When you go downstairs after the service for refreshments and conversation, please take time to look at the bulletin board and enjoy a pleasant visual trip down memory lane. You will see pictures of the stages of construction of this building from 48 years ago plus pictures of some of the families who have been part of this church over these almost five decades. Maybe you will recognize yourself and maybe you will recognize some friends. I say “maybe” because we all know the years take their toll -- or maybe I should just speak for myself! We can thank Jean Javanshir, our church administrator, for putting together this fun and informative piece from our congregation’s past.
Every so often I hear someone talking about OYM’s past – remembering people, places and events especially as related to this building and to the people. In part, that’s what this 48th anniversary celebration is all about – a service celebrating and remembering the people and experiences we have had that are associated with Oriole-York Mills United Church.
Last month the UCW (our United Church Women’s group) invited John Parker -- a former congregation member who is a current City of Toronto councillor – to speak about his role in city politics. At the beginning of his talk, John shared some of his memories and experiences of growing up here at OYM. I was particularly impressed with the way he spoke about how various members of our congregation (some who are present here today) were positive mentors and models of faith, love and industry for John and his family. Those are good memories for which we thank God.
On Sunday, May 16, we will conduct a service of Confirmation in this sanctuary. Rev. Val Noakes has been diligently involved with our youth -- helping them to think through and pray about what it means to make a commitment to be a follower of Jesus Christ in our day. She has a team of adult mentors as well coming alongside these young people and sharing their lives with them. So I hope in another 48 years, God willing, there will be more and more people looking back and saying thanks to God for this place and especially for its faithful and godly people who have influenced their lives in connecting to Jesus Christ.
After reminding you of these significant memories, what if I now told you to forget about what has happened here at Oriole over these past 48 years – to stop always going over and over old history? You might think that a strange request. But that is what God said through Isaiah to the people he loved in this morning’s Scripture.
In gripping language, God stimulated moving memories of hope and redemption from Israel’s past. God briefly sketched the story of The Exodus – their dramatic rescue from cruel slavery in Egypt. Particularly that most striking of all Exodus episodes involving the Israelites crossing safely through the Red Sea only to have the waters tumble back down upon the Egyptian army. The Pharaoh went back on his word and pursued the Israelites to take them back to Egypt and to slavery again. Listen to this part of the story in The Message Bible:
“This is what God says, the God who builds a road right through the ocean, who carves a path through pounding waves, the God who summons horses and chariots and armies: they lie down and then can’t get up; they’re snuffed out like so many candles.”We’ve probably all seen the old movie The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston as Moses. I wonder what movie director James Cameron of Avatar and Titanic fame would do with this scene with the new technology available if he were ever to take an interest in the biblical story. The Exodus really is the stuff of high drama. It was one of the most significant events in the history of Israel -- a unique demonstration of God’s supernatural power on behalf of the Israelites who, at the time, lived under the harsh conditions of forced labour for the Egyptians. When the people were later oppressed (as they often were throughout the Old Testament), they would always look back to that great historical event and be encouraged to trust God again for their future liberation. God’s brief comments here through Isaiah would have brought the minds and imaginations of the Israelites then exiled in Babylon back to that great Exodus story of salvation.
But what must have seemed strange and even confusing to them was for God then to say: “Forget the past! Don’t dwell on what was.”
I can imagine someone responding to God: “Then why did you start out talking about the past, making us think about it and remember it through your vivid descriptions?”
People respond in odd ways to what has happened in the past. Some only want to hold the memories dear in their minds without allowing the reality of what happened to make a difference in their present or future circumstances. Television and movie actor Alan Alda was one of the actors in the television hit series MASH. Alda wrote a book titled Never Have Your Dog Stuffed. In an interview, he explained the significance of the title:
“I was eight years old. My father was trying to stop me from sobbing because we were burying the dog, so he said, ‘Maybe we should have him stuffed.’ We kept it on the porch, and deliverymen were afraid to make deliveries. [Alda went on to say:] There are a lot of ways we stuff the dog, trying to avoid change, hanging on to a moment that’s passed.”It wasn’t that God wanted the people to totally forget the past. I believe God did not want his people to hang on to their redemption from slavery in the Exodus as a mere memory from the past without letting its meaning permeate their lives now in Babylon and then for their future after Babylon. So it is as if God said, “Don’t stuff the dog!” Rather, God wanted the people to “watch for the new thing I am going to do. It is happening already -- you can see it now, if you will open your eyes!” Then God went on to tell them what this new thing was all about:
“I will make a road through the wilderness and give you streams of water there. Even the wild animals will honour me; jackals and ostriches will praise me when I make rivers flow in the desert to give water to my chosen people. They are the people I made for myself, and they will sing my praises!”God’s “new thing” involved at least three things:
(1) God would provide streams of water to flow in the desert of their lives.
(2) God’s plans encompassed everything, including wild animals like jackals and ostriches. God’s plans included all of nature.
(3) God’s people would praise God with joy before the world.
First, God promised to make a way through the wilderness of their exile in Babylon and, along the way, to refresh them with streams of water. But the intriguing thing was that what God did at the Red Sea and in The Exodus from Egypt supplied confidence for the people to believe God could and would do this “new thing.” They would know God’s life-giving presence in their lives in the present in Babylon and in the future when they would go home precisely because of what God had done in the past.
