No Way But God’s      a Sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church, Clarks Summit, PA on
                                      the Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 3, 2022. Scripture readings: Isaiah 43. 16-21;                                          Psalm 126; Philippians 3. 4b-14; John 12. 1-8 

On a blustery Saturday in March, in the chilly kitchen of a home no one had cooked in for years, a son spoke of the warmth his mother generated in that place, not just with the meals and baked goods she prepared at the stove, but with the generosity of her heart.  Around her kitchen table the son’s friends had gathered for a snack after playing football out in the yard.  Friday nights his mother’s friends and neighbors filled the chairs as they drank coffee and ate what came out of the oven and solved the problems of the world.

            Anticipating her funeral triggered a memory. Whenever there was a death in the family or among their friends, the son and his father would be enlisted to deliver dinner to the home wherever that grieving family was gathered.  The same ritual took place when someone came home from the hospital.  The mother would prepare a full meal, soup to nuts, as they say, and father and son would deliver it.

            Fast forward four days.  The funeral was over, the story of those dinners having been shared. The trip to the cemetery was complete. Family and friends were seated around tables telling stories.  The man to my left said that on his way up the turnpike extension, he had been trying to estimate how many meals he had been served in that kitchen.  The woman across the table added a story that made those father and son deliveries prepared by the mother all the more amazing.

            With a big smile she recalled being in the hospital one November and being discharged the day before Thanksgiving.  Her extended family was expected for dinner the next day, but she was in no condition to provide it. Not to worry, her friend assured her.  Sure enough the father and son delivered the meal…one course at a time: first the appetizers, then soup, followed by the salad, turkey with all the trimmings, and finally desert.  An overwhelming act of generosity still appreciated decades later, as if it had happened last week.

            At what might have been a funeral dinner had Jesus not raised a man from the dead, Mary offered Jesus an extravagant gift given from a faithful, grateful heart. The story takes place in the days between the death and restoration of Lazarus and the death and resurrection of Jesus.  The stench of death Mary’s sister Martha had warned about outside the tomb of her brother, Lazarus, gave way to a lovely fragrance of expensive perfume wafting through the whole house.

            It was one of those over-the-top, full-heart moments, at least for Mary.  We wonder if it was simply her gratitude at having her brother’s life restored, or was it something more?  Scripture portrays Mary as the one who sat at Je-sus’ feet and soaked up his teachings with the disciples. Now she pours the perfume on his feet and wipes them dry with her hair. It is an intimate gesture. Is it a picture of loving with all one’s heart, soul, mind and strength? 

Could it be that she heard and processed the things he said would happen to him in over the hill in Jerusalem? Did she get that there would soon be another death to cause her tears to flow?  Jesus seems to indicate in his rebuke of Judas that she has somehow decided to do what there would not be time to do come Friday next.

“Leave her alone, she bought it so that she might keep if for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” (12.7-8)

The comment about the poor was in response to the objection raised by Judas.  The money spent on perfume could have been used to help the poor. “There will be plenty of time for helping the poor later,” Jesus is saying.  Mary is living in the moment, expressing her love for Jesus, an opportunity that will soon be over. The new thing God is doing through Jesus plays out as Mary’s act of kindness fore-shadows another foot washing yet to come.

            Living in the moment, with an appreciation for what has been, and anticipation for what will be, is a thread woven though all of our readings this morning.  Through Isaiah, God reminds the Israelites of God’s grace to their ancestors at the time of the Exodus and points to a new act of rescue that is about to happen.  The Psalmist remembers an earlier time of blessing and uses it to inspire a heartfelt prayer asking to experience similar blessings. Nearing the end of his life, Paul expresses appreciation for his impressive pedigree, reaching back into his past, while pressing forward to “know(ing) Christ and the power of his resurrection.”

            Some people find it curious that God, using Isaiah’s voice to speak, started by retelling the story of the Exodus, reminding the exiled Hebrews of that pivotal moment when God saved them, only to tell them not to get stuck in the past. God’s introduction is a masterful condensa-tion of history that in other places in the Scriptures leads to a command to remember it.  But not here. This time the historical reminiscence leads to a startling statement:

           “Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea,
            a path in the mighty waters who brings out chariot and warrior,
            they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
            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?”

“Nowhere else in Scripture are people called thus to forget,” writes Old Testament professor Patricia Tull, who asks: “Who is this prophet to contradict Moses?”[i]

            A careful reading of the prophet’s words reveals some-thing startling. All the actions God describes are presented in the present tense.  God “makes,” not made, “a way in the sea.”  God “brings out,” not brought out “chariot and horse;” Pharaoh’s pursuing soldiers “are,” not were, “extinguished, quenched like a wick.”  The retelling of the past is a signal to be alert in the pre-sent. God is saying: “What I once did, I am still doing…take a look around.”

