C Lent 5. 2010                                                             Christ Church , York

A woman lives with a broken heart because her husband cheated on her and, unable to get past the experience, has vowed never to love again. Two brothers have not spoken to each other for years because of some perceived slight of one to the other and neither is willing to forget and let bygones be bygones. A young man has not visited his father or mother for the past ten years because he cannot forget the abuse that he lived with in that house as a child. Rights and wrongs aside, these people, and so many more, cannot forget the former things that have happened to them and so they live with their anger and the sorrow. Not all our memories are bad of course and sometimes we live in with good memories – of wonderful days long gone with family and friends; living in the dreams of our past and remembering what it was like when our country was at peace, our cities safe, our churches full and our people content. But even our good memories can sometimes hold us back and not allow us to move on into new life, new hopes, new dreams and new memories.

 But now says the Lord Our God, “Behold, I am doing a new thing. Will you not perceive it? Will you not know it? It springs up right before your very eyes. It is right before you. Can you not see it?”

The prophet Isaiah comes this morning to urge his people to forget the former things and instead, to behold the new ways that God is changing and renewing their lives. But in order to see those new things that God is doing, they are first called to open their eyes and see God. The windows to their hearts and souls are clouded with memories of the pain, hurt and betrayal that they believe they have experienced over the years. They cast their memories back to those good days when things seemed to be going better for them and wonder why it cannot be that way today. But now, says the Lord their God, put these things behind you for I come to do a new thing in your lives.

So it is that God proclaims through the prophet, “I am making a way in the desert.” A desert is a lonely place where one can easily lose direction because of heat, fatigue and disorientation. Even the most experienced guides can get lost in the desert. But God says, “I will make a way for you in the desert and you shall know the path I will make for you and the path will lead you to fertile ground.” Sometimes we too live in the desert, a desert which is that place of loneliness, that place of misunderstanding, that place of confusion in our lives. Sometimes we are like the people of old and spend our lives wandering in the deserts of despair, disillusionment and disappointment. Sometimes we live in a spiritual desert where we feel abandoned and estranged from God and those who love us. Sometimes we feel as though we have lost our way in this life and become desert wanderers without focus and direction and for the life of us we cannot find our way back to fertile ground. And there are yet other deserts - the deserts of personal affliction and the desert of addiction whether alcohol or drugs or sex or money or whatever other addiction drives you. Such afflictions and addictions cause us to loose our way until we reach the point where we cannot seem to find our way back into God’s presence, carrying the baggage of our past which we cannot let go, wandering on the hot sands of hopelessness and despair, looking for a way out but finding none. 

For the only way out of such deserts is to turn to God and away from those so-called realities that keep us in the desert. The only way out is by taking God’s hand and allowing God to lead us out. But that means admitting that we have a problem, submitting ourselves to God and seeking to live in a new way of life. For God says, “I will make a way for you in the desert so that you may find your way out of the desert.”

God is also doing a new thing by making streams in the wasteland. The wasteland is without fresh water. It is that place where dreams waste away; the place where hope and faith in God waste away. It was the poet T.S. Eliot that immortalized the wasteland in his poem by that name and he said of it, “Where is there an end of it…the soundless wailings, the silent withering of autumn flowers…where is there an end of the drifting wreckage…the prayer of the bone on the beach….There is no end…” We live these days in spiritual wastelands where people have become tainted and corrupt; where people are overwhelmed by the horrors and illusions of this world; where people have lost all hope that God will ever change this present human condition. Such people have resigned themselves to eternal pessimism and they have lost all belief in things ever getting better. They have become permanent residents of spiritual wastelands, where they waste away in mind, body, spirit and soul. Their souls are dry. Their hearts are dried out by their daily living. They do not allow their minds to be watered by God’s love, compassion and mercy. They sit in their dry office s, their parched homes, their barren boardrooms. They do not see the streams that God has made in the wasteland. If only they would look up and go to those fresh water places which God has created for their renewal, then they would see that God is doing a new thing in their midst; but they are so steeped in their spiritual quagmires that they cannot see God doing a new thing today.

Our churches are not immune from this wasteland; indeed far too many of them have become spiritual wastelands of their own. They have lost their spiritual vitality and have become infected with dry rot. They have remade themselves so that they look just like the world looks instead of being different. They have sold their souls in an effort to accommodate and imitate the larger society. Their worship services are flat and dry, not because they follow a traditional format but because they have lost all passion for following the Lord. In too many churches, preaching has become stale, perfunctory and wooden; what I heard someone once call “geritol tired preaching.” There is no joy and enthusiasm because there is no genuine love of the Lord nor a desire to proclaim the Good News. The church has become a spiritual wasteland served by spiritually dead pastors who have allowed the cynicism and problems of our modern age to compromise their love for Jesus.

But God says, “I will make streams in the desert.” The dry places shall become wet places. The old places shall become new places. The crooked places shall become straight places. That which is dry and dead will be renewed with the fresh running waters of God’s power and grace. That is why God sent His Son Jesus to this wasteland of ours – to give us hope, joy and life in the Spirit. God looked out over our world and saw what a waste we had made of things and then decided to send His own Son who would clean things up and set things right. Where there was hopelessness, powerlessness and joylessness, God comes with hope, power and joy. That which seemed impossible for man will be possible with God. We need not waste away for God is doing a new thing, even if we don’t perceive it.

And we see this new thing that God is doing all around us, for even now God is breaking down strongholds, transforming dark places into light places and making hard hearts soft. God is giving wealth to the poor, bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, hope to the hopeless and faith to the faithless. God is doing a new thing everywhere. With the gifts God has given us we stand on the verge of eliminating diseases such as polio that have plagued humankind since the beginning. With the gifts God has given us, walls that have separated human communities have been brought down and communities and whole nations have been reunited. With the gifts that God has given us the poor and hungry and devastated in nations like Haiti and Chile and being aided through the amazing generosity of thousands throughout the world. Everywhere we look God is doing a new thing if only we would look hard enough, if only we would put aside the baggage of the past and look.

This does not mean that we have a perfect world for problems still exist and we all have our share of woes. But take heart for God says I come to do a new thing and to do what seems impossible by making streams in the desert, life in the wasteland and a new direction to my people. For in this holy season of Lent God comes to give us a new thing in His Son Jesus Christ. He comes among us bringing new life, new hope and a new promise. Through this Christ the deserts of our lives are made fertile, the crooked places are made straight and the rough places are made plain. There is pain yet before us as we go into the holiest of weeks for there will be suffering and there will be death. But behold, says God, I am doing a new thing for now there will be light in the darkness, hope for weary, water in the desert and life flowing from death. Can you not see it? Do you not perceive it? God our God is doing a new thing among us and His name is Jesus the Christ! Amen.