SIMPLY SIMON

If you are an iPhone user as I am, you’ll know the pressure of Apple marketing. Every year a new model is released and we are sent endless emails boasting the latest features, buttons and colours. iPhone 16 Plus — upgrade now! When you do succumb, perhaps once every few years, you will know the process by which you must transfer all your apps, photos, storage, accounts, files and preferences from the old to the new. Without that transfer, the upgrade is useless. A successful movement to the new depends so much on the essence of the old.

If we are to talk productively on a ‘new you’ for 2025, we must begin by acknowledging that there really is no such thing. You might embrace new resolutions, go shopping for a new wardrobe, enrol to learn a new skill or begin therapy to change your way of thinking. You can do all of these things, yet the ‘you’ you’re so keen to makeover is still you. For you are an accumulation of stories, memories, experiences and connections. You might upgrade to a new cover, but the old remains the essence of who you are and without which you do not exist.

That said, the bible talks a good deal about the ‘new’. It prods us constantly to reach toward the possibilities of tomorrow — the possibilities of new beginnings, new life, the renewing of all creation. In these four Sundays, we are looking at just four biblical texts which speak of the new. In each case, we are wanting to unearth truth for our lives in 2025.

In the first week we read Paul’s words in Romans, his encouragement to “walk in the newness of life.” Last Sunday we read from Isaiah 43, and God’s call to the people of Judah to “forget the things of the past … for I am about to do a new thing.” Today we stay in the Old Testament and read words of poetry from the Book of Lamentations, poetry that describes the mercies of God as “new every morning.” The journey toward those mercies, though, is hard reading. So let’s listen now to the poetry of Lamentations.

Reading: Lamentations 3.1-24

Do you like poetry? My brother Mark loves poetry, and I love the fact that he loves it. I do too, though not quite as much as him. Recently Mark handed me a book of poems, a collection that the editor judged to be the finest in Australian contemporary poetry. I am making my way through the collection at the moment. Some are captivating, moving. I have to confess, though, some I just don’t get. I try. I read and re-read, slowly, deliberately, but I am none the wiser. Poetry is a particular style of writing, an artform that few writers are able to master and that demands of the reader a certain rigour of attention. Poetry at its best does not come easily.

The Book of Lamentations is a book of poetry, a collection of five poems written anonymously. You’ll remember last Sunday we read from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah was sent by God to the people of Judah living in exile from their homeland. Their beloved city of Jerusalem was in ruins and they were held captive by the Babylonians. This was a catastrophic event in Jewish history. Their confidence was shaken. God had promised the Hebrew people the land and Jerusalem as its seat of divine power. Over 500 years of history they had settled the land, planted their crops, appointed kings, built their temple, established a priesthood. And now it was all gone. Or at least it felt that way.

These five poems are an expression of lament, a poetic grieving for all that was lost. As such, this collection of poetry is excruciatingly honest, and at points difficult to read. Most of them are written as funeral dirges, songs performed by women dressed in black, those who wailed in the public square, rending their garments on behalf of the community.

There is a poet behind the poems, one writer who writes from the heart, but these words are embraced by the community. They exist as a form of communal confession. At their essence, they are a confession of three things: experience, feeling and perception — this is how we feel. They are not a statement about the character of God. They do not provide a carefully constructed theology of salvation. Instead, they are a cry of the heart, a song of regret, a confession of despair.

• “He has driven and brought me into darkness without any light”
• “He has made my flesh and my skin waste away”
• “He has broken my bones … He has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness”
• “He has walled me about so that I cannot escape; he has put heavy chains on me”
• “He has made my teeth grind on gravel … He has made me cower in ashes”
• “My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is”

There we have it: experience, feeling, perception. And all of it so very real. Indeed, it is because of the honesty of this confession that the words beginning in verse 21 are so extraordinary: “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

This is no glib statement of faith, an afterthought of reassurance. These words are expressed out of the same experience, feeling and perception as those preceding them. Indeed, these two verses are an expression of the same honesty, the same vulnerability, the same mix of faith and doubt that’s been there all the way through. Somehow through all of this pain and self-doubt and even those moments of self-loathing when it felt as though God was against him, the poet felt God’s presence. He knew that God’s love remained his only security and that God’s mercies were new every morning.

A good deal of what is sold to us in the marketplace of personal renewal requires effort and determination on our part. The genre is called ‘self-help’ for a reason — it’s all about self-discipline, self-awareness, self-improvement, self-advancement — as though the work of personal renewal is entirely in our hands. Look at the titles of some of the current best sellers.

• The Pathway to Personal Power
• Inner Excellence: Training Your Mind for Success
• Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself
• The Art of Self Reliance
• Rewiring Your Mind
• Millionaire Mindset: Habits of Success

I have read none of these books. I know nothing of the veracity of their claims. Certainly a life lived well requires a good deal of effort, clear thinking and self-discipline. But the bible’s language of renewal has little to do with any of this. The language of renewal in scripture is almost entirely dependent on two things: honesty on our part and mercy on God’s part.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813 – 1887) was a 19th century Presbyterian clergyman, a social reformer and a strong supporter of the abolition of slavery. His influence for good was extraordinary, in no small part due to the power of his oratory and his personal courage. In his day he was known as the most influential preacher in America.

