Fifth Sunday of Lent

Isaiah 43:16-21, Psalm 126

The first reading this week comes from what is commonly referred to as Second Isaiah. Isaiah chapters 1-39 are concerned with a pending doom. It is written from the Kingdom of Judah in the latter days before the Babylonians came and left everything, including the Temple, in ruins. The sense of judgment and dread are heavy in those first thirty-nine chapters.

But something changes when we reach chapter 40. The tone and location have changed. No longer is there a sense of doom. No longer is the writer in Jerusalem. The tone has changed to words of comfort. The location appears to be far-off Babylon.

"Do not remember former things, and earlier things do not pay attention to them," says verse eighteen. Don't get mired in the past. Why? "Behold, I am doing a new thing…." Most translations neglect that the verb in this statement is a participle, it's a verb form the Hebrew uses to show present action. Why should the hearers pay no heed to what has gone before? Because, God is already doing something completely new.

I love that the wording here is "a new thing." The verses that follow hint at what this new thing will be: rivers in dry places, pathways though the wilderness. These don't strike us as they're meant to because we've grown so used to them. And that's tragic because we miss just how exciting these words are.

"Behold," God says, "I'm doing a new thing. The factory smokestacks will begin to blow clean air. The fish will eat the chemicals and purify the ocean." Now that would be a new thing. That's so new it's beyond imagination. And that's exactly what God is getting at. "You've never seen what I'm about to do. You can't even imagine."

But, really, is God going to do this? Somewhere deep down, I suppose I believe that God can do this, but…nothing new ever happens. While I suppose I believe that the many tears I've cried will, eventually, reap a harvest…I just wonder when it will happen. Where is this new thing?

Sometimes it seems that the "new thing" promised is just a divine practical joke. We're caught looking and we expect God to eventually say "fooled you" and laugh. I suppose it seemed like that especially in those dark hours between Good Friday evening and Sunday morning. And yet, a new thing came even then. Something completely unexpected.

As we enter near the end of Lent and prepare for Holy Week, let us try and remember that God is a God of new things. And we must always hold onto the hope that we too can find ourselves looking around and feeling like "those who dream."

God of possibilities, help us as we try to hold onto hope when nothing new seems to happen. Give us expectant hearts that never stop looking for that which we cannot begin to dream.