            Tull writes: “…Isaiah’s forceful order to forget is ironically hedged about with remembrance so powerful that it defies amnesia, perhaps even awakens many from it. Thus this order to forget the past turns out to be a hyperbolic introduction to an event the prophet expects to be so world-changing that it actually displaces their founding story.” [ii]

            Another Old Testament scholar puts it this way: “What he (Isaiah) wants to say is: ‘stop mournfully looking back and clinging to the past, and open your minds to the fact that a new, mira-culous act of God lies ahead of you.”[iii] Claus Westermann goes onto explain: “The new thing which God was proclaiming himself to be about to do is the new thing which Israel had ceased to expect, hope for, or believe in…As her laments show, she (Israel) thought that God’s saving acts were now a closed chapter.”[iv]

            The scriptures this morning warn us against making the same mistake.  These voices from the past urge us to keep our eyes peeled in the present.  

            So what is this new thing God will do? The words of the prophet describes it.  The new situation of the people calls for a new approach. The God who made a way in the sea for Moses and his people is about to make a way through the desert for Isaiah’s contemporaries. Dry land to cross the river becomes a hospitable path home through the desert with rivers of flowing water provided along the way for refreshment.

            That’s where the two stories converge, as the one who provided manna and quails and water from the rock way back in that other wilderness, promises refreshment for the journey home about to begin. The new story is the old story in a new time and place. The God who saved is the God who saves.  Writes Professor Tull: “The new situation, a desert rather than a sea, had brought forth the old story in new ways. ‘Do not remember’ becomes a call to loosen Israel’s grip on things as they were, and to expect some-thing new, but nevertheless recognizable in terms of the past.”[v]       

            The timing of this reading on this next-to-last Sunday in Lent couldn’t be better could it?  Last week our pastor asked us all to consider and remember how we made it through two plus years of pandemic produced isolation and inactivity.  He also shared the words of a webinar presenter who said to tell anyone longing go back to the way things were in 2019: “the bridge is out.”

This week the words of the prophet offer a word of comfort and encouragement and challenge. The challenge is not to get so caught up in reminiscing about what was that we fail to recognize how God is at work now. The encouragement comes by recognizing it isn’t all up to us.  And the comfort is found in knowing what God has done, God is doing, and will continue to do. The words of hymn writer Isaac Watts sum it up: “Our God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.”

            Based on this congregation’s history, if God were speaking today like God did in Isaiah’s time it might sound like this:

            “Thus says the Lord,

who helps you continue the legacy of “the efforts of a small group of women, whose initiative and dedication resulted in this church’s formation;”

who leads you on after turning “aprons, quilts, baked goods, candy, live chickens and pigs” into the bricks and mortar of a thrice expanded building erected on parcels of land traded for so as not to be disturbed by the noise and dust of the trolleys on the main drag;

who opens your hands to feed the hungry, and resettle refugees, and opens your mouths to teach the children and adults the way they should go:

            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.”

What will that new thing look like?  Only God knows, but God is in the business of revealing to those with eyes to see what they are called to do and be. That’s why we join the faithful follower who penned the words of the 126^th Psalm, a version of which we sang earlier as our Psalter.

                      “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion we were like those who dream.
                        Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy;
                        then it was said among the nations, 'The Lord has done great things for them.'
                        The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced."

The person who wrote those words looked back to a time when God’s blessings had been flowing and made of those memories a prayer filled with visions of transformation and renewal.

                       “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb.
                        May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.
                        Those who go out weeping bearing the seed for sowing,
                        shall come home with shouts of joy carrying their sheaves (of wheat).

            The Psalmist’s use of the past to open our eyes in the present cautions us not to get caught up in the remembering, which is so easy to do!

Every April there is a part of me that looks back wistfully remembering the energy and enthusiasm shared with my high school classmates as we approached our Board of Education for permission to suspend classes and replace them with an Environmental Teach-In on the first Earth Day.  I recall the fun we had as we named ourselves “SEA - Students for Environmental Action” and made three cages of two-by-fours and chicken wire to receive the clear, brown and green glass that took a whole month to fill as people of our two towns warmed to the idea of recycling. The trip down memory lane leads to an personal lament that we’re still engaging in debates about individual and societal changes necessary to protect the environment.

        Time to stop remembering. Time to look around.    

        I came to church last Sunday and found a four page brochure in the bulletin entitled, “Earth Care and Us.” It listed no less than nine opportunities to learn about or get involved in preserving “the beauty of the earth…the glory of the skies…the love which from our birth over and around us lies.”[vi] Tues-day afternoon, I walked through the park in Clifford Township, with a branch of the pristine, Tunk-hannock Creek rippling to my right. To my left a recycling truck  emptied three green dumpsters of cans, bottles and paper recycled weekly.  On Wednesday my wife and I will travel to visit family in a community where curbside recycling includes two more containers: one for yard waste, and another for food scraps.

            So, I repent of my lamenting, and give thanks for the opportunity to perceive the new things God is doing. That is the task ahead of us as the people of God who worship and serve in this time and place: To look for and celebrate and participate in the new things God springs forth around us and through us. To mine the past for the wisdom that knows there is no way to go but God’s way!

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i] Patricia K. Tull, Connections – A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), p. 94
[ii] ibid.
[iii] Claus Westermann, Isaiah 40 -66, The Old Testament Library, (Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1969), p. 128
[iv] ibid.
[v] ibid., Tull, p. 95
[vi] Folliot S. Pierpoint, “For the Beauty of the Earth,” verse 1, Glory to God The Presbyterian Hymnal, Hymn 14