A Spring Thing – Fifth Sunday in Lent (Isaiah 43: 16-21)
We are now, officially, a couple of weeks into the spring season. Even though, the freezing rain droplets collecting on my windshield earlier this week might say otherwise. Still, the season has changed, and it won’t be long before we begin to see the flowers blooming and the trees budding and leafing, and animals emerging from there hibernation. In fact, just the other day I saw the wild turkeys holding up traffic as they crossed Crooks Road. We will soon be surrounded once again by signs of rebirth and new life. So, it is natural that the end of Lent and the beginning of the Easter season, when we celebrate resurrection, usually fall during this time of year. It is a reminder that God remains at work in the world through the dark and dreary winter months and on into the springtime. We are reminded that God always has a new thing to share with us, just around the corner.
“I am doing a new thing,” says God, in our scripture reading from Isaiah this morning. I have found this to be a popular phrase among some of the clergy people I have interacted with over the years. They love that quote, God is doing “a new thing.” Of course, this is understandable, especially when you consider we are living through a time of change for churches all over. Many churches feel as if what they have been doing isn’t working anymore. Traditions and strategies that served them for decades are no longer effective in producing results. Denominations are shrinking and churches are closing. So, in such times, you will hear clergy offer hope in the form of this quote from Isaiah. “God is doing a new thing.” With that said, the response then becomes, “Ok, but what exactly is that new thing God is doing? Where can I see it?” Which is a fair question, indeed. Where can we see it? What is this new thing? Well, maybe the first place we should look for an answer is in the Bible, that book in which God does lots of things. Specifically, lets first look at these words from the Prophet Isaiah.
The prophet is speaking to a people of Israel who have been conquered by an invading army. Then, many of them were forced to go and live in exile in Babylon. They were facing difficult times and were searching for a word of hope. Isaiah will provide it for them, but first, this reading begins with a reminder to the people about another time in their history when they were conquered and oppressed. Isaiah, speaking for God, begins by framing what is to come with the Exodus story. By reminding people that the same God who speaks to them now is also the God who freed them from slavery in Egypt. The same God who parted the Red Sea so the Israelites could cross. It is the God who defeated the army that was chasing them by drowning the army in that same Red Sea. The scripture begins with a reminder of the great things God has done to deliver the people in the past, and yet, it is followed by the instruction to forget about all that. Don’t worry about what I did before, is what Isaiah tells us God is saying, because I am going to do a new thing, and it’s going to be just as good. If not better.
So, God was going to do a new thing for the people. Something that would be helpful and appropriate to the circumstances they found themselves facing in the present moment. Which were that Israel was not only conquered and defeated by Babylon, but many of the people were taken into exile to live in Babylon. In many cases it was leaders and artists and skilled laborers who were taken, people whose skills could strengthen Babylon, and whose absence would weaken Israel. So, unlike when Moses led the escape from Egypt, the people were not all together in one place. They could not draw on communal strength. They were scattered. So, there was no prophetic leader like Moses to show the people the way. In this time, there were prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Isaiah, who tried to help people spread out among great distance and make meaning out of their predicament and share a message of hope in the faithfulness of God – the God who delivered their ancestors from Egypt.
In today’s reading, the prophet Isaiah relays the message from God to not get wrapped up in thinking about what came before, even if it meant putting aside thoughts of that miraculous escape from Egypt and deliverance to the promised land. The people could not get lost in worrying about how things had always been done, because things were different now. These circumstances would require something new. If God is doing a new thing, we must be aware. We must be paying attention to the ways God is moving in the world, right now. Which requires that we be in the right frame of mind and with a spirit of openness to be able to see what God is doing. Nostalgia for what was, or expectation and concern for what might be, are both ways of distracting ourselves from recognizing “the new thing.”
So, how might we cultivate such awareness? Well, we have already spent some time with the word of God, as reveled to us in the Bible. The Bible being a good way to see what God has been up to in the life of the people, and they responded to it throughout history. These words call us to consider how we are called to respond to God today, in the circumstances of life right now. Worship is one way that we are called to respond to God in our life right now. Indeed, some would say, that worship is the expected response for God’s actions in our life. Do we perceive them, and are we aware of God’s actions during our time of worship? Worship gives us a time to reflect on where we are seeing God’s actions in our life and in the wider world. We respond to that with thankfulness and praise. During worship our minds can be focused on the great and faithful ways that God has shown up in our lives. For a moment we can lift ourselves out of the worry and stress that comes to us from the state of our world or events going on in our personal life and receive strength and inspiration from the presence of God. And, when we come together for communal worship like this, we are not only in the presence of God, but in the presence of our brothers and sisters in the faith. We stay aware, or become aware, of the things God is doing by sharing in the life of faith with others. By seeing and hearing about what is happening in the life of people we know and care about. Sharing in our prayers, of praise, petition, and thankfulness, for the world together. Being there for each other in the ups and downs of life.
