A New Thing

 

 St. Paul's, Georgetown, DE

Lent V - Lazarus Sunday - April 3, 2022

Sirach 26:10 on Facebook livestream

 

Some of you know that I was in Southern NJ yesterday to preside at a wedding. Well, it wasn’t exactly a wedding. That had actually happened two years ago. At the height of the pandemic. On Zoom. 

 

We set it up with the Town Clerk to be present and sign the marriage license while I conducted the service – which took place in North Hampton, MA – from my home in Delaware, while the family of the bride gathered in PA and the family of the groom gathered in VA and friends from all over gathered from where they were.

 

They now have a home that they own, and a 9-month-old son, and their lives are filled with diapers and teething medicine and toys and sippy cups which they try to balance with work demands and schedules and daycare and changing COVID rules and regulations.

 

“Life,” they said, “is crazy. It’s totally not what we expected. And, we wouldn’t change a thing.”

 

We came together so they could renew their vows and receive a blessing in person and celebrate their commitment and love and joy with their family and friends.

One of the people there was a 20 year old man who was – I kid you not 6’10” – who told me that I had baptized him 20 years ago. I looked up at him – waaay up – and said, “I don’t know what I put in the baptismal water but whatever it was, it worked.” He was a Big boy. Freshman in college. Basketball, of course.

 

The celebration was, in a word, wonderful. 

 

Some might have decided to be pragmatic and just let the whole thing go, but not these two. They dressed in their wedding attire – she in her gown (which still fit after having a baby) and he in his suit (which still fit after all her cooking) – and they had the service and the reception in the venues they had previously chosen and the food was amazing and the music and dancing and frivolity were exactly what one would expect when you have a gathering of wonderfully crazy Italians, Greeks and Turks.

 

COVID has caused stranger things to happen but the power of love to adapt and create and redeem never ceases to amaze me.

 

This morning, we hear the Prophet Isaiah say, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth,” and then he asks, “do you not perceive it?” And, we see concrete evidence of it in the Gospel lesson from St. John.

 

Lazarus has just been raised from the dead and understandably his sisters, Mary and Martha, and Jesus and the disciples have gathered to celebrate. They have a celebratory meal, after which Mary – maybe Mary of Bethany or Mary of Magdala, we can’t be sure – pours expensive nard on the feet of Jesus and wipes them with her hair.

 

No one knows it yet – well, no one but Jesus – but things have been set into motion. No one but Jesus can feel it but something in the cosmos has shifted. Something is about to happen, do you not perceive it?

 

When a couple makes a commitment to a new life together, when they make vows to each other before God, God does a new thing and suddenly, new paths open up. Life takes a new direction. 

 

Everything they thought they knew doesn’t make sense anymore and yet it’s exactly what they knew would happen. Things they were confident about are now a worry. One part of their life is dying, but they sense something new is about to begin.

 

Jesus had made a commitment to God to be the vehicle of change and transformation in Salvation History. He raised his friend Lazarus from the dead but he did so on the Sabbath which the Pharisees strictly interpreted as a violation of the law.

 

Suddenly, new paths opened up. Life took a new direction. Everything he thought he knew began not to make sense and yet it’s exactly what he knew would happen. Things he was confident about were now a worry. One part of life was dying, but he had a clear sense that something new was about to begin. New life. Eternal life.

 

And, he wouldn’t have changed a thing – not even the parts that hurt.

 

I have come to believe that one of the most powerful forces in the universe is the power of the human heart and mind and soul to make a commitment. Jesus teaches that “what is bound on earth is bound in heaven.” I have seen that truth at work too many times to deny its veracity.

 

If you look at your own lives you will see that that the only way you have been able to achieve that which once looked impossible – that which you couldn’t have even dreamed might happen – did because you made a commitment to something. You might not have achieved that particular thing, but it opened paths of possibility which brought you to where you are now.

 

This church has made a commitment to be open to new life – new possibility – even if it means parts of it have to die. We have made a commitment to rebuild our infrastructure which has taken lots of hits over the past five years. 

 

We have made a commitment to reach out to our neighbors and welcome them, which means stretching ourselves in ways we’ve not ever before experienced. We have made a commitment to strengthen and deepen our faith – to edify ourselves – so that we are able to carry out what God has in store for us.

 

It's a journey that will bring us to what Martin Smith described as “the crucifyingly obscure boundaries of our faith’.

 

God is saying, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

 

Years of benign neglect and over two years of COVID lockdown have presented unique challenges. Stranger things have happened but the power of love to adapt and create and redeem never ceases to amaze me. We have seen that happen in this community of faith.

 

Next week is Palm Sunday and then begins Holy Week. We are about to enter a journey of the heart and soul and mind by entering the story of the Passion of Jesus and put our actual bodies where we claim our faith has been.

I promise you that if you make a commitment to walk the steps with Jesus, you will be changed and transformed and never again be the same. You will arrive at Easter Day with the same inexplicable joy that the disciples once knew. You will be ready for the new life which God has created.

 

God is saying once again, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

 

Amen.