Pressing on to a New Thing
March 25, 2007
Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:4b-14
With the weather turning spring like these past few days, it’s somewhat hard for me to believe that just 10 short days ago Bud and I walked three miles in driving snow with 3,500 of our closest friends in the Christian peace witness procession from the National Cathedral to the White House.
I’ve been thinking about that experience a bit over the past week, and especially so as I reflected on Paul’s letter to the Philippians and Isaiah’s words to the exile community of Israel.
“Press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus,” Paul says.
And Isaiah’s words: “Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, … 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.”
A way in the sea … rivers in the desert … the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus … a new thing.
What is this new thing? What is this calling? Where does this water flow? Where is this way?
From the barren desert of Washington, is it still possible to see such rivers flowing?
Amidst the cacophony of post-modern culture, is it still possible to hear such a heavenly call?
From the cynical heart of this new century, is it still possible to imagine a new thing?
We live in a culture that seems incapable of imagining a future otherwise. Do you remember back when the Who sang, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss”?
It’s a memorable lyric because it rings true. I can recall my father coming home from work saying, in response to my mother’s inquiries about his day, “same old, same old;” and cautioning us to remember always that “the boss is the boss is the boss.”
How about Bill Murray, in Groundhog Day, asking, “what would you do if every day was the same as the one before, and nothing you did made any difference?”
Somehow, in the midst of all this, it has become the role of the church to bless the status quo. People come to church looking for nothing more than a fill up, a recharge to make it through another week, some help to keep putting one foot in front of the other until we shuffle off this mortal coil and pass over into what’s next.
The church, for its part, has embraced this chaplaincy and seems all too content to live under the soft tyranny of such low expectations. Look around at the “successful” ministries – the mega-churches promise “your best life right now,” in perfect echo of a culture of instant gratification that, even now, wages a war while pretending that such an effort is possible without sacrifice and where the inevitable sacrifices, borne overwhelmingly by the young and dispossessed, are turned into political symbols for use by the powerful.
And still, people come to church looking for nothing more than a little help to make it through – Marx’s “opiate of the masses.” The church, too timid and tepid to trouble the waters, sinks deeper and deeper into the depths of irrelevancy.
What of the “new thing” and, more to the point, what of the God who both promises newness and calls forth repentance, turning, transformation, metanoia?
God will not be mocked.
If we are not about the business of transformation – of our personal lives and of the life of the world – we are not about God’s business. If we are not about journeying deep into the heart of God and then taking the love found there deep into the heart of the world, then we are journeying down the road to nowhere. If we are not pressing forward on the way of Christ’s love and justice, then we are heading the wrong way.
We are called to a love that is both deeply personal yet also essentially public. We are to be a community of profound comfort to those who are wounded and suffering, but we are not a community of complacency for the comfortable looking to have the status quo blessed.
For the status quo of today doesn’t look that much different from what Isaiah saw: a people lost in an alien culture that violated the deepest values of the prophet’s faith. It’s not that much different from what Paul saw: a community of peace and compassion trying to make its way in the midst of a rapacious empire.
If the season of Lent is about anything beyond a quaint memory, anything beyond a relic from an imagined past, then it is about this: pressing on.
Now this pressing on could be mistaken for merely making it through another day. It could be misunderstood, and the church mistaken for the filling station on the way to nothing new.
But that is not what Paul was about, and it will not be what we are about either.
Paul urged the young church at Philippi to press on toward the call of Christ, and we are here to be about the same thing.
As you will hear in a few minutes in the congregational meeting, we are blessed with so many more resources than were the Philippians. We have been given so much more than the exiles to whom Isaiah preached.
Surely there have been and will be bumps in the road. That is inevitable. I know that I have created more than my share of those bumps along the way in sins of omission or commission. But let us collectively be better than any of us can be alone, and let God’s vision and God’s calling to us to be a progressive voice of Christian faith be more compelling than what we – with our limited sight and our propensity to fearfulness – ever dare to dream on our own.
So we are called forth here, to be a place of radical welcome to those marginalized by the larger church and culture – the GLBT community. So we are called forth here, to be a community of peacemakers especially in a time of unjust war. So we are called forth here, to speak truth to power in an era where truth is mocked in the public square.
We are called to compassion in a cruel age; to faith in a culture of disbelief; to love in a time of overwhelming fear.
We are called to these several callings in our personal lives, in our schools, in our workplaces. And we are called to witness in the halls of power and sometimes in the city’s streets.
Because God calls us forth, we shall be the church of Jesus Christ: pressing on in the midst of often desperate and difficult times toward a new thing – toward a future otherwise. Pressing on in the midst of a culture of death toward new life. Pressing on in a culture of consumption toward a community of compassion. Pressing on in a Good Friday world toward the resurrected Christ.
Walk together children. Don’t you get weary. There’s a new day coming. Don’t you see!
Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:4b-14
With the weather turning spring like these past few days, it’s somewhat hard for me to believe that just 10 short days ago Bud and I walked three miles in driving snow with 3,500 of our closest friends in the Christian peace witness procession from the National Cathedral to the White House.
I’ve been thinking about that experience a bit over the past week, and especially so as I reflected on Paul’s letter to the Philippians and Isaiah’s words to the exile community of Israel.
“Press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus,” Paul says.
And Isaiah’s words: “Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, … 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.”
A way in the sea … rivers in the desert … the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus … a new thing.
What is this new thing? What is this calling? Where does this water flow? Where is this way?
From the barren desert of Washington, is it still possible to see such rivers flowing?
Amidst the cacophony of post-modern culture, is it still possible to hear such a heavenly call?
From the cynical heart of this new century, is it still possible to imagine a new thing?
We live in a culture that seems incapable of imagining a future otherwise. Do you remember back when the Who sang, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss”?
It’s a memorable lyric because it rings true. I can recall my father coming home from work saying, in response to my mother’s inquiries about his day, “same old, same old;” and cautioning us to remember always that “the boss is the boss is the boss.”
How about Bill Murray, in Groundhog Day, asking, “what would you do if every day was the same as the one before, and nothing you did made any difference?”
Somehow, in the midst of all this, it has become the role of the church to bless the status quo. People come to church looking for nothing more than a fill up, a recharge to make it through another week, some help to keep putting one foot in front of the other until we shuffle off this mortal coil and pass over into what’s next.
The church, for its part, has embraced this chaplaincy and seems all too content to live under the soft tyranny of such low expectations. Look around at the “successful” ministries – the mega-churches promise “your best life right now,” in perfect echo of a culture of instant gratification that, even now, wages a war while pretending that such an effort is possible without sacrifice and where the inevitable sacrifices, borne overwhelmingly by the young and dispossessed, are turned into political symbols for use by the powerful.
And still, people come to church looking for nothing more than a little help to make it through – Marx’s “opiate of the masses.” The church, too timid and tepid to trouble the waters, sinks deeper and deeper into the depths of irrelevancy.
What of the “new thing” and, more to the point, what of the God who both promises newness and calls forth repentance, turning, transformation, metanoia?
God will not be mocked.
If we are not about the business of transformation – of our personal lives and of the life of the world – we are not about God’s business. If we are not about journeying deep into the heart of God and then taking the love found there deep into the heart of the world, then we are journeying down the road to nowhere. If we are not pressing forward on the way of Christ’s love and justice, then we are heading the wrong way.
We are called to a love that is both deeply personal yet also essentially public. We are to be a community of profound comfort to those who are wounded and suffering, but we are not a community of complacency for the comfortable looking to have the status quo blessed.
For the status quo of today doesn’t look that much different from what Isaiah saw: a people lost in an alien culture that violated the deepest values of the prophet’s faith. It’s not that much different from what Paul saw: a community of peace and compassion trying to make its way in the midst of a rapacious empire.
If the season of Lent is about anything beyond a quaint memory, anything beyond a relic from an imagined past, then it is about this: pressing on.
Now this pressing on could be mistaken for merely making it through another day. It could be misunderstood, and the church mistaken for the filling station on the way to nothing new.
But that is not what Paul was about, and it will not be what we are about either.
Paul urged the young church at Philippi to press on toward the call of Christ, and we are here to be about the same thing.
As you will hear in a few minutes in the congregational meeting, we are blessed with so many more resources than were the Philippians. We have been given so much more than the exiles to whom Isaiah preached.
Surely there have been and will be bumps in the road. That is inevitable. I know that I have created more than my share of those bumps along the way in sins of omission or commission. But let us collectively be better than any of us can be alone, and let God’s vision and God’s calling to us to be a progressive voice of Christian faith be more compelling than what we – with our limited sight and our propensity to fearfulness – ever dare to dream on our own.
So we are called forth here, to be a place of radical welcome to those marginalized by the larger church and culture – the GLBT community. So we are called forth here, to be a community of peacemakers especially in a time of unjust war. So we are called forth here, to speak truth to power in an era where truth is mocked in the public square.
We are called to compassion in a cruel age; to faith in a culture of disbelief; to love in a time of overwhelming fear.
We are called to these several callings in our personal lives, in our schools, in our workplaces. And we are called to witness in the halls of power and sometimes in the city’s streets.
Because God calls us forth, we shall be the church of Jesus Christ: pressing on in the midst of often desperate and difficult times toward a new thing – toward a future otherwise. Pressing on in the midst of a culture of death toward new life. Pressing on in a culture of consumption toward a community of compassion. Pressing on in a Good Friday world toward the resurrected Christ.
Walk together children. Don’t you get weary. There’s a new day coming. Don’t you see!
posted by David Ensign at
8:13 AM
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