All of that is part of our humanity, and during Lent we focus on our humanity. Specifically, the parts of our humanity that cause us trouble. We meditate on our sinfulness, our fallibility, and our mortality. Even this is a way that we can bring ourselves into awareness of what God is doing in the life of the people. After all, prophets like Isaiah did not just preach words of assurance for Israel. They also called them to repentance and to account for their sins, living in ways that did not honor their relationship with God, or care for the well-being of all Gods children. Lent is another such time when our awareness of God comes from repentance.
We begin Lent by facing our mortality and our sinfulness. Now, as we come towards the end of Lent, we are reminded that God will do a new thing even in the face of those realities. We see an example of a new thing happening during the stories of Holy Week. In the death and resurrection of Christ God shows us that we can overcome death and sin. That there can be and will be a new thing after that. The life that Jesus lived and the things that he taught bring us to an awareness of what God is doing in the world and certainly what God is calling us to do in the world. Also, like the prophets of ancient Israel, Jesus calls us to repentance and points out the places in the world where we have not been attentive to what God is doing, or what God wants. That can cloud our awareness as well.
As I mentioned, nostalgia or worrying about “how things are always done” can cause us to miss what God is doing right now. The same can be true when we look ahead to the future. We can worry about the future and lose awareness that way. Or we can get really caught up in and attached to how we wish things would be, and a feeling of need for things to work out that way. Maybe we want things to work out a certain way so we can feel successful. Or maybe we want to be proven correct about something. Maybe we want things to work out so we can just feel safe and secure in the future. All of these are normal human emotions, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to feel successful or correct or safe. However, we also don’t want to miss what God is doing in the here and now. It is alright to have hope for the new thing God is doing, but we don’t want to get too attached to a hoped-for outcome. We should let God do what God is going to do. We should have faith in the God who delivers the people, and who is always with us.
So, lets think about that God who is always with us. That God who is faithfully preparing to do a new thing. What is one more way to tune in our awareness to God’s movement in the world? We can find signs of God’s movement in the Bible, during worship or during times of spiritual discernment and devotion, such as Lent. But again, as we move into spring, and the weather finally turns warmer, let us remember that we can also find awareness of God in nature. In the plants and animals that are also beloved creations of God. After all, as the Prophet says, “See I am doing a new thing? Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” Then he draws our attention our awareness- to exactly where the new thing is happening. “I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” Water is a significant part of this scripture, and a significant part of the new thing God is doing in it. God makes a way through water and God provides water to sustain those who need it, including the animals. Verse 20 says, “The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provided water in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” God provides for all God’s creatures. Of course, when we read this, we could take it strictly as metaphor when it talks about streams in the wasteland making a way in the desert. Certainly, there are times in our life when we feel like we are in the wasteland, and we pray for God to help us find a way out. But, when Isaiah mentions actual animals, owls and jackals drinking from this water, it seems less metaphorical to me, and more literal. God is providing for these animals, helping nature to survive and thrive as God wants. So, if we want to be aware of how God is doing new things in the world, we should take a moment to get out our heads for a moment, let go of the thoughts and feelings and theology and metaphors were turning around up there and look at what is going on in nature. Especially at this time of year as we move from winter and into the new life of spring. God is out here doing a new thing, and it doesn’t always have to be about us.
So, there are some ways we can make ourselves more aware of the new thing God is doing in the world. Lucky for us, they are all pretty standard parts of Christian living – Bible study, worship, prayer, time in nature. And of course, God is at work in the world in many more ways than just what we do here on a Sunday morning. However, my hope and my belief is that our time here together, or any time intentionally spent with God, can help us to see God at work in the patterns of daily life. Not only that, but it can also help us tune in to a vision that aligns with God’s desires for the flourishing and well-being of all creation. Because no matter the specifics, that is what the new thing is always moving us toward.
Finally, in those times when you may have some doubts about all that, when it seems like winter will never leave and spring can’t break through, I offer some more words from Isaiah 43. “Be not afraid for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name. When you pass through the waters I will be with you. When you pass through the floods they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire you will not be burned. Because you are mine, you are precious in my sight, and I love you.”
Amen.