wineskins, in Corinthians Paul announces that in Christ old things have passed away and all things have become new, and in Revelation we get the promise a new heaven and a new earth. In the scriptures it’s clear, God is the God of the new, and when the new thing is done, the old passes away, and that passing will always be hard for those who were at home in the old.

God is doing a new thing. I honestly believe that, but then of course I’ve just said God is always doing new things. We though I believe are on the cusp of something very new, very different. The old things are passing away – you don’t need to be a prophet to see that. We all know that things aren’t the way they used to be, we’re not the way we used to be, and while for some that’s good news, for others that’s a hard reality to accept. But try as some might, and we know that they have, we can’t simply hold on to the old, or recreate something that has passed. God is doing a new thing, and whether we like it or not, that means the old is the old.

God is doing a new thing. Paul Tillich, arguably the greatest Christian thinker of the 20^th century, offered four characteristics if you that we can recognise in the new things God does and the first is precisely that it is God who does them, not us. The new “appears when and where it chooses” Tillich says. We can’t force a new thing or calculate what it will look like, “all we can do is be ready for it.”

All we can do is be ready for it. There’s something inherently threatening in that for many of us I know. We have been born and raised in a culture that values independence over interdependence, that exhorts us to be self-sufficient, proud, and in control of our own destiny, but God’s future, God’s new thing, isn’t something we can control, only be ready for.

“Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.” The second characteristic of the new Tillich offers is that “it must break the power of the old, not only in reality, but also in our memory” and that’s an incredibly big ask, but each is reliant on the other.

It’s so easy for our heads to get stuck in the past. I can’t tell you how many conversations I have had with people lamenting that the way it is isn’t the way it used to be – it’s simply human nature. We treasure those things from our past, we see them through rose-tinted glasses, remembering how great they were and forgetting about the downsides. The past is the past, but so often it has a strangle-hold on our present which prevents us moving to our future. “Do not remember the former things” Isaiah warns, because re-membering them, making them real in our hearts and minds, prevents what’s new from becoming our reality. The new doesn’t emerge from the old, it emerges after the old, and if we want to understand that we have to let go.

Tillich’s third point is that the really new “bears the mark of its eternal origin in its face”. God is doing a new thing, but there are lots of new things, new fads, new ideas, popping up all the time, and if we jump on everyone of them as the new thing we’ll find ourselves on a trampoline, bouncing constantly from one to the next. God’s new thing, Tillich argues, bears the mark of the old.

Anyone who’s ever studied Paul Tillich should confess that there are times when he loses them, and this is potentially one of those times. I think I know what he’s saying, but it gets a bit vague and waffly for me, so I put it like this: Don’t rush in at the first hint of something new. So many fads and fancies look old almost the moment they arrive, look for the legs. Does it last? Does it feel grounded? Is there a tinge of the divine about it? I’m not sure we can quantify some of this stuff, refer back to point one I guess; this is God’s work, not ours, but take the missional church stuff for example. For some that might feel like the lastest new fad, but actually it’s been around for more than twenty years and it’s not going away any time soon. There is the mark of the eternal on it I believe.

Finally, Tillich suggests that a key characteristic of God’s new thing is love. “Love never ends” Paul writes to the Corinthians, and in doing so he stands in a long line of prophetic voices which, like Ecclesiastes, have noted that only love can be truly called eternal, all else is mere vapour, here for now, gone tomorrow. This, I want to suggest, is what we really need to be looking for. If a new thing comes along bringing hate or exclusion or arrogance or resentment, then this is not God’s new thing. God’s new thing will always bring love, and love will always be working to reveal God’s new thing.

“I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” God’s new thing doesn’t hold on to the old, even the old we think can never be forgiven or forgotten. “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

May God grant us the grace to perceive God’s new thing. May God give us the strength to let go of the old, the known, the familiar, may God give us wisdom to be ready for and recognise the new when it comes, and may God fill us with love and open us to the eternal love constantly present within and around us. May we stand ready and eager to be part of God’s new thing. Amen.