WINDSHIELDS AND REAR VIEW MIRRORS
Scripture: Isaiah 43:16-21
FOCUS: We are called to remember our past, both the good and the bad, but then to move forward toward the goal of Godly living and eternal salvation.
The prophet Isaiah is writing to his beloved Hebrew people, delivering a message sent from God. It is a message of both hope and challenge. Isn’t that the way it often is when God speaks to us? To be sure ours is a God of hope and of redemption. Yet if all we ever seek from God is the forgiveness which comes as a free gift, by God’s grace, and if we are only open to hearing the prophets words of encouragement and comfort we have become what I like to call consumer Christian. Consumer Christians go to God like I go to Wal-Mart. They go when they need something, and even then the often go reluctantly.
Those of you who know me well know that I generally go to Wal-Mart with less than a stellar attitude about the outing. I make no bones about it, I don’t like going to Wal-Mart, but go there I must on occasion, for I like to eat even more than I dislike shopping for the necessary ingredients. Now I am certainly not saying that we ought not go to God when we have needs. Quite the opposite, that ought to be the first place we go. But true disciples go to God with their needs because they trust in God’s providence and because they are accustomed to communing with God, not just when their spiritual pantry needs restocking, but daily, when the pantry is full as well as when it is nearly bare. They go to God when life is good as well as when life is not so good, when they feel as though they have been blessed beyond all measure as well as when they feel as though they have been neglected.
The problem with consumer Christianity is that it seeks to reap the benefits of God’s grace without sowing any of the seeds of obedient service in response. There are several words for such behavior in the secular world, words like theft, embezzlement, scam, fraud. As radical as it may sound, I think such words are appropriate, if perhaps a bit too harsh, when considering consumer Christianity. A professed life of faith which is marked by willing acceptance of God’s grace and which seeks constant blessing but which does little in response is at best misguided and at worst a fraud.
Returning to our text from Isaiah we discover that through the prophet God speaks the truth that
God does marvelous things for God’s people, not just to be nice, but so that those God chose as God’s own people might declare God’s praise. I like the way the New Living Translation renders verse 14. It reads, “I have made Israel for myself, and they will someday honor me before the whole world.” Praise and honor go hand in hand. We are praising God most effectively when we honor God’s call upon our lives by moving beyond selfishness to compassion, beyond materialism to contentment, beyond pride to humility. We praise God most completely as we obey God’s commandments to love God unconditionally, with all our being, and to love others unconditionally. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, now there is an archaic metaphor, we praise God most completely as we live lives which seek to do no harm, to do lots of good and which are committed to remaining in love with God.
As Isaiah addressed the Hebrew people they were not exactly experiencing the joy of their chosen status. They were exiled in a foreign land, treated as servants, estranged, separated from all that was familiar and comfortable, from all that had in the past given life purpose. They had lost everything: their land, their homes, their livelihood, their families, even the place where they went to met God. To what must have been a discouraged people God said, “Listen up, I am the God who builds a road through the sea, who carves a path through pounding waves, who snuffs out mighty armies with their fancy chariots and mighty steeds.”
The reference is obvious and was obvious to the people to whom Isaiah was delivering God’s message. Clearly Isaiah was speaking of the exodus events. He was reminding a people in captivity of the marvelous way in which their ancestors had been rescued from a lengthy exile, one much longer than that which his audience was experiencing. He reminded them of the way the sea parted for their forefathers, of the way the waves first stood high to allow the people through and then were released to destroy Pharaoh’s army. It was a familiar story, one told over and over as the people remembered their heritage. It was the story at the center of their most important festival. Everyone knew about the miracles of the exodus.
But note the words used by the prophet. He does not speak of the God who built a road or made a way in the past. He uses, and I am certain it was intentional, the present tense. He says he is speaking for the God who makes a way, who carves a path, not who made a way or carved a path, a God who brings out, not who brought out the enemy. The situation in which the Hebrew people found themselves is timeless. While few of us will ever experience political exile, we will all know some degree of tragedy, we will all know loss, we will all suffer shame and we will all feel at times as if we have been abandoned. And we all long to be assured of God’s redeeming presence in our lives.
In a rather odd literary twist the prophet offers words of assurance which clearly are meant to stir up the memory of God’s past faithfulness and then immediately instructs the people to forget about the past. What’s up with that? Well I think Isaiah was saying to folks that while the past may be instructive, may offer hope for the future, may bring up pleasant memories, we must never allow ourselves to live there or to dwell on what now lies behind us. It is not a bad thing to remember what God has done for God’s people in the past. But there is a monumental difference between remembering fondly the acts of God in the past and clinging to the past at the expense of moving into the present and on to the future.
The Message translates verses 18 and 19, “Forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand new.” There is a lot of stuff in that one brief passage. Forget about what has happened. Such are words of challenge both for those of us who have baggage from the past that is bringing us down and for those of us for whom the past is filled with fond memories and warm feelings. Don’t keep going over old history, don’t live in the past, Isaiah says. So many lives are wasted by folks who find they simply cannot leave the past behind. On the one side we find those who live in the past because in their mind it was better than the present. Perhaps they have come on hard times or suffered tragedy so they spend their lives remembering “the good old days”, regretting the present and comparing it unfavorably to the past. On the other side are those who are so eaten up with regret and guilt or bitterness and anger that they cannot move forward, stuck forever in the muck which is their past.
