Purpose: A look at what God is doing
Prayer
Father God, we pray that we will be allowed a glimpse of what you are doing in our world, as we seek to follow you more closely each day.
Introduction
When I read through this morning’s passages about 10 days ago, there was one phrase that stood out to me – the question that God asks of the Israelites, in verse 19, when He says “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”.
My first response was, “No, Lord, I don’t.”. I felt rather guilty about that, and then wondered if perhaps it was supposed to be a rhetorical question. There was one sermon I read, where the author also said that he doesn’t perceive it, after that I felt a little happier. I also remembered a former vicar of Christ Church saying that you can only see what God has done in hindsight.
Lent 5 – Backwards & Forwards
The fifth Sunday of Lent is supposed to be a time when we look backwards at what God has done and forwards to see what He is doing and will eventually do. We see what God has done for us in the past, and maybe, we can see a little of what God will be doing for us, or better, with us, in the future. Both our readings have that element in them. In the Old Testament, God is telling the Israelites that He is going to rescue them from exile. In the New Testament, the dinner is to celebrate Lazarus’s rising from the dead, but it also looks forwards to Jesus’s crucifixion.
I wonder, in each of those passages, what do you think the people they are speaking about thought that God might be doing.
History (of the Exile)
Let's start with the Isaiah passage.
597bc Nebuchadnezzar
In 597bc Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon defeated Jehoiakim, king of Judah and the leaders of Judah were taken into exile in Babylon. For Babylon, the exiling of the elite was a way of managing those they had conquered, and preventing rebellions. For the Israelites, it was an experience that left them questioning everything they thought they knew about God. Even if, looking back, the prophecies seem quite clear. If they do not follow God and live the way He asks them to, they will suffer the consequences – and now they have.
539bc Cyrus
In 539bc Cyrus, king of Persia, conquers the Babylonian Empire, and, the policies for managing conquered people change, so eventually the exiles are allowed to return. They will have been away from their home for about 70 years.
The Israelites, God is speaking to
The passage in Isaiah, is speaking to the exiles at a time when the initial shock of what’s happened has worn off, and they have started to make a life for themselves in their new situation. The vast majority of those who were exiled would die in exile, only their descendants would return. Sometimes God has to wait for a whole generation to pass, before He can do the next thing.
A new thing
Now, perhaps when they’ve really settled in to a life in a foreign country, when they’ve begun again to know who their God is, or think they know, He’s telling them to get ready for the next thing.
God says:
Forget the former things. The rescue from slavery in Egypt, when I got you across the sea – an impenetrable barrier that stopped you in your tracks, and then utterly annihilated your pursuers. Their chariots and horses, and all the Egyptian troops are still there, buried in the mud, never to rise again.
God doesn’t really want them to completely forget, or he wouldn’t have just reminded them! He wants them to look forward rather than backwards, because now He is doing a new thing. He is preparing a way across another impenetrable barrier, this time a desert. It must have seemed like an impossible dream that they could return home. That they could once again live in the promised land, the place they all look to as home, even if many of them have never been.
God can, and will, deliver on the dream, He’s making it a promise, because when God says something, it WILL happen. And if you still doubt that, well He’s done similar things before.
I wonder what they really thought when they heard those words? After all they only have to walk 500 miles across an inhospitable desert.
John Reading
The New Testament reading that we heard is more nuanced. There is no clear prophecy. Mary’s extravagant and outrageous act of worship could be just that – an instant expression of her love for Jesus, but Jesus give it a greater meaning. According to Judas, she wasted a years wages in that act, and all who witnessed it would see her actions as those of a prostitute, because no self-respecting Jewish woman at that time would let her hair down like that.
Jesus’s response to the accusation is:
7 “Leave her
alone, it was intended that she should save this perfume for the day
of my burial. 8 You will always have the poor among you,
but you will not always have me.”
I wonder, do you think that Mary, Martha, Lazarus and the other guests realised that Jesus’s death was only days away? Do you think they had any idea what that meant for the wider world? If you read the gospels now, it is clear to us, with hindsight, that Jesus knew exactly where he was going, why he was going there and what would happen when He arrived – and afterwards. He knew that his crucifixion, and then His resurrection, would save use from a situation that we couldn’t escape from.
Saving Ourselves
It is not a river, or a desert that stops us saving ourselves. It is each of us that stops us saving ourselves. We are the insurmountable barrier to our salvation. There is a chasm to cross, a pit to fall in, and the cross of Christ is the bridge. God makes a way for us to places where we cannot go on our own.
God is always active.
Even when the way is made, we cannot follow it, if we cannot see it. God is always there ready to show us the next steps.
I wondered what we can see God doing, and how much we can understand what He is pointing us towards.
Looking back – the world
As we look backward on the history of our world, we see that those who followed Jesus spread across the entire world. Some of that was caused by people fleeing persecution, and sharing their faith with their new neighbours. Some was very carefully planned, people were trained as missionaries and sent to places where it was known that the word of God had not been heard. All of those things were prompted by the Holy Spirit. Almost none of it was easy for the people involved.
Looking forward – the world
As we see the world order changing and hear of deportations from America, can we see God at work. What is He doing? Do you perceive it? It is estimated that over 1 million Christians will be deported from the USA as ‘illegal migrants’, most will go back to South American countries, principally Venezuela. What is God doing there?
Father Dan, was saying at Forging Men that the young people of today are looking to practice a different type of faith – they will worship God, follow Jesus, but not in the way that we do. What is God preparing for that generation? Is He perhaps just waiting for us to pass before he does something amazing?
Looking back – the church
We can also look back at our church, I’m talking about Christ Church and the things we were involved in, rather than the Church of England. We can remember times when God was blessing us in different ways. Maybe you remember the time when we had about 100 people in our main service, and all the gifts they offered to our church. Or you look back to events like Mission ‘89, or perhaps to our weekends away. All of those things seem unlikely to ever happen again.
Looking forward – the church
How will God build us up in the future, what blessings will he bestow? What will we have to do to be a part of that. We have a new Rector, so things will undoubtedly change. Can you see what is coming, do you perceive it? Or, do we just see the impossible barriers that God can so easily break down. It’s not the sea, or the sand, now it’s the age gap.
We will just have to continue to follow Jesus as closely as possible, and see where the Holy Spirit is leading us, step by step. In a few years maybe we will look back and see what God did in this time, until then, there is some hard work to get on with building the kingdom of God. Meanwhile, we continue to look for God’s leading in all sorts of new directions.
He says: “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”
Amen.
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