For most of Beecher’s ministry, he lived in the shadow of accusations of adultery. In one instance, there was a public trial that divided the Presbyterian Church and alienated members of his own family. Though never convicted, throughout his life Beecher carried the stains of these allegations and the weight of whatever truth lay behind them. As for the impact upon the women involved, we cannot even begin to know.

With the trial looming, Beecher was invited to give an inaugural lecture in honour of his father at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The story is told of Beecher in his hotel room an hour before the lecture was to begin, with no clue as to what he would say. He stood in the bathroom shaving. Suddenly struck with a thought, in the rush he cut himself with the razor.

Years later fellow Presbyterian Frederick Buechner wrote this: “Well the old pulpiteer might have cut himself, because part of the inner world that his lecture came from was the deep trouble that he was in and the deep trouble that was in him. … As he stood there looking into the mirror with soap on his face and a razor in his hand, part of what he saw was his own shame and horror, the sight of his own folly, the judgement one can imagine he found even harder to bear than God’s, which was his own judgment on himself.”

Whatever else Beecher was, aspired to be or was famous for being, he was at base a man of flesh and blood, as brittle as we all are. What Beecher came to understand is that renewal is the work of God. What is ‘new’ is not about you or me. It begins and ends in the love of God — a reality that is eternally new and renewing. It is only mercy that surrounds and undergird our lives, however fragile they be.

Every communion Sunday I stand behind that table and, after our prayers of confession, I say these words: “Know, dear friends, that you are forgiven.” It is not my forgiveness that I remind you of. I do not in these words offer you absolution. These words are simply a statement of fact. New life begins with the grace of God. The work of renewal in your life is entirely dependent upon the mercies of God, mercies that are new each and every day.

Friends, if we are after a ‘new me’ for this new year, that pursuit begins with humility. We are sinners. We are broken. We are wounded and scarred by our failings and the by failings of others. Indeed our world is wounded and scarred. This is the honest truth. Faith is not our doing. Faith is the work of God in us. Your old self is who you are and who you will always be. What is new is the kindness of God that surrounds you and within which you find new life and a new beginning every morning.

Amen.

Following Christmas, Brenda and I spent time in a resort a long way from here. For ten days we walked, read books and took long afternoon naps. Nearing the end of this time we were sitting by the pool. I made the casual observation that Lent begins late this year. “Really?” Brenda said, without looking up from her book. It’s one of the hazards of being married to a minister. We are oddly obsessed with religious calendars about which no one else cares. I went on to bemoan the great chasm of Sundays in between my return to work and the beginning of Lent. “So what will you do?” Brenda asked, putting down her book. “I have no idea,” I said, slumping into my lounge chair. There was a long pause. “What about ‘the new you!’?” she asked. “We all want that.”

To be honest, ‘the new you’ sounds more like pop psychology than material for a sermon, but the seed was planted. I have learned that Brenda has insights into what really matters that often exceed my own. The more I reflected on her suggestion, the more it made sense.

We all long for new beginnings, especially as we move from one year to the next. There’s that undying sense of hope that we can start over, begin again — putting the old self aside to embrace the new me. As we noted last Sunday, though, most of us have lived through enough Januarys to know that the new quickly merges with the old. New and old blend together and soon our ‘new me’ resolutions fade away.

Still, we people of Christian faith are defined by hope. As the followers of the resurrected Christ, we are the ones who believe doggedly in the possibilities of new life. Our bible is full of such promises — new creation, new mercies, new beginnings, new bodies, a new heaven and earth. So what do we make of such promises? And what do they mean for the way you live your life in 2025?

Last Sunday we read from Paul’s letter to the Romans and his encouragement to ‘walk in the newness of life.’ Today we read a text written thousands of years earlier by the Hebrew prophet Isaiah.

Reading: Isaiah 43.1-7, 14-21

The Book of Isaiah tells the story of the great prophet of the 8th century BCE. Isaiah is sent by God to the people of Judah in desperate circumstances. He is sent with words of hope.

The book of Isaiah is commonly thought to be three books in one, possibly written by two to three different authors over hundreds of years. Despite this, together they tell a coherent story. The people of Judah have been overtaken by the Babylonions, their beloved city of Jerusalem destroyed. By the time we get to chapter 43, well into the second of the three books, a large segment of the population has been taken captive and are living in exile on the banks of the Euphrates River. Their faith is devastated and their identity as the people of God shamed by God’s apparent failure to protect them. As the years of their exile pass, their distinctive faith and identity is at risk of being subsumed into the dominant culture of Babylon. Frankly, the people of Judah are in despair. Surrounded by worshippers of Marduk and Nebo, the gods of the Babylonians, their own faith and their own God look pathetic. Their plight is evident in the lament of Psalm 137: “By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down, and there we wept when we remembered Zion.”

It is in to this context that the words of today’s reading are spoken. They begin with this heartfelt declaration of love on God’s part.

