Isaiah 65:17-25
Saying “Yes” to God’s New Day
James Sledge November
17, 2019
A
few weeks ago, one of my Facebook “friends” posted this on her page. “When the
time changes next weekend could we please go back to 1965 when life was
simple!!!!! I think most will agree the 60’s were the best years of their
life!!!”
“Most” here obviously doesn’t include anyone born
after 1970. It might not include those who served or lost loved ones in
Vietnam. It’s probably doesn’t include civil rights marchers who faced dogs,
fire hoses, beatings, and death threats. But for many, including an eight year
old me, it did seem a wonderful, simple time. We lived what I thought was the
nearly idyllic life of a typical suburban family. Oh, for life to be that easy
again.
Nostalgia
is a way that many of us react when things are not going as well as we’d like. As
with my Facebook “friend,” it usually involves some selective remembering that
focuses on the good and forgets the bad. Those who want to make America great
again, recall a time when American was in its ascendency, the preeminent
superpower with a growing middle class, burgeoning suburbs, and an interstate
highway system beginning to be built. Of course this nostalgia forgets the large
numbers of people who were systemically excluded because of race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on.
It forgets the ecological damage being done without the least bit of concern.
There’s
a lot of nostalgia in the church these days. Remember when the sanctuary was
always full? Remember when the confirmation class had forty youth in it?
Remember when we couldn’t find enough rooms for all the Sunday School classes?
Remember?
Of
course nostalgia forgets that 1950s Christianity often actively supported laws
enforcing racial segregation and criminalizing sexual orientations or behaviors
seen as “deviant,” The Church gave religious sanction to American society,
speaking in biblical terms of a new Jerusalem, in exchange for the culture all
but requiring people to participate in religion. But it was an easier time to
be church, although Jesus did say that following him would be difficult.
I’ve
been reading a book with the subtitle Is
Faith Still Possible? (Spoiler alert: the answer is yes.) It asks this question
in the face of the difficulties that the church faces in our day. The book’s
forward is written by the Director of NEXT Church, Jessica Tate, who worked
with the Session at the beginning of what would become our Renew process. She
writes that when the book asks if faith is still possible it speaks directly to
her and raises unresolved scenes from her life.
“I
recall countless committee meetings where someone worries over the lack of
young families in the church or sheepishly admits that his own adult children
do not attend church anymore. Is what the church offering so banal that it is
irrelevant to those around us?”
And
this one really hit me. “I can hear the voice of a colleague saying that he is
glad he is close to retiring. ‘The church as we know it is broken,’ he said.
‘Good luck.’ Is this the best the gospel can offer to those charged with
sharing it? Is this the best we can offer the world?”[1]
I
suppose that nostalgia is a natural human response when facing difficulties,
and I certainly engage in it myself at times. But from a Christian standpoint,
it makes almost no sense at all. Christian faith is rooted in the promises of a
God who is about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall
not be remembered or come to mind.
God’s
new day is never a return to something. In fact, God’s newness always has an
element of judgment on the past and present. The former things are no longer
remembered because God’s newness turns the old upside down. No more cries from
the distressed? No one will labor in vain? None shall hurt or destroy? That
will require an entirely new way of living: the powerful no longer using that
power for selfish ends, no more becoming rich by exploiting others.
The
idyllic image the prophet paints is meant to evoke this world turned upside
down. Those that the lambs, the weak, had once feared will no longer be a
threat. The lion, the most powerful being the prophet knew of, would no longer
prey on others.
Luke’s
gospel has Mary prophesy a world turned upside down even before Jesus is born. The
results are very much like those from Isaiah, although God’s actions are
described more provocatively. “(God) has shown strength with his arm; he
has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the
powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry
with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
Jesus
proclaims this new day, this kingdom of God that is drawing near, and he calls
followers to repent, to turn from the ways of the world, the ways where the
powerful impose their will on the weak, where the rich grow richer at the
expense of the poor, and to begin living out the newness of God now, to begin
showing it to the world and drawing the world toward God’s newness, God’s
future.
Of
course most of us are much more accustomed to and practiced at old ways, the
ways of the world where the strong overpower the weak, where those with
abundant resources use them to get even further ahead of those who have few. We
may wish the world were a better place, that the weak and the oppressed and the
poor had it better, but… We didn’t create the system but we keep on enjoying
the advantages it gives us.
But
Jesus calls us to become agents of God’s new day. He promises us the gift of
the Holy Spirit who let’s us experience Christ present with us and know the
hope of that new day, so that we can begin living now in ways that make that
new day known to the world.
Jesus’
call always demands a “Yes” or “No” from us. Following Jesus means putting down
certain things and taking up others. Will we say yes to the way of Jesus and no
to the way of the world? Will we alter how we live so that our lives begin to
conform to the new thing God is doing in Christ?
A
part of our answer comes from what we do with what God has given us. Our giving,
our stewardship of God’s gifts, is about life lived toward God’s new day. Too
often, stewardship is understood simply as raising enough money to meet the
budget. Budgets do have to be met, but more fundamentally, stewardship is our
response, our “Yes” of “No” to Jesus’ call.
For I am about to create new heavens and a new
earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind, says the LORD. And Jesus, who gives his very
self for us, invites us to be a part of this new thing. Come, let us walk
boldly into the future with our God.
[1]
Ronald Byars, Believer on Sunday, Atheist
by Thursday, Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2019, p. xi.
No comments:
Post a Comment