If you had a dime for every
product in the grocery store claiming to be “new and improved” you could
probably send a kid to college. Last time I checked there was—new
and improved detergent, dog food, pancake syrup, orange juice,
denture cream! And who doesn’t want cleaner clothes, a happier pooch,
tastier pancakes, extra flavorful o.j., more secure uppers? “New and
improved” point to the kind of quality, effectiveness, and value that we
as discriminating consumers come to expect.
But you know, “new and
improved” isn’t always what it’s cut out to be. Remember the “New Coke”
fiasco about twenty years ago? The Coca Cola Company spent millions
testing and then marketing their new product. It was supposed to have
been one of the biggest, boldest corporate moves of all time. But
surprise, surprise, “New Coke” was a complete bust, a disaster of
monumental proportions. When it comes to our favorite soft drink, we
like things just the way they’ve always been. Thank you kindly. Even
if it new and improved is better than before, it’s not always a good
idea to mess with a good thing, let alone “the Real Thing”.
The Bible has a lot to say
about new things and the book of Isaiah is no exception. “Thus says the
LORD…I am about to do a new thing, now it springs forth. Do you not
perceive it?” Considering the situation, the news must have sounded
pretty darn good to the Israelites. Cyrus the Persian was knocking at
the gates of Babylon and in no time, they’d be on their merry way, back
home to Jerusalem.
As Isaiah reminded them things were
beginning to take shape just as they had centuries before in the land of
Egypt, when God delivered God’s children after a long season of
captivity. This is the LORD “who makes a way in the sea, a path in the
mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they
lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a
wick.” It’s all enough to inspire a sense of genuine nostalgia; a
return to the good old days when God was God and everything was right
with the world! Huddling in the ghettos of Babylon, the children of
Israel might have wondered if those golden days were upon them once
again.
The trouble was though for all the talk of
present gloom and doom, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that with
the passing of time, God’s people began to accommodate themselves to
their surroundings, to the point that they actually started to do pretty
well for themselves. So, there was some reluctance to leave the comfort
of what they knew for what was “new” but altogether uncertain back in
Jerusalem. To rebuild would take energy, resources and time, lots of
it. But even before that, they had to return through a wilderness filled
with danger and hazards of every kind. The cost of going home, of
embracing the new was going to be very expensive indeed, maybe more than
they wanted to pay.
It seems to me that when it comes to
dealing with “new things” we really aren’t all that different from God’s
people centuries ago. You can almost hear the murmur of the crowds,
“Well we’ve never done it that way before!” But despite their
reluctance, despite our own reluctance, God is always up to something,
something new.
And as Anna very eloquently suggested in
her sermon last week, in this time of impending sabbatical God is up to
something new among us right here at Ascension Lutheran Church. We’re
going to be challenged and stretched in new ways, in ways that we never
imagined, in ways that may not always be comfortable. For me it’ll mean
at least part of the time living not only in a totally different
country, but in a completely different culture where at least at first,
I’m not going to have a clue what people are saying. For you it means
being open to gifts you perhaps never recognized, assuming a level of
commitment and responsibility in ways that we never have before—maybe
offering a Sunday morning message, calling on one of our homebound
members, sharing a personal reflection for the newsletter or weekly
Accents, calling up someone you haven’t seen in a week or two to see how
their doing, to let them know that you missed them. A challenge, yes, a
stretch, without a doubt, but such is the life to which God calls us,
broken, imperfect, fallible creatures that we are.
A professional furniture restorer was once
asked about what goes into his craft. “Three things.” He immediately
replied. “First, it’s imagination. Creative imagination. You have to
be able to see past all the layers of paint, chips, the mars and scars,
past all the faults in the wood and the broken pieces to the
possibilities that you see beneath the surface. Then you have to have
time and energy, not just a little, but a lot. Restoring a piece of
furniture doesn’t happen overnight. It isn’t a matter of snapping your
fingers and having the finished piece suddenly appear. Finally,” the
craftsman declared, “it takes love. In fact, love is more important
than skill. A person has to really love the piece of furniture and what
she or he sees as its possibilities. Just about everyone can learn the
skills, but loving what you’re working with, that’s not always the
case.”
As the master furniture restorer
approaches his work, so does God meet us just as we are—chips, mars,
scars and all. “Thus says the LORD, ‘I am about to do a new thing; now
it springs forth, do you not perceive it?’” The idea of a God who does
new things is certainly not an unfamiliar one in the Bible. Time and
time again, we hear of how the LORD is busy restoring, renewing and
raising up, opening up opportunities, giving life even when it seems
impossible. There’s Abraham and Sarah, advanced in years, without an
heir to whom God declares an audacious word of promise. “Sarah will
have a son and your descendents shall be numerous.” There’s the prophet
Ezekiel, who beheld a valley of dry bones, dry bones that began to
rattle and come together when God’s word was spoken, bones that took on
sinews, flesh and skin, that in turn received the breathe of God and
lived. In last week’s Epistle lesson, we were met with Paul’s stunning
declaration of God’s new creation “in Christ.” “Everything old has
passed away, see everything has become new.”
In the same way God is
restoring and making us new not tomorrow or the next day or the next,
but today. “Now, it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”
Water is life—for those who wandered in the wilderness long ago and
received the gift of water to sustain them, for you and me who have
received the gift of water in baptism—our life-giving link to God and
God’s saving work. So as the community of the baptized, God gives us
all the gifts that we need to be about His work, His mission, His
ministry here and now.
And as those created in God’s image, our
lives are a reflection of God for all the world to see, a reflection of
God’s creative imagination that loves the world so much that it spares
nothing, not even God’s very own son that whoever believes in Him would
not perish but have eternal life.
What does the future hold?
Only God knows. But because of God’s very own son Jesus, we are free,
free to embrace a future that is in God’s hands, hands skilled in
restoring, hands able to make even a broken world new again, hands that
hold and keep us forever. Amen.
Pastor Brian
Peterson
