Luke 19:5-19 November 17, 2013 SOMETHING NEW

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1 Luke 19:5-19 November 17, 2013 SOMETHING NEW Back in the early 70s, the British comedy group Monty Python made a movie entitled, And Now for Something Completely Different. Most congregations don t want something completely different. In fact, most congregations fight any kind of change tooth and nail. It s what pastor s call the Eleventh Commandment of the church: Thou shalt not change the way we do things because we ve never done it that way before. No, churches for the most part don t like different. They don t want something new. Which is rather unfortunate because, for the sake of the church and for the sake of the world, the thing we need in the worst way is something new and different. Wouldn t you agree that the world is in sort of a fix? We have problems galore some of them very serious and even life-threatening problems. We ve tried all the old solutions, the former strategies, the previous programs, and none of them have changed much of anything. Yeah, we really do need something fresh, something not yet thought of, something new. In the western world in particular, we ve been conditioned to think that if there s going to be any solution, any real change, any salvation of humankind and the world, it will have to come from us or it won t come at all. We need to help ourselves. Have you ever seen the size of the self-help section at your local bookstore? Or have you ever typed the word selfhelp into the search engine at Amazon.com? I did that just a few days ago, and literally, over 250,000 books came up on the site. It would seem that we believe any and everything that ails us or is wrong with us, we think we can make it better or fix it. Are you addicted? Overweight? A dummy when it comes to computers? Do you have high blood pressure or want to improve your love life? Well, rejoice, because there s a book or a smart phone or ipad app for that! As Dr. Phil is fond of saying, Only YOU can cure what s wrong with you. Of course, we soon discover that it ain t as easy as Dr. Phil makes it seem. That s because we re creatures of habit. We get caught in our ruts.

2 2 Most of us do what we do, not because it brings us happiness, but because it s simply what we do. It s who we are. We ve been doing it that way since were in elementary school maybe even before that. So, doing something new comes hard to us. As a result, newness, or change, is pretty rare. The new and improved model of us we had hoped for ultimately turns out to be, once we get to know it, mostly the same old thing. Nothing has changed. It sounds pretty hopeless, doesn t it? If that s the case, where will the change we need and yearn for come from? In this morning s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, the prophet Isaiah announced to a suffering Israel that God was about to do something completely different, something really new. God, the same Maker who created a new world out of nothing but chaos, was on the move again. Prayers were getting ready to be answered. God was preparing to act, and a new world would be the result. And this newness, this recreation and transformation, would come, not because of anything human beings did, but solely as a gracious, unearned, undeserved gift from God. This morning s Gospel lesson from Luke also points toward something new. Jesus and his disciples were walking by the magnificent temple, and they got into a conversation about the beauty and permanence of that great structure. It was made of such huge stones! A building like that, with such a solid structure, would surely last forever; right, Lord? Just like today we usually build our churches and temples bigger and heavier than they need to be, and delude ourselves into thinking our creations will last forever. But Jesus told his disciples that, in the case of the seemingly indestructible temple, stone would be cast down from stone and the whole place would soon lie in ruins. Imagine this church building of ours crashing down or burning to the ground, and multiply your disbelief and shock a hundredfold, and you get an idea of how stunned and incredulous Jesus disciples must have been when they heard their Master say that to them. But Jesus was right. Just a short time later less than forty years the Romans had had enough of those rebellious Jews they had conquered, and they completely destroyed the center of Jewish national life. The temple became a pile of rubble, with the exception of a small portion of its wall which still exists today and is called the Wailing Wall. Other than that, not one stone was left upon another, just like Jesus said. Talk about change and newness. Talk about being forced to do things differently. The people of Israel went through a great, national catastrophe. As a result, Judaism as they knew it and practiced it was forever altered.

