7^th Sunday After Epiphany, Year B / Isaiah 43:17-25

Pastor Gayle M. Pope

Out With the Old … !

“Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old,” says the Lord.

Now there’s a switch.

How many times had the Lord commanded just the opposite? “ Time and again, the Word of the Lord told the Israelites, “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.”

Was it not the whole point of the Passover to remember these things?

But now, says the Lord, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” Don’t you get it?

This tension between holding on to and preserving the old and yet being open to the new is a classic conflict in religious experience. It’s not always easy to discern where God is truly leading us in our own lives, or where God is leading us as a church.

Faithful, well-intentioned people often disagree on these matters – especially when the “old things” seem good. And maybe they WERE good in their time. But the God of the Israelites – the God we serve – is a living, breathing God who is all about life – new life – new creation.

When we remember the old things God has done in such a way as to institutionalize them – to make whatever God did in the old days into the sum total of who God is for us, we end up substituting our memories for our God.

We attach our hope and security to what is past, looking back to the comfort of what we know, or clinging to institutional structures that give us status or power. And so it is no wonder God asks, “Can you not perceive” the new thing that is springing forth?

We can see this conflict in today’s gospel. God has done a new thing by sending His Son into the World. The Word of God that has been present in the voices of prophets, priests and kings over the centuries is now present in the flesh. And the most religious people of the day cannot see it!

Healing is one thing, but now this Jesus has the audacity to forgive sins! They are holding their tongues, but Jesus knows what they are thinking, "Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?"

They are right, of course. Only God can forgive sins. What they couldn’t see is that God was standing right before their eyes in the flesh of Jesus Christ.

So Jesus went ahead and gave the skeptics what they expected and were willing to accept. And he gave the paralyzed man what his friends thought he needed most – the ability to walk. But he granted this physical healing, he said, only as a sign, “So that you may know the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”

God was doing something new, and so he provided evidence as if to say, “Yes, it really is me!”

You would think people of faith would be eager for the new thing God is about to do! You’d think we’d be standing with open arms waiting and watching and saying, “Bring it on!,” Lord. And maybe, sometimes, we do.

But more often than not, we resist because the truth is, the “new thing” God does requires the death of the old. And that can be uncomfortable, if not downright scary.

I’m pretty sure I would have been as skeptical as the Scribes, had I been around in Jesus’ day. It would have taken me awhile to really believe that Jesus was who he said he was. Because it would have meant letting go of all my preconceived notions about how God works in the world and what God expects of me.

God is doing some new things among us today, too … like giving us an empty parsonage to use in a new way, and sending us on a 40-day quest to discover His purposes for our lives. We might have to do some things differently than we have in the past and it might be uncomfortable.

The thing to keep in mind as we struggle to discern God’s will in our own personal lives and in our life as a congregation is that God’s “new thing” is really always about the same OLD, OLD thing, which has been God’s purpose all along – to be in a loving relationship with His children – a relationship that continually makes all things new.

God’s new thing is saving ALL God’s creatures from the bondage to sin and death which separates us from God. God’s “new thing” is the resurrection that springs from the death of death, the empty tomb that springs from the cross.

The new thing happens within us once when we receive salvation by grace through faith, and yet God continues to make us new again and again as our old sinful self dies a thousand deaths whenever we turn away and then back again to God to live in that new resurrected life.

And as God renews the hearts of his people, God also renews his church by the power of the Holy Spirit, continually calling us to focus on our Savior and not on our traditions and practices themselves.

As sinners, it is our nature to fight the new, hoping consciously or unconsciously to avoid the painful death of the old.

Sometimes we do this by denying the reality of our situations; other times we try to control the process of change and renewal. We attempt to put ourselves in charge of making things new by pursuing religion, piety or emotional experience for its own sake. We try to corral the free-flowing breath of the Spirit, guiding it to blow where we think it should.

Theologian Paul Tillich wrote, ”By trying to produce [the “new thing”] we prevent its coming. The new which we sought and longed for comes to us in the moment in which we lose hope of ever finding it. it appears when and where it chooses. We cannot force it, and we cannot calculate it. Readiness is the only condition for it.”

Often that readiness happens when we finally recognize how powerless we really are; or we finally notice that the old thing has become stagnant and no longer effective. Sometimes that takes awhile. But God waits patiently, meeting us where we’re at and gently nudging us along until suddenly, unexpectedly, we are caught up in the new. A light turns on, and God’s Epiphany takes hold in us.

The Apostle Paul writes, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

The new thing that God promised has already been done for you and for me, in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Christ you are forgiven. In Baptism you are washed clean.

This is the new thing that God wants for all of His children and as soon as we perceive that newness – as soon as we receive it by faith in Jesus – God wants us to take it into the world and spread it around.

Whether we DO that in new ways or in old ways, the important thing is that the living God is at work within us and among us and through us.

What is God doing in your life right now that is causing you to change? How is God making you new? Do you perceive it?

How is God calling our congregation to change and become new in the way we proclaim the Gospel and fulfill our mission? Do we perceive it? Let us pray for the insight and wisdom to recognize the Spirit at work among us and for the faith and courage to follow wherever God leads.