I Make All Things New - April 3, 2022
Isaiah 43:16-13 & Psalm 126
Deborah Laforet
I Make All Things New
Let us pray. May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by the Spirit and be words of wisdom for this day. Amen.
I used to tease Jeff all the time about his inability to accept change. Even the smallest of changes, he would grumble and resist. But, it’s not just Jeff. It’s human nature to resist change. It’s natural to want everything predictable and expected. It makes us feel comfortable and secure. From the time we’re small children, we resist change by stomping our feet, screaming, and refusing to budge. I think we all still feel this way at times, but our older and more mature selves have learned to hide it much better.
When we hear in our song, “I make all things new, beginning with you and starting from today,” we shake our heads. I don’t think so. And inside, that small child is screaming and stomping their feet and refusing to budge. Change means risk. Change is scary.
We’re a church and churches are known for being traditional. Sometimes we are traditional in our rituals and the way we gather. Sometimes we are traditional in the way we view the bible and the way we view God. Some of us refuse to budge when encouraged to explore new names for God and or be open to a new interpretation of bible, while others hate it when a new hymn is introduced or when someone messes with the liturgy of worship. All of us have something that we don’t want to see change, that we resist, that makes that screaming toddler inside of us want to dig in their heels.
But then we hear, “I make all things new, my promise is true, for I am Christ the way.”
It’s only natural when we are resisting, when we are upset, when we feel fear, to close ourselves, to hunch in our shoulders, tighten our bodies, and dig in our heels. It’s not easy when we are experiencing these feelings to open ourselves to the Spirit? Maybe the Spirit is calling us to change, to accept something new, but we’re not in a place to hear it. Not yet, anyway.
When we look at our Jesus story, it seems old to us now. This story is more than 2000 years old. It feels familiar and known, but for the disciples of Jesus and the Jewish people of the day, what happened was confusing. Remember that they expected their Messiah, the one they longed for and prayed would come to save them, to be a warrior, a mighty king. They thought this Messiah would come and overthrow this Roman occupation of their sacred city and temple. They expected the “Son of David,” meaning someone connected to their King David from thousands of years ago, to be a strong king that they hoped would rule them again, who they hoped would triumph over Rome, who they hoped would unite their nation again.
So when people started to call Jesus the Messiah, people were baffled. They didn’t understand how a poor, itinerant preacher, who was actually more like the past prophets in their bible, could be their promised king. Especially when this person did not fight the Romans, when he did not lead a successful rebellion, and especially when this preacher and prophet was treated like a traitor and hung on a cross, one of the most shameful and painful ways to die at that time. The Romans won the day when they killed Jesus. How could this be their Messiah?
But did the Romans win? Did they have the last say? Was death the final word? I won’t spoil the ending. Stay tuned in a couple of weeks.
This was a new story and Christians have been wrestling with the meaning of this story for 2000 years. This Messiah, this Christ, was more than a martyr, more than a prophet, but how could he be divine, how could he be the one who saves us when he couldn’t save himself?
When a new things come along, it sometimes takes time to understand and accept, to wrap our minds around the new thing. Our brains see change as a threat and as a danger. We have to take time and very intentionally to look beyond this. I’m not saying we ignore our initial instincts. We should always pay attention to our instincts, but maybe not put this part of our brain in the driver’s seat. We need to pay attention to our fears and our gut instincts, but we also need to be able to calm our fears and look beyond to possibilities, to opportunities, to the call of God, to new life.
Our church is going through a lot of change right now. When I say ‘our church,’ I mean St. Pauls, I mean the United Church, and I mean churches around the world, including other faith or religious communities. We live in a world that is vastly changing, and we’re not used to this. Faith communities are not used to this. There has always been change, but change happens so quickly now that it’s difficult to keep up with it. We’re not given the time to process and evaluate and slowly live into the change. Instead of change taking generations, multiple changes are happening within generations. Is this a good thing? Maybe, maybe not, because we still need to take that time to process and evaluate. The change may not be the healthiest or wisest way forward. But I also don’t think status quo is an option. If the church doesn’t change to meet the needs of the people, of the community, and of the world, then it loses its purpose; we lose our ability to function as disciples of Christ, bringing the good news, offering healing, loving our neighbour, loving our enemies, crying out for justice, striving for peace.
What are the changes to which we are being called today? In our own lives and in the life of the church? As a faith community in Oakville, what are the needs of our community and can we meet some of those needs? The needs are different from 1956, when this faith community began to worship on this plot of land. This community and our world look very different. How then do we change our church community so that the work we do resonates with the needs of others and with God’s mission for the church?
The psalm Carol Anne read celebrates the restoration of a people. I imagine this was after Babylon had conquered Jerusalem and took many of its people to live in Babylon, which is called the exile, and then after the Persian nation conquered Babylon and allowed the Israelites to return home, at least a generation later. The Israelites rejoiced. Their mouths were “filled with laughter, and [their tongues] with shouts of joy.”
But everything would have been different. They were coming back to a land that had moved on and changed. Even the people returning were not the same people. They were a new generation. But they celebrated because they knew God was with them, that God’s promise was true. God would be with them through the changes, guiding them, offering them wisdom, even if they didn’t always pay attention.
As we grieve the loss of what we used to be as a church, as we wander in confusion and fear, wondering what’s next, let us pray, let us remember, let us celebrate that God is with us through the changes, that God’s Spirit is guiding us and offering us wisdom, that behold, Christ’s promise is true and Christ is the Way. Thanks be to God. Amen.