“But now thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you,
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
… For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour. …
Because you are precious in my sight
and honoured and I love you …
do not fear, for I am with you.”

Following on from this moving declaration is God’s promise to intervene.

“Thus says the Lord,
your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
For your sake I will send to Babylon
and break down all the bars …
I am the Lord, your Holy One,
the Creator of Israel, your King.
Thus says the Lord,
who makes a way in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters,
who brings out chariot and horse,
army and warrior.”

But then at the end of this extraordinary promise from God that recalls their original deliverance from Egypt, there is this:

“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?”

At first sight, the concluding direction sounds simple enough: forget everything that has happened till now, turn your back on the past and embrace a new future. But as straightforward as that sounds, it doesn’t make sense. The whole chapter to this point has been a recollection of the past. The chapter is filled with allusions to the work of God in calling the people out of bondage in Egypt, of God parting the Red Sea and the Hebrew people entering into the promise of a new land and a new identity. Indeed, it is on the basis of this remembering that God can say with such conviction, “fear not, I love you!” Even more, go forward just three chapters beyond today’s reading and God calls the people of Judah to remember again: “Remember this and consider, recall it to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no one like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done.”

So what is God is saying here in this text: “Do not remember the former things …for I am about to do a new thing.” Remember? Don’t remember? Clearly, there is more than one way to remember. There is a remembering of the past, a healthy remembering, out of which a new future, a new confidence can emerge. But there is also a remembering that holds us imprisoned in the past. The people of Judah, languishing on the banks of the Euphrates, had drunk so deeply of their despair and failing, they could no longer discern a future. All they longed for was yesterday. Even more, so broken were they by their present circumstances, the only way they could imagine a way out was by going back to the past. As a consequence, they were at risk of missing the future God was inviting them into. “Do not remember the former things,” God urges them, “for I am about to do a new thing.”

When we are in despair, held captive by fear, our instinct is to retreat into the past and use it as a blanket of protection from our present circumstances. When everything around us is shifting, we become nostalgic for simpler times or past glories. We saw it in the debate on marriage equality, didn’t we? It’s as though hope can only be found in a recreation of yesterday, so pull up the draw bridge, baton down the hatches, and we will return to the days of old when things were certain and everyone knew their place. In the process, we abdicate our vocation in the now for our security in the past.

Many of you will have heard of the recently released film, ‘Conclave.’ Some of you have seen it. It’s a fictional telling of the election of a new Pope for the Catholic Church. Upon the death of one Pope, the cardinals gather in Rome to find his successor. The film is great story-telling with exceptional performances. In some respects, aspects of the story are implausible, but what the film does provide is an insight into the processes and politics of change for the Church of Rome.

Against a backdrop of the cultural tensions within the Church and the impact of growing religious pluralism, even inter-religious violence, beyond its walls, the Cardinals must choose a leader to help the Church navigate its way. The conservatives want a leader who will rally the troops for the fight, pull up the cultural drawbridge and resist change in any form and by any means. The progressives want the Church to open up, let down the drawbridge and respond accommodatingly to social and cultural change. The debates between the two are heated and reach a crescendo following the exploding of a bomb by religious terrorists just outside the walls of the Vatican. In the midst of this debate in which the mission of the church is likened to a war between good and evil, a newly appointed Cardinal Benitez from Afghanistan stands to speak:

“My brother Cardinals, with respect, what do you know about war? I carried out my ministry in the Congo, in Bagdad, in Kabul. I’ve seen the lines of the dead and the wounded, Christian and Muslim. Who do you say we have to fight? What is it you think we are fighting? Do you think its these deluded men who have carried out these terrible acts today? No, my brothers. The thing you’re fighting is here … inside each and every one of us. If we give into hate now, if we speak of ‘sides’ instead of speaking for every man and woman. … Forgive me, but these last few days we have shown ourselves to be small petty men. We have seemed concerned only with ourselves, with Rome, and with these elections, with power. But these things are not the Church. The Church is not tradition. The Church is not the past. The Church is what we do next.”

There is something in this that strikes me as being deeply true and deeply challenging. It is certainly true for the Church — the Church of every tradition, Catholic, Baptist or anything in between. The Church is a community of memory. We are who we are today because of our past. We honour that story, we press into the faith and identity we have inherited with gratitude and conviction, but we do so always as a people called into the present and future. We are agents of God’s Spirit today, bearers of light and grace for tomorrow. Indeed, the Church’s mission is defined by what we do next.

There is truth here, too, on a more personal level, for the principle is the same. As you enter this new year, who are you called to be and what are you called to do? Every year of our lives requires a new resolve. The vitality of your discipleship and faith is found not in what you did yesterday but in what you do next. Certainly remembering is vital. We remember our baptism, our calling to follow Jesus. We recall God’s grace and the life-changing encounters we have known in our lives. But we are not bound by the past. We are not constrained by the fears and failures of yesterday. We are not defined by the woundings of the past or even the scars we bear in the present. We cannot be. “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?”

What new thing does God want to do in and through you in 2025? What new thing does God want to do in and through this Church? Surely these are questions worth asking. More than that, they are questions we must ask.

Amen.