Isaiah 34: 16-21 + Psalm 126 + Philippians 3: 4b-14 + John 12: 1-8
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
When children are very young, and they learn new things, their parents and others who love them rejoice! We see on social media posted photos and videos of first steps, first words, first time playing in the mud, first time eating a banana….the new things that toddlers and babies do fill us with good feelings and offer us hope!
When they become teenagers, trying new things can take on an entirely different meaning.
And when we become adults – new adventures, trying something new is something we often too seldom attempt. We are too busy or too wary or we have simply lost our holy imagination.
When placed in the context of a community – any community – trying something new is not always a well received notion. And when placed in a context where traditions are beloved and revered – trying something new can be and often is, unwelcomed.
Our sisters and brothers in the Roman Catholic church have had a BIG week for something new…a new Pope from a new tradition and a new continent.
It is helpful to remember, though, that we most often grow through these new experiences. Difficult though they may be, it is unfamiliar ground that invites us to new paths and unexpected delights.
In the reading from Isaiah today, the people are homeless exiles in a foreign land. What they long for, more than anything, is the past. Because, they remember, though just barely now, that God had delivered them in the past. That God had made a way out of Egypt in their past was not, the prophet told them, what they should be thinking about in the present. God was about to do a new thing. Something that was almost too hard to comprehend. That there would be rivers in the desert and the wild animals would worship God. Ridiculous…..except for God.
In the reading from Philippians Paul talks about his own new thing…literally a new identity, a new name, a new life. Paul says that his “old thing” was pretty great by the standards of the culture. He was an Israelite, of the tribe of Benjamin, no less. He was a Pharisee, a respected religious leader of the time and as far as the law of the land was concerned, he was blameless. And Paul’s new thing….it was knowing Christ Jesus as his Lord. In order to do that, Paul reminds the people at the church in Philippi, he had to give up all of those things that had made him who he was. That was the only way he was going to know Christ.
The early believers in Jesus often had to give up much in order to follow him. The understanding and respect of their communities, relationships with friends and family, vocations – remember all of those fisher folk who laid down their nets? They gave up their old, familiar ways of being for the new thing that Jesus was doing.
We often say that we are not asked to give up as much as those early believers, but I wonder if that is true. If we are really turning toward the new thing that God is up to in Christ Jesus, perhaps we are being asked to give up more of the old thing than we know.
Throughout Scripture we are called to take up our cross and follow Jesus and we are given numerous examples of what that might look like. This leaving behind of family and friends and vocation….this persecution for what we believe….that’s in the past, isn’t it?
Much has been written in both the secular and sacred press about the decline and anticipated demise of the church as we know it. We live in this reality every time we gather and we are not alone in this. Pews are half filled, choirs number a dozen, and Sunday school programs take a back seat to organized sporting programs. We wring our hands and we gnash our teeth and we point fingers and we sit in fear.
But what if, in all of this, God is doing a new thing? What if…in all of this….God is doing a new thing?
It will most certainly be uncomfortable. It will most certainly mean that we will be called to leave behind all that we have understood ourselves to be in order to embrace all that discipleship is calling us to become.
When Mary, Martha, and Lazarus welcomed Jesus to their home in our Gospel reading today, I wonder how much they knew about what it would mean to follow him? We have so much of their story in Scripture, comparatively speaking, that it’s astonishing what we know of them up to this point. That Mary and Martha were vastly different sisters, that when Lazarus died, they were angry with Jesus for being slow to arrive. That Lazarus is now alive, and is eating there at the table with them – a sure sign that he was raised and is not some ghostly or zombie like apparition. So whether or not they completely understood what it meant to follow Jesus and his radical teaching – they welcome their friend and they give a dinner in his honor. The text doesn’t tell us who the other guests were, but since Judas was there, we might assume the presence of the other eleven disciples too. And as they are there, Mary, for reasons perhaps unknown even to her ,takes a pound of the costliest perfume, that would have cost a year or more in wages, and pours it over Jesus’ feet, filling the entire house with sweet fragrance. She takes her hair down and wipes Jesus’ feet with it.
Why, we might ask, did she wash his feet? Why not his hands or his head? Mary must have understood, in some place deep within her, that to be a disciple of Christ means more than a tacit faith. It means more than sitting with understanding. Following Christ implies movement. We follow Christ. We do not sit with Christ. Or understand him. We follow….he is moving….and we are following. And in that movement we will be taken out into the world and away from what has been into what will be.
Discipleship – following Christ- means moving and walking in new ways, leaving the old ones behind. Too often we find ourselves looking back at what was and longing for it to be that way again. But the worth of that backward glance is only good as a reminder. We recall and remember God’s faithfulness. And that is worthwhile. We recall God’s faithfulness to the people of Israel as God led them from captivity into freedom. We remember the ways that the lives of those who followed Jesus were changed from old to new – Paul, Mary, Martha, Lazarus….Martin Luther, St. Francis of Assisi….Mother Theresa, Pope Francis. But more than that we remember how we were changed and how we continue to be changed….and so we add our names to that list….Inge, Paul, Elsie, Mel, Kyle, Gavin….(add others) all of us are called to imagine that new thing that God is planning and we know that it will come to be because we followed Christ.
Friends, I know that God is up to something here in this place. And I know that it is not always easy or comfortable. It is easier to remember the former things than it is to allow God to use us to do a new thing. But we know that God’s new thing is about to spring forth and that it will be beyond our wildest imagining. Our task is to come together at font and table to remember our baptismal call and to share the holy meal. Our task is to love Jesus lavishly, with all that we have…not holding anything back. And then we follow him…we get up and go out and follow Jesus into a world that is broken and hurt and we take our broken selves and place them in service to that world, fully expecting that new thing to spring forth.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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