To both camps the prophet says , “Be alert, be present.” I have mentioned before the book The Sacrament of the Present Moment by Jean-Pierre De Caussade. I am particularly fond of that title. It is a constant reminder that we have not only the ability, but also a responsibility, to see every moment of life sacramentally. Think about that. How different would life be if we took every second as seriously as we do the most holy of moments here in this sanctuary? I do not mean that we are to be ever somber and serious in the most common sense of the word. Jesus made it clear both in words and by the way that he lived that he loved life, enjoyed a good laugh now and then and savored times of goodhearted fellowship. Scripture reminds us that The very first of Jesus’ miracles took place at a wedding party and had to do not with blindness or death or leprosy, rather it was to replenish the beverages of choice. But in the truest sense of the word, Jesus did take every moment of his life seriously.
In his book De Caussade writes “The present moment holds infinite riches beyond your wildest dreams but you will only enjoy them to the extent of your faith and love. The more a soul loves, the more it longs, the more it hopes, the more it finds. The will of God is manifest in each moment, an immense ocean which only the heart fathoms insofar as it overflows with faith, trust and love.” Alfred Lord Whitehead put it more succinctly when he wrote “The present is holy ground.” I confess that I struggle to see not just moments but hours, whole days and sometimes I fear even weeks as sacraments to be honored. I certainly fail to treat significant blocks of time as though they are holy. I need to be reminded by that beloved prophet who lived so long ago to be alert, to be present, all the time. I need to be challenged not only to accept the notion that God will lead me through troubled waters, but also to affirm the truth that every moment is not just precious, it is a gift from God to be treated reverently.
Isaiah warns against living in the past, calls us to be fully present in each moment and then proclaims that we are to be on the lookout for new things, for new ways of thinking, for new attitudes, for new opportunities. Here we need a word of warning. What Isaiah does not say is that we are to put aside the past and then to go about creating a new order of things. Our role is discovery not creation, growth not formation. Isaiah teaches that it is God who is about to do a new thing. We are to see it, to recognize it and to make it our own, but if we are to be true to our calling we must recognize that it is God alone who creates the newness. It is God alone who offers us new opportunities. Despite what we are sometimes taught, there is no such thing as a self made man or self made woman. It is only as we offer ourselves unreservedly to God that we become new creatures. And it is only as we put aside our obsessions with the past that we are equipped to fully live into God’s future.
Our New Testament lectionary text for today comes from Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi and has some of his most familiar words. He begins by making clear that he has an excellent resume. He is battling the perception among some that he is not smart enough, that his credentials are not good enough, so he lays out his claim to fame. But then he is quick to discount all that he has just proudly presented as his pedigree. He doesn’t mince words, though the translators of this passage all do. Suffice it to say that the literal translation of the word often interpreted “rubbish” or “garbage” is in fact far more graphic. In the still unpublished McCullough paraphrase Paul writes, “Everything I once held in such high esteem, all the perks and privileges I once cherished, all the advantages in I once took such pride, mean nothing now that I have offered myself to Christ and he has offered himself to me. It finally dawned on me that in the big picture absolutely nothing I have, none of my stuff, none of my accomplishments, none of my pride are worth anything, they are all garbage compared to the richness which is mine as a true child of God redeemed by grace through the power of God’s son.”
Paul had an epiphany. Not a bad thing to experience during Lent. I would recommend it to us all. But wait, don’t we do that at Christmas? Of course the season of Epiphany is associated with the coming of the Wise Men. But we all need to have an epiphany if we are to be all we were created to be. The word has its origins in the Greek and comes from a root meaning “manifestation” or “striking appearance.” What Paul had experienced in both a literal and figurative way was an epiphany, a manifestation of God’s presence, a striking and unmistakable appearance of the Lord. But the word means more. According to one dictionary, an epiphany is that moment when the last piece of the puzzle falls into place and we come to fully comprehend that which we have been pondering. For Paul the epiphany came as he reached a full understanding of the importance of complete surrender of all he was and all he had.
Having come to that realization Paul says, again from my paraphrase, “I’m not done yet with transformation. I still have work to do and service to render. But I am moving forward and I know where the finish line is. This much I know, I’m not spending much time looking back, I’m moving ahead, and I can’t wait to see what new thing God is about to do in my life.” It sounds to me like Paul might have been reading Isaiah.
For some bizarre reason, as I pondered this week’s text I couldn’t stop thinking about the trite but profound illustration I heard somewhere in my distant past. In talking about how to deal with the past as we move into the future someone has opined that we need to view life the same way we drive an automobile. We need to note the difference between the size of the windshield and the rear view mirror. Corny? You bet. But there is a lot of truth there. If we pay too much attention to that which is behind us we may lose our way, or worse run off the road all together. That is not to say we should all remove our mirrors, they have their place, for if we completely ignore what is behind us, if we block out rather than move beyond our past, our past just might catch up with us one day and if we are not careful, unless we keep an occasional eye on it the past could well run right over us.
But for the most part those who seek to honor the God who makes a way where there seems to be no way, the God who creates streams of living water within the sometimes desolate landscapes of our lives, the God who brings new life to parched dry places, will be found looking attentively out life’s windshield, anticipating what God can and will do in their lives. Oh they will occasionally briefly glance in the mirror. But when they do they will be looking back to recall the mighty deeds of God at work throughout history and reflected in their lives and the remembrance will stir up in them an abiding sense of hope and confidence that the power of God is at work in each present moment and will be at work in the future.
For your sake and for the sake of the kingdom of God let it be so in your life. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.