For those of us who follow Jesus the Messiah (Jesus the Christ), we too must remember the past because the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the Risen Jesus constitute the foundation for who we are as God’s people today. Without the reality of Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection and ascension, we have no basis upon which to stake our lives as followers of Jesus Christ. But -- God does not want his people to hang on to their baptism, confirmation and acceptance of their salvation in Christ as a mere memory from the past. God wants his people to let his risen life, through the Holy Spirit, to permeate their lives with meaning for their living now and also for their future.
In his book The Jesus Creed, New Testament professor Scot McKnight shares the moving story of Margaret Ault. When Margaret was about to complete her PhD at Duke University in North Carolina, she fell in love. She went on a date with a man named Hyung Goo Kim and the proverbial sparks flew. But almost as quickly as the sparks became a fire, they were doused with water. Hyung Goo informed Margaret that he was HIV-positive. Needless to say, Margaret was devastated. In her own words: “I’d just met someone I liked, and we were definitely not going to live happily ever after. I felt like I had been kicked in the gut by the biggest boot in the world.”
Still, they were married. In his book, McKnight asks the question many of us would ask: “Why would anyone invite into the core of their being so much pain?” He shares the answer from the rest of their story. He writes:
“When Margaret was in graduate school at Duke, she and Hyung Goo loved to walk in the Duke gardens, and so knowledgeable did they become of its plants that they ‘supervised construction’ of a new project. They walked through each part of the garden routinely and [even] had names for some of the ducks. In their last spring together, the garden seemed especially beautiful. Hyung Goo died in the fall [of that year] and Margaret returned to the gardens the next spring where a memorial garden of roses was being constructed in his honour.”McKnight refers to Margaret’s book Sing Me to Heaven where she reflects on the days she returned to the gardens:
“Where peonies were promised, there were only the dead stumps of last year’s stalks; where day lilies were promised, there were unprepossessing tufts of foliage; where hostas [or lilies] were promised, there was nothing at all. And yet I know what lushness lay below the surface; those beds that were so brown and empty and, to the unknowing eye, so unpromising, would be full to bursting in a matter of months.
“Is the whole world like this? Is this what it might be like to live in expectation, real expectation, of the resurrection?
“Was not Hyung Goo’s and my life together like this? Empty and [parched], and yet a seedbed of fullness and life for both of us. He died, and I was widowed; yet in his dying, we both were made alive.”
After quoting Margaret’s words, McKnight concludes:
“Where does she find strength to grip such faith and such hope? It is found in [her question]: Is the whole world like this?
“The answer, ‘Yes, the whole world is like this: the whole world offers us tokens of new life beyond death and disasters.’ It offers the promise of new life beyond the grave, a life of renewed love in the presence of God. Why? Because Jesus was raised from the dead.”God’s second “new thing” spoken of in Isaiah but focusing on Christ Jesus is not merely for an individual person or even for a particular group of people then – when you know the rest of the story. God’s plans include people in all times and of all nations in the world. And God’s “new thing” includes ... well … Did you notice God’s words in verse 20: “Even the wild animals will honour me; jackals and ostriches will praise me”? So God’s “new thing” also encompasses all of nature – including the wild animals. There is nothing that is outside of God’s circle of redemption -- of salvation – for the world. In particular, Isaiah wrote his most lyric visions for what God will accomplish in the future to include trees and fields, mountains and hills, streams and creatures of all kinds.
Listen to Isaiah 41:18: “I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.”
And listen to the vision God gave Isaiah in 11:6-9 for a different time in the future – and that is still in the future: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”
God’s “new thing” embraces larger purposes than we can ever think of or know.
And, finally, God’s “new thing” will cause God’s people to praise God with joy before the entire world. In one of his many memorable clinical vignettes, neurologist Oliver Sacks tells about Jimmie, a man whose memory somehow became a sieve.
Jimmie remains forever stuck thinking it’s 1945. Harry Truman is always the U. S. president, the war has always just ended, and this ex-sailor believes he has his whole future to look forward to. Sacks reports that Jimmie is a very nice, affable fellow with whom you can have a good conversation about this or that. But if you leave the room after visiting with him for two hours and then return a short while later, he will greet you as if for the first time. Now, of course, that is simply tragic all by itself. But Sacks’s observation as to the overall effect this temporal vacuum has on Jimmie is that he has no joy. Jimmie is joyless in that he is confined to an ever-changing, yet finally meaningless present moment. With nothing to look back on and with nothing new ever to look forward to, joy is simply impossible.
However, there is one time when Jimmie does display something akin to joy. There is one moment when the vacant look on his face is replaced with something the neurologist can describe only as a look of completeness and of hushed calmness. This happens whenever Jimmie takes Holy Communion in the chapel. Sacks had once lamented to one of the Roman Catholic nuns who operate the nursing home that Jimmie had lost his very soul due to the disease in his brain. The nun reacted with outrage! She said that if Sacks would observe Jimmie caught up fully and meaningfully in taking Holy Communion, he would have no doubt that God was somehow managing to minister to Jimmie’s soul. Sacks could not disagree with that assessment, even though there was no good neurological explanation for the change that came over Jimmie at Christ’s table.God can do a “new thing” in each of us and a “new thing” in our congregation. And God wants us to watch, too, for the “new thing” he has for us as individuals and as a congregation when we let God minister to our souls.
Someone has said that only the past is inevitable. Maybe not! Because of the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, there is a kind of holy inevitability as to what can happen right now in the present as well! And that same past – but not merely the nostalgic memory of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension -- will inevitably fill our present and even our future with hope, with joy and with praise. That is God’s promise for a “new thing” in us! Are we watching as he said to do?
May this be so for you and for me. Amen.
Rev. Chris Miller Easter
OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto website »
4 April 25, 2010
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