5 Lent C (25 March 2007)

Isaiah 43:16-21

Pr. George L. Murphy

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Akron, Ohio

GIMME THAT NEW-TIME RELIGION!

For the setting of our First Lesson, imagine some Jewish exiles gathered for a revival service in Babylon. They were having a tough time. It was hard to be a minority in a foreign culture, one that in many ways was more attractive than their own. A lot of the younger Jews had started to drift away from the church, so the elders had decided to have a revival to call people back to the old ways, the religion of their ancestors. All the older people were there and they’d dragged along many of the younger generation too. The kids weren’t very happy about it – they had better things to do than sing old songs and listen to long speeches and calls for commitment.

The big song for the revival was “Gimme that old-time religion.” It was a catchy song about how the old-time religion had been good enough for Moses and David centuries ago, and good enough for grandma and grandpa, so it’s good enough for us. So all the older people were loudly singing, “Gimme that old-time religion, gimme that old-time religion, gimme that old-time religion, it’s good enough for me.”

When suddenly one of the restless teenagers stood up and shouted, “You can keep your old-time religion! I think it’s boring! It all happened hundreds of years ago. So what? Okay, God got our great-great- lots of times great grandparents out of Egypt a long time ago, but what good does that do me now?”

“That’s right,” said a young woman in the shocked silence. “I mean, I want to marry this nice Babylonian guy, and we’re in love and everything, and my mother says, ‘You can’t because he’s not Jewish.’ Is that, like, a reason? I’m supposed to tell him, ‘I can’t marry you because my ancestors walked through the sea a thousand years ago?’ Come on!”

“And we’re supposed to be impressed because this religion is old?” demanded another girl. “That’s crazy – something isn’t good just because it’s old. You don’t boast about eating ‘old-time food.’ If bread is old and moldy you throw it out!” The younger people all laughed and applauded and the older ones said, “That’s the trouble with kids today – no respect for tradition.”

“Well, if this religious stuff is going to mean anything, God ought to do something now,” said another teenager. “Quit harping on how great God was a long time ago.” And the elders began to mutter, “Heresy.”

Then the prophet stood up and the whole room got quiet. They all respected the prophet. And the prophet said, “Thus saith the LORD: ‘The kids are right.’”

“I am the LORD, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King.

Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, ...

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?

I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

There was nothing wrong with remembering what God had done in the past. God had created the universe, called Abraham and Sarah, brought Israel out of slavery and destroyed the pursuing army of Pharaoh in the sea. The LORD “brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; ... they are extinguished, quenched like a wick.” To the end of the world God will be proclaimed as the One who brought Israel out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm

Yes, that was all great. And the prophet says, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” For those Jews in Babylon, children and grandchildren of the people who’d been carried off into exile sixty years ago, the mere memory of what God had done in the past didn’t do much good. They couldn’t help asking, “Does our God still care about us? Does the LORD have any power now? Sure, he was the God of Moses and Miriam but is he my God?”

God’s answer is, “I am your Redeemer ... your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King.” I am not just the God of people in the history books but your God, the one who is for you.” You don’t need to keep singing about that old-time religion, the prophet tells us, because God intends to give us something new. While some of you have been living in the past and others have begun to think that God is out of date and that you ought to find something else to give your life meaning, God has been at work. Already the army of the Persian king Cyrus is on the march, coming to take the Babylonian empire apart and set the Jewish exiles free so that they can go back home. “To save you,” the prophet says on God’s behalf, “I will send an army against Babylon; I will break down the city gates and the shouts of her people will turn into crying.”

The exiles don’t recognize that salvation is on the way. Cyrus – a heathen king who doesn’t even know the LORD – can he really be the LORD’s anointed, God’s instrument to save his people? Of course he can – if God really does do new and surprising things. God is always faithful to the promises he made in the past, but may fulfill them in ways we never expect. “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

And in just a few years those exiles did go home, crossing the barren wilderness to Jerusalem that they thought they’d never see. And you know, God’s rescue of those exiles from Babylon rather quickly became for the Jews part of the old-time religion. The LORD wasn’t just the God who got Israel out of Egypt but was remembered as the one who gathered the exiles of Israel and brought them back home. God’s new work became part of the treasury of God’s mighty work of the past.

So five hundred years later, when the Jews were under Roman domination, a lot of them wanted to bring back the good old days when God rescued the exiles and brought them back to Jerusalem. “Gimme that old-time religion,” they sang. “It was good enough for Moses, and good enough for Ezra and Nehemiah, and it’s good enough for me.”

And Jesus told them, “No one puts new wine into old wineskins” and “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” Jesus Christ, in his life and passion and death and resurrection, is God’s great work which is always new.

Sure, Jesus lived on earth a long time ago. The stories in the gospels are part of history nearly two thousand years in the past. They’re part of that “old-time religion” as we usually think of them. And yet – Jesus Christ is alive now. When the gospel is proclaimed, when you come to the Lord’s Table, you aren’t just given the remembrance of some historic figure. It is the living Lord of history who comes to you there and calls you to follow into his future. He is the one who promises his disciples “I am with you to always, to the end of the age.”

At the very end of the Bible God says, “See, I am making all things new.” That is not a God who wants us to live in the past. We are to remember what God has done – the Exodus and the return from exile, the death and resurrection of Christ. Those fundamental events are the basis for our lives as Christians and we can’t forget them without forgetting who we are. How could we celebrate the Eucharist without remembering “the night in which he was betrayed”? But the church is not a museum.

Those events of the past are to empower us for the future. God is at work in the world today, saving and freeing people, and as the people of God we are called to discern the new work that God is doing, and to be part of it..

Because God is doing something new, the words of our text are more than just a record of ancient prophecy. God’s word is spoken not just to those exiles in Babylon but to us.

“I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert,

to give drink to my chosen people,

the people whom I formed for myself

so that they might declare my praise.”