I am a student of history. It was part of my major in college along with political science. Human history is filled with great drama, stories of heroes and heroines, the rise and fall of leaders and nations; from the earliest known civilizations in China and the Middle East to the rattle and hum of the global economy of the last century; from the oldest manuscripts in the earliest known languages to the newest technology with its own computer languages: history keeps on rolling with one event leading to another.
I believe our history informs who we are. You’ve heard it said that, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” History helps us develop our identity as an individual on this expansive planet. Our past informs our present and our future. I am a Nowack. It’s what connects me to my ancestors, to the generations that came before me. I am also a Berglund, a Godlewska, a Pospisil, even a Cohen. Their beliefs, morals and values were passed down to me through the years, whether I knew it at the time or not. Many of you know where your families came from. It could be from another state like Ohio or California or (God forbid!) New Jersey. Or it could possibly be from another country, such as Germany, Sweden, or Mexico. There are many of us here who can trace their lineage back to the founding of this congregation in 1850. We have inherited a set of ethics, a set of morals and values to guide and inform who we are.
Our God is the God of history; the alpha and the omega; the beginning and the end. He created us and he sustains us. God has spoken and worked through the generations that preceded us bringing us to where we are today.
We need to know our own history, our church’s history, and how the past has influenced our present day. But are there things in the past that cannot inform us in the present time? Are there areas of our lives that the lessons of the past do not address? What can we forget? What must we remember?
Our text this morning is a great one about newness and joy. The Hebrews are in exile in Babylon as punishment for their unfaithfulness, waiting for what God will do next. God is on the verge of doing such a mind-boggling, outside the box new thing that’s never been done before; there are no models or examples for this impending act of grace to be found anywhere, and even the one model that suggests itself has to be turned on its head in order to match.
Isaiah fears that Israel will want to return to the past, re-live their traditions going back to the Exodus story and of David and Solomon and more. And in going back to this tradition, they will find themselves living in the past. If they do, they may miss out on the new thing God wants to do. So he writes: "Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old."
But wait a sec! Are we not supposed to look back at what God has done in the past? Isn't it strange that Isaiah asks us not to remember the past right after invoking the story of the exodus? Does nostalgia cripple us in some way? What about the commands to "remember" that occur all throughout Scripture?
The counsel of Isaiah to his people, and God's counsel to us, is that we need to remember the past without fixating on it. If it becomes a habit of the mind, it becomes a form of spiritual escapism and forfeits the calling God has placed upon us. He only takes them to the exodus for perspective. Pharaoh had changed his mind on releasing the Hebrews, so he and his army chased them down onto the shores of the Red Sea. But God split and held back the waters so the Hebrews could advance. (Exodus 14, Isaiah 43:16-17).
God saw. God heard. God saved.
These things were true for their ancestors captive in Egypt, and they were still true in those days while God's people were captive to Babylon. God sees. God hears. And God saves. But how God would see, hear and save would change, is changing, and will always change. This is the way God rolls. God is always doing a new thing.
So while the Babylonian captives should remember that their God was a rescuing God, they weren't to anchor their expectations in only what God had done before -- as though what God had done before is all that God can do. If you fear losing our past, you aren't going to see what's right in front of you. Or you're not going to see WHO is right in front of you.
Have you seen this in a friend who pines away over a past romance? Meanwhile, he or she totally misses the amazing person he or she interacts with every day. They lose out because they're way out -- in the past.
Or think about the young adults who head off to college maintaining a relationship with a girlfriend or boyfriend back home. They have one foot in their hometown and the other foot at college. They are not fully connected into either community. More often than not, this relationship serves as a safety net because we are afraid of the unknown and cling to what we do know. Anybody who has ever found themselves in this situation would agree that 98% of the time these relationships don’t last. They realize they don’t want to miss out because they’re way out in the past.
In his novel A Light in August, William Faulkner reflected that "Memory believes before knowing remembers."
At the cultural level, that means that the mullet haircut won't ever be cool again and acid wash denim was bad the first time around. When you see people stuck living in the past, you want to snatch them out of their Camaros or their Mustangs and drag them into 2013, or at least up to 2001.
Even Moses fell victim to living in the past. When the Hebrews were parched in the desert, God told Moses to strike a rock with his staff -- it gushed drinking water (Exodus 17:5-6). When they thirsted and complained again in Numbers 20, Moses was to speak to the rock before the people. Instead, he bashed it with his staff -- twice this time. Drinking water still gushed, but it was called a distrust of God (Numbers 20:12). Moses was looking for God to act in the same way he did in the past -- and for that, he would never enter the promised land. If we fear losing our past, we aren't going to see what's right in front of us. Or we're not going to see WHO is right in front of us.
The 211th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) made use of this passage from Isaiah when they proposed a new vision for church growth in the 21st century. The theme was: "Here these words ... Hey, I am doing a new thing ... Do you get it?" This was followed by a number of bullet points, including:
The church must give up reproducing the past. Doing the same things harder, faster, and smarter won't grow churches.
The report then went on to explore the "new thing" of church, seeing the church moving from the dry wasteland to spiritual waters; moving from negative attitudes to hope, joy and openness and giving ourselves away to a ministry that proclaims God's love and grace.
This is where the church gets hung up. This is where we get stuck. We love our history. We love our traditions. We love doing church the way it’s always been done, usually that means the way church worked back in the 1940s, 50s & 60s. The middle of the 20th century was a great time for the Protestant church in the United States. The economic post-war boom brought about big changes to communities across our land. The suburbs grew and expanded around major cities and towns. With it came families with lots of children, the Baby Boomers as we call them now. Families joined churches, attended services and went to Church School because of their belief and faith but also because it was the cool thing to do. It’s what was expected. If you build it, they will come. A retired minister I know told me that his first call was in a small church that had expanded rapidly in size to the point that there were 1000 children in church school. But over the last 40 years or so, a lot has changed in our church and society. More and more people are not attending church services, especially the younger generations. The influence of the church on our society is shrinking, it’s diminishing. To be religious in the eyes of our culture makes you a hypocrite. The “spiritual but not religious” percentage of the population is growing the fastest while our churches continue to hemorrhage members.
In the light of this seismic shift in our culture and society, we cannot stand by and let it blow right by us. It was writer George Will who once said, “The future has a way of arriving unannounced.” In our case, we can go kicking and screaming into the future or open our hearts and minds to seek out what is God doing in this place. We cannot allow ourselves to get nostalgic with our traditions. It will tie us to our past stifling our alertness to our present day realities, our responsiveness to new opportunities, and the potential for growth into yet-unrealized possibilities for ministry.
We must reflect upon questions such as: Where is God leading us? What is the vision God has revealed to this church family?
Scholar Geoffrey Grogan captures the tension in Isaiah 43: "We are meant to reflect on the past with gratitude and stimulated faith but not allow it to stereotype our expectations from God."
God is sending us a clear message. You ain't seen nothing yet! Get your eyes off the rear view mirror and back onto the road. The best is yet to come.
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