November 14, 2005 (33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time)
1. Hear again these words from the prophet Isaiah: “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” Isaiah was writing to a people recently returned from their exile in Babylon. Jerusalem was a shambles, families and farms and trades were all in disarray, and the world crowded all around as a constant threat. The people needed to hear God’s promise again that a new creation is on its way. Last week, we talked about heaven, and that’s part of this new creation. But today we need to remember, like the ancient Israelites, that God is with us now. God is creating something new and something better in our world in our lives right now. We believe in a God who is doing a new thing, a God who puts a new heart within us, a God who rules over a place called the New Jerusalem. We believe in a God who makes all things new.
2. One of the remarkable features of this passage from Isaiah is how specific are God’s promises concerning the new creation. To be honest, it’s probably so specific because the prophet Isaiah was responding to specific injustices, real cases of public nastiness, particular instances of mean and sorry limitation. In other words, the vision of the new in this passage points to some very concrete problems with the old. And if you are a realist, what some might call a pessimist, you might not be too shy about pointing out that the old and awful world of the ancient Israelites that emerges from this passage is all too similar to our own world. You might wonder: if God is bringing newness, if new creation is on its way, it seems to have been delayed. Just like the experience of the Israelites, the world still crowds around us, our lives are all too often a total mess.
But don’t take my word for it. There is proof that our world still cries out for something new.
Isaiah promises that the new creation will not have infants who live but a few days. While rates of infant mortality have decreased radically in the modern world, especially in developed nations, in the third world, infant mortality remains tragically high. The CIA World Factbook puts infant mortality in the United States at the relatively low rate of 0.6%, but this still means that the U.S. is in 46th place in the world in terms of infant mortality. Sadly, many nations in Africa still have infant mortality rates higher than 10%.
Isaiah promises that all old people will live out a long life. Again, in the industrialized world, this is basically true, with the exceptions we all can name resulting from accidents, murder, and disease. But in other parts of the world, the average life expectancy is appallingly low, generally due to the AIDS epidemic. Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have a life expectancy hovering around 40 years.
In the new creation in Isaiah, no one builds houses and then doesn’t live in them. Nor does anyone plant crops and then not eat of them. Of course, many today do not live in the houses they built. National Geographic magazine says that in 2010 there are 35 million refugees in this world who have been forced from their homes by war and unrest. Some agencies put that number much higher.
And of course, in today’s global agricultural economy, few people eat the food that they plant in their fields. Presbyterian mission co-worker Jed Koball explains that one of the key causes of hunger in the country of Peru today is the fact that many fields once used to provide food for the local population are now used to grow a cash crop, asparagus, for the North American market. Examples like this one are unfortunately common.
Finally, and perhaps most provocatively, in God’s new creation says Isaiah, no parents will “bear children for calamity.” This is every parent’s most fervent hope for their children today, that they will never encounter calamity despite a world full of perils and traps. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if none of our children ever experienced calamity?
No wonder that Isaiah’s prophecy for an ancient people still sounds fresh and attractive to us today! So many conditions of the old world still plague our contemporary time. We still need a new creation. We still need a new heaven and a new earth.
3. Noted Christian speaker and preacher Tony Campolo makes the bold claim that when Jesus came into the world, God’s promises came to pass. Despite all that I’ve just said about the world still being in dire need of a new creation, Campolo argues that in Jesus, we have been given new life. Jesus, in all the gospels, proclaims that, in him, the kingdom of God is coming near to us, and this is the beginning of the new creation. Campolo writes, “[Jesus] wants to change this world into the kind of world that it ought to be. That’s why Jesus came, to create transformed people who in turn will live in a transformed world.” This is why Jesus teaches his disciples—and us—to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
In other words, Jesus among us is the turning point in history between the old world and the new, between the old life and the new life. Ancient promises, like the one made in Isaiah to the Israelites, are answered in Jesus Christ. And so now, even though the world can still feel awfully broken, it is on the mend. Christ is with us, Emmanuel, in a whole new way, even in the trials and problems of modern life.
Campolo suggests that Hurricane Katrina was a good example of a new thing emerging even in the destruction of that storm. Campolo writes, “When Katrina took place, [Jesus] was the first one who wept. He was the first one who cried. He was the one who was outraged because we didn’t build levees strong enough to hold back a hurricane force wind. He was the one who was outraged by the fact that there was so much poverty in New Orleans. To be Christian isn’t just to believe in Jesus, it’s to allow Jesus to invade you, to change your emotions, your feelings, your thinking.”
4. And when this transformation begins to take place, we start to be able to see signs of the new creation. Life emerges where before there was none. As Christians we need to remember that Jesus came to bring in the kingdom of God. In him, the old world is being made new. When you see new life emerge, you can be sure that is Christ at work. When you see signs of the new creation, you are seeing the promises of God being fulfilled even now. After the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington in 1980, scientists and other observers were astonished by how quickly the landscape regenerated. A 1987 article from Time magazine reported that, “What they observe is nothing less than a landscape being reborn. Nature is laboring mightily to transform the scoured flanks of the mountain, its debris- filled river systems and chemically polluted ponds and lakes into a facsimile of the sylvan setting that existed before the eruption. To the untutored eye, the evidence of devastation still seems overwhelming. Scientists, however, see a glass filling itself up slowly but surely. Says James MacMahon, head of the biology department at Utah State University: ‘It's not a forest yet, but the rate of progress is amazing.’” Maybe all of us can think of areas in our own lives where we have been surprised by the rate of growth. Where has Jesus been making new life in you?
And sometimes, this work of new life, this constant move toward wholeness, comes in even less expected and more sudden ways. I recently heard a radio interview with musician Sxip Shirey. Shirey grew up in rural Ohio on 54 acres of woods. He loved it in the country. But to make it as a musician, he realized it was going to be necessary to move to New York City, a place he initially detested. It was ugly and crowded and unfriendly. But then one night, he found himself on the roof of a friend’s 36-storey apartment building overlooking downtown Manhattan. It was a deeply foggy night, and as he looked out, he saw the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Their bases were covered in fog such that it looked like two enormous buildings floating in the clouds. In the harbor, he could hear the foghorns of the boats, and to his right he could see the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges lit and floating above the mist. To his left, he could see the Statue of Liberty, and he at once felt connected to his Albanian grandmother who had emigrated through Ellis Island. Then and there, Shirey discovered the life and the beauty of the city. He said, “I felt connected on a spiritual level to the city for the first time.” What was ugly was beautiful. What had hurt and felt like a strange land had become home.
5. For us too, a new world is on its way. Even when we feel alienated and when this world feels old indeed, our God is at work. When we see the world through the redemptive lens of Christ, we note new life springing up. When forgiveness is extended, when beauty shines forth, when relationships flourish, it is then that “the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox.” Open yourselves to Jesus and to what he is doing in you and in us to usher in a new creation. Open yourselves to these promises and trust that our God is faithful.
Let us pray: Almighty God, attune us to see your work in your world. Open our hearts and minds to the many ways that you are bringing us new life. May your kingdom so inspire us that we share your love and life with all. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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