What Isaiah promises is a new thing. His people are in exile, trapped, far from home, humiliated, without much hope if any of having a meaningful life in the usual way, forlorn and sad and homeless and so a new thing is a promise they like to hear. It isn't like they wouldn't like a change. I think sometimes when we hear about new things we cringe because we don't want to change anything because as far as we can tell we are not in exile or hopeless or homeless though one wonders what is the nature of our alienation. The Israelites were alienated in a strange land. We are somehow alienated in our own land. When I say we I don't necessarily mean all of us (you may be feeling very much at home in your world, I hope so anyway) but that there is severe alienation going on in our own culture should not come as a shock to anyone. Alienation could be understood as nothing more than feeling cut off from a meaningful life. It is the emptiness and futility of living in a random world with no sense of purpose and a growing sense of alarm and discontent and restlessness that is not easy to name. In both cases it is the sense of being overwhelmed by events unable to control and sustain even a fragile belief in happy endings or even in the possibility of anything good.

 

 Isaiah addresses the people in their sadness and reminds them to remember the good old days, the time when God did something good for them, (In their case the exodus from slavery) and then he says now forget about it. What is coming is even better. Of course, being a prophet the remembrance is a two-edged sword. The people are to remember also how they have failed God in the past, that sin and all the usual misdeeds of the people, are also part of the picture but again he says forget about it. God is not only doing a new thing, a thing even better than before, but God is making us new. Forget about the failures of the past and embrace the hope of the future. It is a fair question to ask of ourselves: Do we still have hope? Do we embrace or fear what is coming?

 

This is what prophets are for - to remind us that we do have hope and it is not hope in our ability to finally turn things around when we finally know what is right and are willing to do the right thing but it is hope in God's ability to do anything, anything at all. And more than that, Isaiah is saying, bluntly, not only can God do it but God willdo it. Thy will be done. Amen.

 

How are we to respond? I think of Mary's response to the sadness of her time, the coming suffering and death of Jesus. She seems to be the only one in the room who gets it, who knows what is coming, besides Jesus of course, when she literally wastes her expensive perfume in one reckless, generous outpouring of love. Her response to the sad and hopeless reality that the world has won again and Jesus, sent by God to show us what love is, is going to be killed, is to offer all her love, no turning away, no hardening of the heart, no giving up hope, just an outpouring of love and compassion in what appears to be throwing it away.

 

Perhaps there is a lesson for us who, whether we are still in denial or not, are hurting, are desperate for some hope, are on the edge of giving up on the good guys winning in the end, are beginning to wonder if there are any good guys anymore, giving up on any new thing at all. Here is a response that is quite different than our natural one to turn away and hide, to find solace in personal pleasure and denial of the broken world we live in. (We can afford to hide a least for a while but the world is coming for us too.) How will we respond?

 

We could take our lead from the outrageous word of God that says the future is better than the past and there is a future that will be as God has planned it, a future of love, and our response could be also to pour out recklessly and generously all the love we have inside, holding nothing back, for it is in the pouring out, in the surrender, in the abandonment of our safe and fragile security, that our hearts are emptied and opened to what God has promised. This is how we dream dreams and see visions and hear the Word of God. This will not be an easy choice for us for we are trained to be reasonable and cautious. We play it safe. We don't give too much away. We are not interested in wasting anything. Neither are we accustomed to hearing voices other than our own. In Dillard's famous words that describe our unsentimental and practical selves, we are nobody's  little flock. Not any more. There have been too many let downs, too many broken dreams, too many nothings to still believe in the God who makes something of nothing and that is just the point. It is when there appears to be nothing left that God will make something new. But our imaginations may be limited at this point. We are like the cynic in Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun.  We have seen it all but of course as soon as we say that, it is clear that we have seen nothing at all, nothing that really matters.  

 

Even if we are given a revelation we are likely to chalk it up to mere coincidence, a random event that is more accidental that providential, something to keep quiet, to ignore even, for what good is it?  Bishop Willimon writes : We've got to break ourselves of the habit of dealing with things that happens to us, or visions that come our way, or words that are a work in us, the habit of dismissing this as mere coincidence. For those who are convinced that the Word has been made flesh and the son of God has intruded into the world nothing is the world is mere.

Once we have been encountered by the Christ we don't deal with people, with one another, with the world as merely anything. For us in the eyes of faith it is never merely coincidental, accidental or happenstance It is revelation. It is a gift of God who does not leave us alone who loves us enough to seek and reveal, who calls us to the new thing that is already happening if only we had eyes to see.

 

The baptism of Ben is not merely a baptism, it is the baptism of Ben. It is the promise from God that there is a future and that the future is good. Ben's little life represents us all this morning. Each life is significant to God as each one of us holds within us the promise of God's future, of a life to be lived for God on earth.

 

This holy meal we call communion is not merely a rite of the church, it is where the temporal world meets eternity. It is where the past, present and future are gathered as one. It is memory and hope. All the usual boundaries are gone. Like Baptism is where an invisible grace is made visible. It is where the promise of God is given life in the lives of people.

 

Nothing in the world is mere. Everything living is potentially the new thing that is promised. We all have within us the love that overcomes the suffering of the world.  

 

Such is the attitude needed to hear the prophets word for the new thing is not just what God will do but the change of hearts that enables us to transcend the dreary evidence of our sorry history, to transform all the former things that we are taught will never change, to see in the reality of a broken world the wholeness of God's creative vision, to grasp our true meaning as human beings in history, to embrace God's will for us, to overcome the obstacles of our fear and pettiness and despair. And to be God's transforming people in the world.  

 

All of that is present in the word of the Prophet who speaks a magnificent word unbound by the restraints of time and culture and loosed on the world never to be lost no matter how lost we become, for this is God's eternal word: I am about to do a new thing . . Are we not as desperate to hear such a word as the Israelites in exile? Are we not ready for something new? Are we not weary of the fear and violence and materialism that leaves us numb? Are we not ready to look into the eyes of our children and grandchildren not fear for them and dread what they may have to face? Are not ready to open our hearts to such a hope that it fills our souls with an unbounded imagination about what is really possible for humankind?

 

Willimon: I wonder if an important discipline for contemporary Christians, particularly in this culture, is the weekly cultivation of a sense of openness , the discipline reminding ourselves that there may be something afoot in the world that cannot be defined or circumscribed through our predominate modes of making sense in the world. As Christians we need some imagination, some attentiveness to the weird. (What a comfort it is to know I am not the only one who thinks so, and a Bishop no less.) 

 

Perhaps if you want to you could listen to the scriptures and the foolishness of what is preached and participate in our worship practice with an eye out and ears tuned to the weird, to the new thing that is being revealed to us even now. Pay attention. Assume nothing.

 

It would have made more sense for Mary to have given up on love but it was revealed to her that nothing can overcome love. Love endures all things, an old thing that until we believe it is always a new thing for who knew that love endures all things? Did you?  Such is our hope as God will do a new thing and has given us permission to forget the old things that hold us back and keep us sad and afraid, and God has invited us to live into the future with every hope that what God promises is indeed what will be. Therefore we can live as those who are no longer restrained by fear or overwhelmed by events and despair but who will invest our lives generously and with gladness in the bright and beautiful future, in the new thing that God will do.