Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year C
Isaiah 43:16–21, Psa 126, Phil 3:4b–14, John 12:1–8
First the text of the day, with a few boring translation and textual notes, followed by some reflections and "sermonic" comments.
Isaiah 43:14-21
14Thus says the Lord,
For your sake I will send to
Babylon
and break
down all the bars,
and the
shouting of the Chaldeans will be turned to lamentation.[2]
15I am the Lord, your Holy One,
the Creator of Israel, your King.
16Thus says the Lord,
who makes a way in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters,
17who brings out[3]
chariot and horse,
army and warrior;
they lie down, they cannot rise,
they are
extinguished, quenched like a wick:
18Do not remember[4]
the former things,
or consider the things of old.
19I am about to do a new thing;[5]
now it springs forth, do you not
perceive it?
and rivers in the desert.
20The wild animals will honor me,
the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness,[8]
rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
21 the
people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise.
Sermon thoughts, introduction
This week’s first reading comes
from the second part of Isaiah (called creatively by Bible scholars, “Second
Isaiah”) and runs from chapter 40-55. It was a very popular section for New Testament writers back in the day, and
is still so for Christian types today. In fact, it is one of the most
frequently quoted areas of the Hebrew Scriptures in the New Testament, and it
hogs nearly all of the first readings in the modern lectionary. And it’s no
wonder. These fifteen chapters are “filled with proclamations of salvation and
celebrations of the Lord’s redemptive work,” and Christians have for centuries “seen
the similarity of this prophet’s message to the new Testament’s good news.” [9]
I. Remember Not
Note
that in other parts of Isaiah, the prophet admonishes the people to remember,
but here he tells them to forget. “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of
old. I am about to do a new thing” (vv. 18-19).
In
Case you don’t believe me, here are some examples of the “remember” passages:
Isaiah 44:21
21Remember these things, O Jacob,
andIsrael
I formed you, you are my servant;
O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.
and
I formed you, you are my servant;
O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.
Isaiah
46:8-9
8Remember this and consider,*
recall it to mind, you transgressors,
9 remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is no one like me,
recall it to mind, you transgressors,
9 remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is no one like me,
But here, in Isaiah 43:14-21,
his advice is to forget the things of
old.
So, if I were constructing a
sermon on this passage, I think my first word of wisdom would be this one: “Remember not” (from the RSV, by the way,
not the NRSV)
Don’t
try to predict the future based on what you had in the past.
To be fair, there is a slight debate in scholarly
circles as to whether the prophet is saying “forget all the stuff that you did in
your past that got you here” (i.e., the sins, idolatry, mistakes, greed, etc.)
or “forget all the mighty acts of God from the past that were pretty awesome
(i.e., the Exodus from Egypt) because what’s coming up is even better.” For the
former, the message is “don’t get bogged down in the past out of guilt or shame
or feelings of inadequacy, because God is about to do a new thing that does not
take that into consideration.” For the latter, the message is “Don’t evaluate
what I am about to do in light of the mighty things I have done in the past.
This will be greater and grander than anything you have ever seen before.” For my
comments below, I am emphasizing the former interpretation.
On the
one hand, we do have
to remember our pasts. Of course, as George Santayana famously said, “Those who
cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I never was too sure what
that meant, but if a famous philosopher and foreigner said it, then it must be
very wise.
But on the other hand, over-remembering our pasts can also bog us down. The good use of
memory is that it can tell us what not
to do in the future; the bad thing is that some of us can get so tied up in what
we tried to do once before that we no longer have a vision or path for the future. The tied down, concrete, immovable past
can blind us to the open ended, liberated, future. I wasn’t able to accomplish “A”
and “B” in the past, so surely I also won’t be able to accomplish “C” today. In
addition, sometimes what we have done in our past is so awful that we cannot even
envision a future in which we will be
forgiven and redeemed, and empowered to be new.
Sometimes we have so much pain (either emotionally or
physically) from something that has happened to us that it gets in our way of
seeing a future that is actually (potentially) clean and clear and hopeful.
Sometimes we have tried so hard to get us through one set of crises, that we
think there is nothing new that we can do (or have energy to do). Some of us
feel so inadequate, so small, so helpless, so powerless, that we cannot
conceive of ourselves succeeding in the future. Our pasts can blind us to the
possibilities of the future.
So, as “Isaiah” put it:
“remember not things of old…
Behold, I am doing a new thing”
(ch. 42:9; 2 cf.,
Cor. 5:17; Rev. 21:9).
Remember the old saw about the seven last words of the
church?: “We’ve never done it that way before…” That is intended to be funny (though
only slightly), but what it is trying to say is that church people can get so bogged
down in the old ways that we did things in the old days, that we can blind
ourselves from seeing any new path into the future for our church (ourselves). The truth is that most of us
desperately need to listen to God and hear the words, “Behold I am doing a new
thing, can you not see it?”
It’s interesting to note that there are two words in
Hebrew for “forget.” One means to “cover up” the memory. The other is to “blot
out” the memory. The one used in this passage means to “blot out.” The phrase, “Remember
not” (“Do not” ’al, “remember” zâkar) in
this Isaiah passage, isn’t referring to the absence of memory, but the freedom from
it. That’s not the same.
The significance of that for some people is that some of
us tend to want to just cover up our past, to deny it. To forgive it, perhaps, but not actually forget it, not to “blot” it out. And when we do that we find
ourselves being tortured by our past even when we don’t realize it. That person
hasn’t really forgotten his or her past they have just not looked at it. It
controls them and they don’t know it. This passage in Isaiah, says forget it completely. I don’t think that
Isaiah is saying to go catch a case of amnesia, but to forget it as a weight
that bogs you down, and drags your life. And keeps you from becoming the person
that God created you to be. You can’t go on with your future while your past is
thoroughly in control.
