Isaiah 43 : 16-21 Sermon A young Pastor had recently arrived at her church and she found no shortage of people willing to talk with her and offer her advice. They told her about the great heritage of the congregation s past, about who the key people were and what she needed to do to maintain all that was good about their church. She was frequently assured that if she followed the advice she was being given, everything would go smoothly and she would do well. But this pastor was smart. After thanking yet another parishioner for the history lesson and the well intentioned advice, she asked him a question: Tell me what new and exciting things you are expecting in the future for us at this Church. For the first time she was met with silence. For as she had begun to suspect these parishioners could not imagine a future any different than the past, and anything they could imagine they were sure that they didn t want. Well we all come from different places and we may have had experience of many different churches, but I would guess the story sounds familiar enough. It seems to be built into the culture of churches that we prefer the comfort of the familiar to the uncertainty of anything different. And this has nothing to do with being Presbyterian it is much broader than that. Even the trendiest kind of congregation which meets in a café to discuss the lyrics of U2 will soon run into trouble if someone decides they want to drink cappuccino instead of the more traditional skinny latte. Why can we not just keep things the way they were? Actually this attitude has nothing to do with religion. If you try to introduce change into any organisation you will be confronted by all sorts of opposition. It is something deeply engrained in us all, and if you are still young enough to think you are immune to such negativity, just wait until the next generation start to challenge your once revolutionary ideas! Change is always frightening. And while that has nothing to do with religion, it is a fear which religious organisations do seem to be blessed with it in extra strong doses.
Actually I think that is understandable. One of our key selling points is that we have a long history, that we have grappled with the big questions of life over many generations and have answers which have been tried and tested and have stood the test of time. We should rightly be cautious about giving any of that up. And whenever we have experienced things our past which have helped us and encouraged us and enabled us to more fully love God and love our neighbour, we should clearly value that. And for us that may well include memories of days when churches were bigger and busier and more influential in all sorts of ways. So when we do hear a desire for change expressed, it is generally a desire to get back to what we had before. As I say, I think that is perfectly natural and understandable, and it seems more natural and understandable the older I get. But, as the pastor in my story instinctively understood, there are problems with that attitude. For one thing, we know that no organisation, however worthy its past, is going to survive without adapting to changing conditions. Imagine the Ford Motor Company still trying to convince us of the merits of the original model T! For another we know that our perception of the past rarely accurate, and where we ever able to return to it we may not find it as exiting as it seemed through our rose tinted spectacles. But there is something else which should be much more significant than any of that. For the scriptures around which our communities are built, and which form the foundation of our Christian living, again and again give us a message which is all about change and moving on to new things. Again and again we read warnings about the dangers of looking back, and encouragement to look forward to the fulfilment of wonderful visions and promises. It is caught very nicely in the word of God for us this morning, 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? This is not an isolated verse. The whole thrust of scripture is a message of God doing new things and inviting people to see it and to get on board and become part of it. Jeremiah says: "The time is coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant." (31:31) Ezekiel says: "I will... put a new spirit
in them." (11:19) In 2 Corinthians 5:17 we read: "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" Or in 2 Peter 3:13: "we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, Or in Revelation 21:5: "He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" The message of scripture is not about returning to some lost paradise. It is always about moving towards new promises. And this divine intention to do new things leads to people do what was unfamiliar, or perhaps even unimaginable before. Had anyone ever thought of building a ship miles from water and large enough to contain the world's animals, before Noah did it? Had any military strategist ever instructed his forces to march around a walled city blowing trumpets before Joshua did that at Jericho? Had any medical expert considered curing leprosy by sending the patient to dip seven times in the muddy River Jordan before Elijah commanded the Syrian General Naaman to give it a try? None of that was anywhere in their religious tradition. These are stories of people doing new things, because they perceived that God was doing new things and they ready to get on board. So what does this have to do with us? Well I think we are as prone to nostalgia as anyone else. We look back to days when we had more strength and energy, and in some cases hair. We look back to days when our lives had more purpose and direction. We look back to days when the church was more vital and active. We look back just as the people of Israel did when they had been set free from Egypt and found the security they had know as slaves more attractive than an uncertain future. We look back just as the people living in exile in Babylon looked back to the great days they had known in Jerusalem. We look back just as the Sadducees and the Scribes of Jesus time did, longing to get back to the days when people had been more religious. But none of them were ever commended for that attitude. All of them were instead invited to look for what God may be planning for their future, and to get on board, and to become part of it. And so, of course, are we. For at heart this is not about lifestyle or the management of organisations. At heart this is a spiritual matter. Whenever we exhibit an excessive affection for the past, whenever we talk about it as
if there will never be anything better, we demonstrate a lack of faith in the God who is always making all things new. We don t ever move forward by clinging to our past. Paul expresses that when he said, "This one thing I do, forgetting the things that are behind, I press toward the mark of the prize of the high calling in Christ Jesus." That's what Isaiah meant when he said "forget the former things; [and] do not dwell on the past" (43:18). Our faith is in a God who creates a better future than anything we have known in the past. Our calling is to forget the former things, and to look forward, and to move forward. Well, to be honest, and I hope I am never anything else, there is something about this message which I don t really like. I don t want to forget the past. I still want to celebrate all that has been good. I still want to laugh at all that has been funny. I still want to learn from all experience I have gained and the mistakes I have made. A message which tells me that none of that is worth keeping just doesn t ring true for me. But I am also aware that if I am to be open to all that the future may bring, there are things which I must forget and turn away from. If I retain bitterness about that time when I was let down, if I hold on to my perceived right of revenge from that time I was wronged, if I continue to feel smug about that time when I achieved something, if I am still crippled by my sense of guilt and failure about the times when I didn t, then these things will shape and control my future. If I want God to shape and control my future, then I must be ready to let go of the past, and to move on. And letting God shape my future sounds like a far more exciting option. If we cling to things from our past, or perhaps I should say if we continue to allow things from our past to have a grip on us, we will not be open to the new things God is doing. If we covet the past, unable to imagine a future that could be any better than getting back to what we once knew, we will not perceive the new things God is doing. And that would be a terrible thing to miss out on. It is a small kind of faith which can only believe in what we have known in the past. But our faith is faith in God, the beginning and the end, the
eternal one. It is faith in God who sent his only son to give his life for us, in God for whom even death is merely an opening into a new and better future. And with such a faith we can have nothing to fear, and everything to look forward to.