3 3 The Jewish faith, which for the longest time had been centered in the temple, was transformed, through the violence of the Romans, into a faith spread across the globe. The Jews truly became the people of the book, the Holy Scriptures, and they gathered in synagogues around the world to carefully study God s Word. This new Jewish faith carried on, and is still practiced to this very day. What this says to me is that there may be newness coming to us through the activity of God, and that newness might be a good thing in the end, but it probably won t be as a result of painless change. In fact, it seems that pain is necessary for any significant and beneficial change to occur. And that s probably a major reason why we experience so little in our lives that is truly new. Because, almost always, for something to be born anew, something must die. For us to enter a new world, we have to let go of the old one. In order for our lives to be transformed and made new, we need to stop clinging to our old life and give it up or have it taken from us. Such things can be painful, and we tend to avoid pain if at all possible. I wonder, is there any circumstance going on in your life today that s painful or distressing, but it may just be a difficult but perhaps necessary dismantling of something old so that newness of life might come? And is that painful dismantling or end to something old in your life, could that be in reality the beginning of God accomplishing something totally different in you? As a pastor, I ve heard about this experience from parishioners time and time again. For example, someone is fired or laid off from their job of many years. They re cast into depression and despair. It s a very frightening and uncertain time for them. But then a few months later I talk with them and they say with glee that they found a new job. And they say something like, Getting fired from my old job was the best thing that could have happened to me. I love my new job. I had wanted to look for another job for quite a while, but I was afraid to risk it. After I got fired, it forced me to do what I really should have done a long time ago. I ve heard such stories repeatedly. Maybe you ve experienced such a story in your life. I have. Before I was called to this church, I had gone through two other job searches in the span of five or six years. For one reason or another, nothing ever panned out. I grew discouraged and frustrated. Some people in my old church were hinting strongly that they were growing tired of seeing my face up in the pulpit after almost fifteen years. So, as I began my third round of searching for a new call, I talked

4 4 with God constantly about my concern that my chances of ever finding another church to serve were steadily diminishing. Then, out of the blue, the First Congregational Church of Scarborough came along. And the rest, as they say, is history! I could chalk it up to luck or good fortune or fortunate timing; but in faith I prefer to look at it as an act of God. That s because I believe ours is a God who frequently intrudes among us. And sometimes, by the grace of God, God brings us the blessing of the destruction of an old world so that a new and better one might be created But that s what God is like. God can and does come into our lives and make a way when it seems there is no way. Sure, God often brings us peace, comfort, courage and reassurance in times of trouble and despair; but sometimes what God brings us is something completely different; something new. Because it s God s nature to make all things new. In the very first sentence of Genesis, which is the very first book of the Bible, the Hebrew words are literally translated, In the beginning, God began creating. Not God created, in the past tense, but, God began creating, in the present tense. That tells me that God s creation isn t something God did once and for all and then God stopped doing it; but rather, God s creation is something God continues to do. God is constantly, and even now, acting to create and recreate the world, and us, as well. God, in effect, keeps on making all things new. That s God s wisdom and providence. Day in and day out, our Creator is actively involved with creation, intervening, interfering, renewing, and doing battle with the primordial chaos that threatens to undo creation. And so it is that creation continues on, being transformed and changed as God keeps on making something new out of the old. You know, we human beings are proud creatures. We don t like to admit that we re vulnerable, that we sometimes make dumb or self-serving choices; and we try not to acknowledge that sometimes we just plain need help because we ve gotten ourselves into a pickle that we can t seem to extract ourselves from on our own. Like it or not, and whether we admit it or not, we re facing huge problems and challenges as a species some of them seemingly unsolvable. The temple of humankind is teetering on the brink of disaster, and if we re not careful or we don t start to get our act together, it just might happen that stone upon stone of the temple of humanity will be cast down and be destroyed. I m not trying to be bleak and pessimistic here, just realistic. What we need, my friends, is something completely different; something new, something from outside ourselves and our own abilities and expectations. And that s where God enters in IF we allow God in, that is.

5 5 We re now closing in on the end of the church year. In a couple of weeks we will enter the season of Advent a time of preparation and hopeful anticipation for the coming of God into our world to save us. So, with the ending of this church year we re in, the season after Pentecost, God s promise of a new beginning comes. The God who brings things to an end and closes things down will also start things afresh and open up new and better possibilities. The God who casts down our puffed-up expectations about ourselves also builds up a new heaven and a new earth. And therein lies our hope, our reassurance, our faith. May we always give thanks to God who is constantly doing something completely different, and is continually making something new out of our old world and our old lives. Amen.