A New Thing

A Sermon Preached at Salem United Church of Christ

Higginsville, Missouri

7 April 2019

I. Introduction

• I do not know about you, but I love the smell of a new car, not that I get to smell it often – like so many things, someday scientists will probably discover that that smell is toxic or carcinogenic, but I love it – it is the smell of newness, of something different – and the fact that it will soon fade seems to make it all the more special – soon after buying a new car, that smell goes away, never to return – there is a car air freshener that is supposed to duplicate the smell, but I do not think it works – when the smell is gone, it is gone
• I have heard, though I cannot say where, that our sense of smell ties closely to our memories, that one of the most powerful triggers for memory is smell – so perhaps when we smell that new car smell we are remembering something special from our pasts – who can say?
• New things are often a delight, to see, to touch, to hear, to taste, and, yes, to smell – of course, older things can be a delight as well – there is nothing like the smell of an old book, or the feel of old leather – and it is the older stuff that is the temptation for us
• The idea of perception is important in this text as God proclaims through the prophet that a new thing is coming

II. Old Things and New

• Remember that during the time when the prophet spoke these words the people are still in Exile in Babylon – we have spoken several times before about how much this dislocation hurt the people – about how they felt cut off from their roots, from their land, from their God – there they are in the midst of foreign people who are worshiping foreign gods and doing foreign things, wearing foreign clothes and eating foreign foods – it is all so strange to them to be so completely out of touch with who they are – this experience of being foreigners in a foreign land becomes the reason why God’s people are to welcome foreigners into the land – they know what it is to be foreigners, so they are to make foreigners welcome
• And into the midst of their dislocation comes a prophet from the school of Isaiah, the great prophet in Jerusalem during the eighth century BCE – the prophet comes to say that even though the people feel that they are alone, they are not – even though they feel cut off from God, God is still with them – not only is God still with them, but God is about to do a new thing, a thing they could not have expected
• While in the Exile, the people did continue to tell the stories of God – they began to collect the stories and to write them down in ways that they never had before – and of course they had the rituals with which to remember those stories – one of the stories was the story of the Exodus
• You remember that story, right? — the family of Jacob (also called Israel) moved to Egypt during a great famine – Joseph, one of Jacob’s sons, was there and welcomed them and shared the abundance of Egypt with his relatives – after many years, the tradition says 400 years, the children of Israel were numerous, and their presence in great numbers was a threat to the Pharaoh, who enslaved them as a means of control – through many trials and difficulties, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, God brought liberation to the people – one of the most memorable of the events of the Exodus is the time when God parted the waters of the sea, which allowed Israel to walk through, but when they were through, the waters rushed back in on the army of Pharaoh – we see that event in this text when the prophet speaks of God making a way in the sea and of the quenching of the army and its horses
• But having brought to mind that powerful image of God’s work of liberation, the prophet tells the people to forget it — “Exodus? Fuhgeddaboudit” — “do not remember the former things or consider the things of old” — but, why? Why forget the past?
• Forget the former things because God is about to do a new thing – it is right there, right in front of you – just around the corner perhaps – do you not perceive it? Do you not taste it in the air? Do you not hear it in the songs of birds? Do you not see it just there in the corner of your eye? Do you not feel it in the ground? Do you not smell it in the freshness of the day? — it is there, just there – and it is coming
• Instead of making a way through the sea, God will make a way through the wilderness – instead of drowning armies, God is going make rivers in the desert so that God’s people will have plenty to drink as they journey home to Jerusalem – but that is not the wonderful part of this image, as wonderful as it is – the wonderful part is that this journey is a piece of what God is doing to form the people for God’s self so that the people might declare the praise of God – there is also a sense in which they will be praise to God – their very existence is the embodiment of praise to God
• There is continuity with the past, but God does not repeat the past – God’s action in doing a new thing is both a continuation of the past, although with a new tone, and a completely novel thing – the past is not bad, but it does not limit God — it did not happen in the ancient world that conquerors allowed conquered peoples to return home – and yet the prophet says the people will return through the wilderness
• That really is the wonderful thing – God the creator will re-envision the past in new ways to do a completely new thing – and in the process, God takes another step in creating a people of praise

III. A New Thing

• My training in graduate school was as a historian – as historians, and even as non-historians, we often like to quote George Santayana, the philosopher and writer, who famously once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” – that makes sense to us – the idea being that we look back to see what we have done and what others have done, and, ideally, we learn from that so that we can avoid the mistakes of the past
• As followers of Jesus Messiah, however, as believers in God, we cannot simply look at the past and assume that what God has done God will do – the work God in the world is not that simple – God is always doing new things – our choice is to join in this creative, novel work or not
• Our task is to look for the new thing that God is doing today – we cannot predict what it might be, but we can be ready for it when it appears – we cannot say that God will do this or that, but we can say that God will act in creative, loving, gracious ways
• We prepare for the new thing that God is already doing, not by forgetting the past completely, but by not living in it – we prepare not by expecting God to act in a particular way, but by expecting that God will act – we prepare not by doing what we have always done, but by setting out into new territory, both as a community and as individuals – we all know the seven last words of the church – there are two versions of those words — either “We’ve never done it that way before,” or “We’ve always done it that way before” – in either case, if that is the feeling of any church, they should close the doors because they have already done all they are going to do – before we know it, we may be doing things we never thought of doing or expected we would do – God is at work in us – we are not yet done becoming what God creates us to be, calls us to be, and empowers us to be

IV. Conclusion

• Our Lenten journey is proceeding apace – we have only this week and Holy Week before the resurrection celebration of Easter Day – as we move through these two weeks and beyond them into the future that God envisions for us, let us look constantly for the movement of God
• Do not remember the former things – God is doing a new thing, and that new thing is right there before us – do you not see it? Do you not taste it, feel it, hear it, smell it? – A new thing is always in our future, as individuals and as a congregation, and God is leading us into it

Tags: Future, Isaiah 43.16-21, New Creation, Trust, Vision of God