The way to deal with the dark spots in our pasts is to
take them out, look at them, address them, be honest about them, stare them in
the face, wrestle with them, atone for them, apologize for them, and then blot
them out and move on. Of course in
real life we usually can’t do all of that. Our mortality gets in our way. We
much prefer to try to cover them up, try to deny them. But the closer we can
get to honest wrestling and blotting, the healthier our move into the future
will be.
Incidentally, when I was little, my grandfather was
famous for making beer in the back yard. When it was time to ferment, he would
bury it in big vats underground, and let it sit there for weeks until it was
ready. He used to say that emotions are kind of like his beer in the back yard.
He said that if you try to hide from them and bury them, the longer they stay
buried and not taken out and looked at and dealt with, the more likely that they
will someday explode something fierce and harm someone close to them. You can
hide from your emotions or feelings, and you can bury them, but the longer you
do that, the more likely they will explode and hurt someone close to you.
A past that is left untouched or addressed can haunt us
and make us fearful of the future. It can blind us to the future.
“Israel
II. And
that is the second issue: do we actually
see it?
Are we yet capable
of seeing the new thing that God has
in mind for us? Are we able to open our eyes and see the new world unfolding
before us, and will we be ready for the new thing that God is preparing for us?
Sometimes we are ready to see something and sometimes we
are not. Last week the Gospel lectionary reading dealt with (among other
issues) the so-called “Prodigal” Son. If you used it in your sermon, you know
that the prodigal had to get to the very bottom of his life before he heard God
speaking to him. In today’s Hebrew scripture, we can say that Isaiah was not
certain that—as wonderful as God’s new thing was—people would actually be able
to see it. What makes us able to see God’s miraculousness? What makes us (some
of us) be able to hear it?
Do you know the old (and admittedly weak) joke about the
guy who bought a pack mule? It might be appropriate here. The seller said the
mule really understands orders. So, it’s important that all you need to do is
tell him where he should go and what he should do. However, when the buyer got
home he tried to get the mule to go forward and he refused. He couldn’t get him
to move, never, not at all, nothing. So he took the animal back to the original
owner and said, “You lied to me.”
The seller looked at the mule, looked at the buyer, then
picked up a two-by-four and hit the mule right in the head with it. Then he
said “go forward.” The mule did it.
The buyer said, “what on earth did you do?”
The seller looked at the mule, and the buyer and smiled.
Then he said, “Well, sometimes you just have to do something dramatic to get
their attention.”
Does that apply to us too?
Notes:
[1] “Redeemer” (go’el) v. To act as kinsman, one
who redeems. Do the part of “next of kin,” whose job was to take over propetty
if the head of household had died or was no longer able to do it, by marrying
brother’s widow, etc. Sometimes to beget a child from her for him. To redeem
from slavery, to redeem land.
[2] nrsv:
Meaning of Heb uncertain. Oxford Bible
Commentary says of this: “The reference to ‘lamentation’ in NRSV is a
speculative emendation of the text.” Barton, John. Muddiman, John: Oxford Bible Commentary (New York :
Oxford University Press, 2001). Elizabeth Achtemeier, writing in the Lectionary Commentary says, “the Hebrew
of verse 14 is indecipherable, although the RSV reading (which contains the
world ‘lamentation’) is probably as good an emendation as is possible” (“Fifth
Sunday in Lent, Year C,” Lectionary
Commentary: Theological Exegesis for Sunday's Texts, Volume One (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), p. 343).
[3] “Brings out” (yâtsâ') vb. “In
an ironic play on words, the prophet uses the same verb, ‘brings out’ (ys), to describe the activity of the
Egyptian army that is used in other exodus narratives to describe Yahweh’s
‘bringing out’ of Israel from bondage (Ex. 3:10 and elsewhere). The enemies of
human liberty are responding to the initiatives of the same sovereign Lord as
were the liberated tribes. The forces of evil are summoned from their place of
safety and are crushed (‘extinguished, quenched like a wick’) by the power of
Israel’s God.” James D. Newsome, Texts
for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary
Based on the NRSV, Year C (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, p.
229.
[4] “Do not remember” (“Do not” ’al, “remember”
zâkar) “Remember not” (rsv). Not the absence of memory, but the freedom from it. That’s not the same. It’s
interesting to note that there are two words in Hebrew for “forget.” One means
to “cover up” the memory. The other is to “blot out” the memory. The one used
in this passage means to “blot out.”
[5] This sentence begins in the Hebrew with the word hinnêh, which would mean something like Behold, lo,
see. Many, if not most, other
translations have it but, for some reason, the nrsv
does not.
[6] The Hebrew includes “even” here for emphasis.
[7] The theme of “way” or “road” (derek) in the wilderness is common in second Isaiah. . See
55:12-13. For “a way in the wilderness,” see Isaiah 40:3, “A voice cries out: ‘In
the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a
highway for our God.’” Note that “the ‘way in the sea’ of v. 16 was a dry route
through the threatening waters created by a merciful Yahweh. But the
"’way’ in v. 19 is a life-sustaining
thread of watr through an arid wasteland. It is ‘way in the wilderness’; it is
‘rivers in the desert.’” Newsome, Texts for Preaching, p. 230
[8] “Give water in the wilderness”: See Exodus 17:1-7
(water from the rock at Rephidim).
[9] Gene Tucker, Preaching
Through the Christian Year: Year C (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press
International: 1994), p. 160.
[10] From "Sermon for the 5th Sunday in Lent"
Rev. Todd Donatelli, April 1, 2001,
www.day1.net/index.php5?view=transcripts&tid=183
