Fifth Lent
Isaiah 43:16-21; John 12:1-8; Philippians 3:4b-14
The contrast of opposites is an interesting study. Most personality tests, like the Myers-Briggs, are based on the contrasting views and preferences that we have of the world. In their simplest forms such tests set forth a number of choices such as "Which do you prefer, up or down, inside or outside , simple or complex, old or new?" Obviously the contrasting words have different meanings depending on your view of the world. Old or new for example. A friend offers you a ride in their old car. Now there are old cars and then there are "old" cars. There are the old beaters that my brothers and I drove when we were in high school, old cars, and then there are the classic, vintage and antique cars, old without a doubt but old in a way that is quite different from the old I drove.
Old transformed into something seen with new eyes, experienced with new senses, a new classic. Old or new. I was mailing a letter the other day and looked in the desk for a stamp. I had used up my normal supply and hadn't had a chance to get to the post office, so I went through the desk looking for a stamp. Sure enough I found some old stamps. They were old 34 cent stamps. Fortunately I also had a few old 3 cent stamps. Then I remembered that I actually had some other stamps stored in the basement, part of an old stamp collection , much older stamps now probably worth quite a bit more than their face value. We live our days with a curious mix of the old and new. We may want a new house but we would never think of parting with that certain cherished old chair. We shop for a new computer to replace the old one but we put it on the same old desk that we would never think of replacing. We buy a new state of the art sound system and play our old music on it (at least that is what my sons say).
Old or new. In some circumstances the "old" means time-tested and proven while in another setting it simply means outdated with diminished value. For some the "new" means improved while for others the "new" means unorthodox and unproven, as in a new medical treatment or a new employee. Things new and old play an important part in our lessons for today, and how we understand and experience the world. Within our Christian Bible we have both an Old and a New Testament. We need to be clear first of all that the use of the word "old" to describe the Hebrew portion of our Bible is not to suggest that it is out dated and of lesser value. If anything this oldest portion of our Bible is to me more like an old fine wine, carefully aged and full bodied, to be savored and embraced in the richness of its wholeness and the way it compliments what it is served with. From this older portion of the Bible comes the vision of the prophet Isaiah presented in our first reading with a proclamation of newness. Like most announcements of newness, not everyone heard this word with joy and enthusiasm. Written while the Israelites were in exile in Babylon possibly in the 6th century before Christ, this text is part of what scholars regularly identify as "Second Isaiah." While First Isaiah was concerned with delivering a message of judgment and coming tribulation, the message of Second Isaiah is intended to comfort a displaced people who were having to make a life for themselves in the foreign land of Babylon.
Our lesson for today begins with the dramatic declaration, "Thus says the Lord." This is not an opinion piece or the theological ruminations of some preacher, this is the voice of God speaking through the prophet, and who is this God? This is the God that has been revealed active in the history of the people, the God who provided for Israel's escape from Egypt, dividing the waters of the Red Sea and providing a dry path through the sea, the prophet reminds his listeners that this is their God who acts to provide salvation and deliverance. But then God declares through the prophet, enough of the past, "Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing..." In the past the people were faced by the impossibility of passing through the sea to safety, yet God did a new miracle and the people were delivered. Now the people were exiled in a distant land separated from their home by the wilderness and desert that looked every bit as impassible as the Red Sea of old had been, and just as God acted in the past to deliver the people, so God was prepared to act again, act in new ways so that the people "might declare my praise."
The challenge is that God's newness is not so easily recognized. God declares, "I am about to do a new thing, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" We tend to see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear, the political spin doctors know that too well, the media has featured the frenzy of attempts this week to define the way various testimony was perceived not just by the 9-11 Hearing Panel but by the American public. Some people heard something new, others heard something old and familiar. Our perception is defined in great part by who we are and what our place is in the world.
For 70 years the Israelites were in exile in Babylon. After a decade or so they began to settle into their encampments around the city of Babylon. Like the Palestinian refugees who were forced to settle in Gaza or Jordan after the conflicts in Israel of the 1960's, a whole generation of people were born and grew up with no history of any other life, the former things were passing away, the memories were fading of any other type of life. And then comes the promise of something new, to some the new is a threat to the stability that has been established, regardless of how bad, the unpredictable new could be worse, who knows, better to stay with the familiar, the known. God's intent "to do a new thing" is not easy for us to interpret. The easiest spin to place on such words is to aim them at the end of time, that ultimately God will indeed create a new heaven and a new earth, that through death we will enter into a new relationship with God, but until then we will endure the present world in the hope and promise of the life to come. The only problem with such a spin to God's words is that they take God out of history, the very history that has so revealed our God to us. From our experience of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament we have come to know a God who honors and works through the world and creatures of that world. A God who became so engaged with the world that this God emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (Phil. 2:7) in loving, incarnate engagement with the world in order that our world might become what God had intended it to be. In order that our world might be made new!
