Loving God, both your Spirit and your creative power continue among us, making all things new.  Help us to recognize you wherever we encounter you, and open us to the power of your Spirit; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

    Have you ever wondered if the writer of Ecclesiastes was depressed?  Now, I know that this might seem like it has nothing to do with the readings that we heard today, but humour me here for a moment.  Here is part of Ecclesiastes 1:

All things are wearisome; more than one can express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing.  What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun (v. 8-9).

Same old, same old, right?  And not particularly inspiring.

    Yet, in our readings for today, we’ve got new things happening all over the place!  There’s a new heaven and a new earth.  There’s a new Jerusalem and a new commandment.  There are new things happening with the Gentiles, and the one who is seated on the throne says, “See, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5).  So when is all of this new stuff happening?

    Was there, in fact, a time in the past when God stopped doing new things?  After all, in both the Old and the New Testaments we see God doing new things all over the place.  Way back in Isaiah, hundreds of years before Jesus was born, we read the following:

Thus says the Lord,... 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?  I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert (Isa. 43:16, 18-19).

    As with many things in the prophets, this is fulfilled in a number of different times and places.  However, most immediately it referred to how God would care for the people of Israel on their journey through the wilderness from Babylon back to Jerusalem.  Our God’s creative power is not dead.  Our God absolutely has the power to bring water from a rock or to create rivers in the desert.  Our God even has the power to inspire Lutherans and raise them up out of their pews!

    Consider, too, what happens in the first reading that we heard today from Acts.  Peter, who is trying very hard to do what is right and has been empowered by the Holy Spirit, is repulsed when he has a vision that includes all sorts of animals that are forbidden and unclean for a Jewish person to eat.  Peter hears what he believes to be the voice of God telling him to get up and kill and eat.  Of course, this goes against everything that Peter has been taught, and he refuses.  However, the voice tells him not to call things profane that God has made clean.  Three times this happens, and then Peter is faced with another dilemma.

    You see, Peter has also been taught not to enter the house of a Gentile or to eat with them, and right at that moment some men from Joppa come to invite Peter to do just that.  Peter was being called by God to go and to share the message about Jesus with these people and to eat with them.  And then, once again, God does a new thing.  God goes right ahead and pours out the Holy Spirit on these Gentiles before they have even been baptized!  Leave it to God to mess with people’s preconceived ideas!  In one fell swoop Peter learned that all of those laws about what was clean and unclean no longer bound him, and he learned that God is interested in saving Gentiles.

    Notice that this is not a matter of Peter being tempted somehow to abandon those things that are right and good.  We can tell by the activity of the Holy Spirit in the story that God is behind these “new things,” and not the devil.  So where did we get the idea that anything new or different cannot possibly come from God?

    Consider, as well, today’s gospel.  Throughout his teaching and ministry, Jesus had mentioned many of the commandments that had been given to the Jewish people in the covenant that God made with them at Sinai.  Yet, in his final meal with his disciples, Jesus does not lift up any of these commandments, but a new commandment: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (Jn. 13:34).

    Now certainly there were commandments of love in the Old Testament: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself (Deut. 6:5;Lev. 19:18).  However, Jesus’ commandment is new because it points to his love for us as our example.  In fact, if we managed to keep this one commandment, we would be keeping all of the other commandments as well.

    Yet, just like the sheep in Agnus Day (youth bulletin), how many of us go looking for loopholes?  The sheep, of course, feels that “love one another as I have loved you” is far too difficult and is looking for a loophole for dealing with jerks.  For our part, isn’t our tendency to look for commandments that we think that we can keep, so that we can point fingers at those others who can’t?  Isn’t that so much easier than actually loving as Jesus loved?

    But back to the “new thing.”  We started out by asking when these new things are happening, and did God stop doing new things at some point?  In Revelation, the one who is seated on the throne says, “See, I am making all things new” (21:5).  While it is easy for us to assume that this will only happen some time in the future, I’m not convinced that this is true.
 
    I say this because a good deal of this passage from Revelation comes straight from the prophets that were written hundreds of years earlier (cf. Isa. 65:17-19; 25:7-8; 55:1; Ezek. 37:27).  As well, the new Jerusalem is not just a heavenly city in the New Testament, but is also equated with the church – the bride of Christ (cf. Eph. 5:23-32; Gal. 4:26).  There is both an “already” and “not yet” quality to this passage.

    And so, while the new heaven and the new earth are obviously future things, God has already begun to make all things new.  In fact, it is an ongoing process.  After all, haven’t you heard that when we are in Christ God makes us a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17)?  This happens by the power of the Holy Spirit, who is just like “rivers of living water” flowing from the hearts of believers (Jn. 7:38).  And so, what new things might God be wanting to do through us, right here and right now?

    Last weekend at our synod convention, Pastor Tim Wray reminded us that people love change.  As evidence, he pointed to how we love to show off our new phone, or our new car, or our new boat, or our new hairstyle, or our new outfit, or our new computer.  People love change.  However, we are afraid of loss.  We don’t want something new if it means losing something that we value.

    It seems to me that in all of the new things that God was doing in the Scriptures, the one thing that stayed constant was God’s relationship of love with his people.  The preconceived notions needed to change.  The measuring stick for faithfulness needed to change.  But the relationship with God remained, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

    Today, my prayer for each one of us is that we might have that same relationship of love with God through Jesus Christ.  For, when that relationship is solid, we can handle whatever new things God might do among us.  “See, I am making all things new.”  Amen.

Easter 5(C)                                    Acts 11:1-18
May 2, 2010                                    Revelation 21:1-6
St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church                        John 13:31-35
Pastor Lynne Hutchison

© 2010 Lynne Hutchison  All Rights Reserved