FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT
Prayer of the Day: Creator God, you prepare a new way in the wilderness, and your grace waters our desert. Open our hearts to be transformed by the new thing you are doing, that our lives may proclaim the extravagance of your love given to all through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
“I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:19
My knee jerk reaction is “no,” I do not see anything that looks like a new work of God’s redemptive intent in the world around me. What I do see is an erosion of legal and moral standards from the highest level of government, a growing lack of civility within our communities and a shocking lack of compassion and empathy in the hearts of too many who claim to be disciples of Jesus. Never could I have imagined that I would one day hear the president and vice-president of the United States threaten their neighbors with conquest and annexation in the manner of Hitler and Stalin. Our communal maturity level has dropped to the point where men and women in places of responsibility insult one another with crude language no teacher would permit on the playground. While I have sat through some pretty raucous congregational meetings in my day, never have I encountered the kinds of threats, accusations and intimidation that I see thrown about in so many churches these days. If God is at work in this mess, I cannot perceive it.
Neither could the prophet’s audience. They, too, were living in circumstances that were none too promising. Living in exile after having lost their land, their places of worship and their last shred of autonomy, the Jewish communities in Babylon did not appear to have much of a future. At this point in time, the armies of Persia under Cyrus the great were advancing on Babylon. Though this was surely a profound historical event, for the Jews it only meant that they would soon have a new master. The prophet Isaiah, however, was able to see in this clash of empires an opportunity for his people. Though the waring kingdoms were doubtlessly driven exclusively by their own nationalist agendas, God was also involved in the mix, turning their cruel and self centered designs to God’s own redemptive purpose. Through Persia’s conquest of Babylon, God was making a way out of captivity, through the wilderness and back to the land of promise where there would be opportunities for new beginnings.
I do not mean to say that God is orchestrating events such that, as one bumper sticker has it, “God is in Control.” John the Evangelist tells us that “God so loved the world.” Control is not something you do to one you love. It seems to me the scriptures are clear in ascribing meaningful agency to creation and all of its creatures, particularly its human creatures. The course of human history is not foreordained. The decisions we make have real consequences for good or ill. But our decisions do not have the last word. That belongs to the One whose Word brought creation into being and stubbornly remains mercifully and redemptively engaged with it no matter how often and how far it goes off the rails. God patiently, creatively and compassionately takes up whatever mess we throw at God and makes of it something new, something beautiful, something that opens the way forward where it seems there is no way.
I have experienced something of that divine salvage and repurposing in my own life. As those of you who follow me know, my wife suffered a severe and crippling spinal cord injury four years ago. It was a life altering event in all the ways you might expect. Many of the things Sesle loves to do, many of the things we loved doing together were suddenly ripped away from us. Severe disability is a drain both on the disabled one and the caregiver. But what was truly life altering for us had little to do with all that. Through Sesle’s journey of recovery, we found ourselves in the company of many fellow travelers with whom we found a caring community. We developed lasting friendships with sisters and brothers recovering from accidents, strokes and the effects of birth trauma. At this point, I can hardly imagine life without this community and the love, support and wisdom it imparts. Understand, I do not mean to imply that God caused Sesle’s injury in order to bring about some higher good. What I do believe is that God meets us in the worst of times, when it seems as though all is lost, to open up windows of new opportunity.
Unfortunately, I am not a prophet like Isaiah. Unlike him, I cannot see any “new thing” that God might be doing in the midst of all this Trumpian chaos. And I am certainly not searching the Book of Revelation or any other apocalyptic passage of scripture to find clues that might uncover some divine historical timetable. That is a fool’s game that has made fools of all who have ever tried their hand at it. Nevertheless, I believe the “new thing” is there somewhere. I believe that because I have been indoctrinated with stories of God’s revealing a way forward just when it appears we have reached a dead end. God introduced the promise of blessing through Abraham and Sarah to a world mired in violence and division. God blessed them with a child when it seemed as though the fertility train had left the station. To a people who knew nothing but slavery for four hundred years, God broke the grip of empire to set them free. And let’s face it, no dead end is deader than death. Yet that is precisely where God worked God’s greatest redemptive work of all. God does some of God’s best work in the dark.
So what do we do until the “new thing” God is doing becomes clear? The prophet makes that crystal clear to us. We are to “do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with []our God.” Micah 6:8. Speak good news to the poor; speak truth to power; feed the hungry; care for the sick; stand with the oppressed; shelter the refugee; welcome the stranger; encourage one another; sing, dance and pray as we wait for the dawn. In the meantime, God can be trusted to make a way in the wilderness and quench our thirst as we make our way through this desert.
Here is a poem by Thomas Centolella about hope that survives even when its object is not in view. Perhaps that is the sort of hope we need as we await the revelation of the “new thing” God is up to.
The Hope I know
doesn’t come with feathers.
It lives in flip-flops and, in cold weather,
a hooded sweatshirt, like a heavyweight
in training, or a monk who has taken
a half-hearted vow of perseverance.
It only has half a heart, the hope I know.
The other half it flings to every stalking hurt.
It wears a poker face, quietly reciting
the laws of probability, and gladly
takes a back seat to faith and love,
it’s that many times removed
from when it had youth on its side
and beauty. Half the world wishes
to stay as it is, half to become
whatever it can dream,
while the hope I know struggles
to keep its eyes open and its mind
from combing an unpeopled beach.
Congregations sway and croon,
constituents vote across their party line,
rescue parties wait for a break
in the weather. And who goes to sleep
with a prayer on the lips or half a smile
knows some kind of hope.
Though not the hope I know,
which slinks from dream to dream
without ID or ally, traveling best at night,
keeping to the back roads and the shadows,
approaching the radiant city
without ever quite arriving.
Source: Almost Human (c. 2017 by Thomas Centolella; pub. by Tupelo Press). Thomas Centolella is an American poet and author of four books of poetry. He is a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award, the American Book Award, the California Book Award and the Northern California Book Award. He is also Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University and lives in the San Francisco Bay area. You can read more about Thomas Centolella and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.
Peter's Outer Cape Portico 