What would divine newness mean? Rod Hunter suggests that we are not looking at some miraculous changing of the facts of our finitude or the magical substitution of a new world for the old. God created the world good, Our experience of the God of our world is a God who does a new thing in our world. We are talking about a transfiguration of things in their very limitation and brokenness. Newness means a new apprehension of events and a new freedom for love within events, new depths of meaning and purpose revealing new depths of love and freedom. A reborn sense of meaning and value that makes things new by transfiguring their significance and liberating their potentiality for the future. A new thing, the bush burns but is not consumed, a star shines in the night leading the wisdom of ages to a child's birth, a voice cries in the wilderness and from the waters of the Jordan there rises the Word of God active in human history.
A new thing, thousands are fed with but a few loaves and fishes, the objects of daily life become the pictures of God's kingdom in parable and story, and a beloved friend dies so unexpectedly only to be called forth from the grave. A new thing. Our lives are filled with new things. I recently got a new car, and it has new technology, a hybrid, gas and electric, we are getting new computers, and Al is setting up a new wireless network. I am anticipating the opening of a new restaurant in Deerfield. Newness is so much a part of our modern lives. We expect the upgrades and new versions, the former things are constantly passing away. God created the world that way, there are new flowers in the courtyard here at church. Spring is a time of newness. I know that everyone came this morning expecting a new sermon, newness is part of God's creative order for our world. But it is not easy to let go of the old, the familiar, the comfortable. Our Gospel tells us that six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, to the home of Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead. Now someone rasied from the dead is a piece of history that is hard to ignore. And yet what did it mean?
In the 11th chapter of John, right before our lesson for today we read that many of the religious community of that day were deeply troubled by such a miracle, it threatened their traditional faith, their familiar understanding of the world. Death was one of those things people had come to accept. But Jesus said no, he did a new thing. We still struggle with such notions. Lately I have found myself beginning each day by turning on the radio and waiting to hear the latest death count from Iraq, from Israel, from whatever other conflicted corner of the world has caught the media's attention.
It is as if our society has decided that death is just one of those things we have to accept, and then I find myself drawn into prayer for those who have died, those who survive, and I remember that Jesus said no, there are new things that God wills for this world. To be able to see beyond the moment, that is what newness is all about, sometimes we ground newness in objects, new clothes for school, a new song to sing, a new friend to meet and know. Newness is God's gift to see, experience and know even the familiar freed from the past.
Our Lenten journey is intended to be a time of reflection on our failings and short comings, our sins and moments of doubt, but there is also the promise of something more. Mary recognized this, maybe it was only intuition but she discerned it. Jesus sitting down to eat with her brother, this was not intended to be just another ordinary moment, something new was needed, new clothes? new food? No, she decided, a whole new texture, something in the air, perfume. It is said that smell is the most primitive of our five senses and that smell has the power to evoke long forgotten memories. The text says the fragrance of the perfume filled the house. To one of the disciples, Judas, who was soon to betray Jesus, the fragrance had the rich smell of money. This is not an aroma so unfamiliar to most of us. And the possibilities that we sense are equally familiar, to care for the poor, to do something good rather than extravagant, could not Jesus recognize the need? Where was God for the poor and suffering?
But a new thing was about to happen, the very God who cared so much for the suffering of humanity had entered the world, entered the world knowing that not even the carefully ritualized fulfillment of religious laws or the might of great wealth or the exercise of political and military power could save humanity from their sin and sickness unto death. The poor would continue to exist, Death would have to be accepted, UNLESS, Unless God did a new thing, and the fragrance of perfume filled the air, Breath deeply, inhale the fragrance, Mary poured the oil on Jesus' feet. He recognized it for what it was, a new moment, an anointing for death that would go beyond the grave. In the decades that followed there would be those who remembered, remembered every time they caught even the faintest whiff of the perfume and they would remember, remember the time an ordinary meal became something more. That's what God intends for our world, that each ordinary moment become something more, something new, a moment of grace that proclaims God active in our world.
There are no ordinary moments to a God who celebrates such newness, that is what today's lessons are trying to help us see. The opportunity to share this moment together makes this moment unique, this group of people will never gather again in exactly this way, with these same needs and joys. That is the gift of the Spirit in calling together this community of faith, this church, there is a new look, a new sound, a new feeling, even new aromas. To be sure, there are still the poor, but God moves new hearts to be open in sharing and caring, feeding and healing. There is still death, but Christ's rising from the dead gives new purpose to lives lived and proclaims a loud "no" to death's power to end hopes, dreams and meaning in life. We still gather each Sunday at the Lord's Table in an old and familiar ritual, but there is something new in this moment, we breath in the Spirit and this room is filled with God's grace and newness. We are soon to embark on the most holy week of the Christian year, as familiar as the story may seem, as regular as the worship services may appear, there is a word that comes from God reminding us, 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? A new thing... God grant us the grace to perceive it!
Amen.