Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 19, 2006

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

There’s a common wisdom about religions that has long puzzled me. At least, is has puzzled me in so far as it applies to Christianity. Religions, and societies in which religion plays a dominant role, are supposed to be, on the whole, more conservative than more secular societies. They are supposed to be resistant to change, and both history and today’s world seem to confirm that impression. In the history of the West, European culture was relatively static, with relatively little innovation in any areas of human endeavor, until, through the great historical developments that we know as the Renaissance, the Reformation, and most of all the Enlightenment, religion lost its firm grip on society. With the appearance of rationalistic secularism from the 17^th century on Europe experienced an explosion of scientific, technological, economic, and cultural innovation that even now has not yet run its course. In the world today societies in which religion is the dominant force certainly tend to be socially conservative and relatively underdeveloped. The best examples are perhaps the Islamic nations of the Middle East. In our own society today the most vocal and visible parts of the Christian church are vociferously conservative, resisting and rejecting many of the discoveries of the human mind, their rejection of evolution and of modern understandings of human sexuality being the best examples. Religion can indeed be a very conservative force in human life.

And that has never made much sense to me. Christianity at least has always seemed to me to be downright revolutionary. I’ve never really understood how a faith that teaches God’s unconditional love for all people, God’s demand for justice for the most vulnerable among us, and God’s rejection of the human proclivity for violence could get to be so conservative. Yet there is no denying that it has, and our reading this morning from Isaiah got me to thinking about why that is. That passage certainly suggests a God who is hardly conservative. There the prophet we know as Second Isaiah, the author of chapters 40 through 55 of the Book of Isaiah, has God say:

Do not remember the former things,
        or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
        now it springs forth, do you not
                perceive it? Isaiah 43:18-19

I’m not sure I have the entire answer to that question, but I think that at least a part of the answer lies in the way people of faith so often come to see faith. Rather than see faith as a call to newness of life, to ever expanding discovery of the wonders of God’s creation and of God’s love, mercy, and grace, we tend to see the faith as a set of truths, usually doctrinal truths, that are fixed once for all time. The faith comes to be a monolithic set of propositions that are supposed to represent eternal, unchanging, divine truth. When we see faith that way, our task becomes not discovery but simply acceptance and preservation. If we have the fullness of divine truth, then we don’t need innovation and discovery; and indeed our sacred duty becomes to resist them. Certainly that’s how many of our fellow Christians seem to approach the faith and indeed life itself.

I’ve even heard Christians cite a Bible verse in support of the proposition that Christianity is indeed a monolith given to us whole that we are simply to accept whole and to preserve. Maybe you’ve heard it too, so let me spend a minute on it. That passage is from the rather obscure New Testament book of Jude. Verse three of that book, which is so short that it isn’t even divided into chapters, reads: "Beloved..., I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints." "The faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints." That sure makes it sound like the faith is indeed a monolithic set of beliefs that doesn’t change, doesn’t it?

Well, it does, but only if you take it entirely out of its textual and historical context. You see, the next line, verse 4, gives the context that shows what the author is really talking about. That verse says that the reason we must "contend for the faith" is that there are people among this author’s audience "who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ." This verse makes it clear, I think, that "the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints" is simply belief in the grace of God through Jesus Christ. The author’s point is that the freedom we have through God’s grace must not deteriorate in licentiousness. The letter really isn’t talking about more than that. That’s the textual context. The historical context is important too. This letter was written some time in the first century CE. At that time, most of the doctrines that those who cite this text for the unchanging nature of the faith surely consider part of the supposedly unchanging faith hadn’t even been developed yet. For example: The Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity weren’t fully developed until at least the fourth and fifth centuries, hundreds of years after Jude was written. Moreover, the classical theory of atonement so beloved by Christian conservatives didn’t get its fullest expression until early in the 12^th century, more than a millennium after Jude. So one thing is clear: The use of verse 3 of Jude to seal the faith in concrete is indefensible proof texting of the worst sort.

Which brings us back to our passage from Isaiah. Here we have a God who locks nothing in concrete. Here we have a God who wants to lead us in new directions. This God says don’t look back, look forward. This God doesn’t want us to forget what God has done for us in the past, but this God doesn’t want us to get stuck there. In their historical setting these lines are about God about to do the new thing of leading the Hebrews out of captivity in Babylon and back home to Jerusalem. Yet that story isn’t just about something that happened a long time ago to other people in a place far away. That story is also about us. God wants to lead us out of whatever exile we’re in too. God wants to lead us out of our bondage the way God led the Hebrews out of bondage in Egypt and then almost a thousand years later out of bondage in Babylon. God wants to lead us out of our own bondage to old verities, old falsehoods, and old ways into new life.

But surely God does not do a new thing merely for the sake of doing a new thing. The new truth and the new life to which God leads us aren’t arbitrary, and they aren’t a radical departure from the central truths that our tradition has always taught. The author of the Letter of Jude, in the line that our conservative proof texters usually fail to quote, tells us where God is leading us. Our faith is faith in the grace of God in and through Jesus Christ. The newness to which God leads us is always a new, deeper, more complete understanding of that grace.

The new thing that God is doing in the church today is to lead us to a deeper understanding that God’s grace is for everyone. God is teaching us today that every time we try to put limits on God’s grace, every time we try to make that grace conditional or to exclude some people from it we have gone astray. Every time we try to limit God’s grace we are stuck back in those former things, those things of old that Isaiah warned us against.

It’s almost Lent again, and this Lent, as it did last Lent, the United Church of Christ will run a national television ad campaign founded on the extravagant, all-inclusive welcome, God’s welcome, that people can find in the churches of our denomination. Isaiah’s God said "I am about to do a new thing." Our church says "God Is Still Speaking." We mean the same thing. God is doing a new thing. God is still speaking. God is leading us in new paths of grace. God is teaching us that God’s unconditional love is indeed for everyone. God is doing a new thing. Do you not perceive it? Amen.