WALK WITH ME: INTO A NEW PLACE

A Sermon by Bill McDonald from Isaiah 65:17-25

April 8, 2007

Isaiah 65

¹⁷ For I am about to create new heavens

and a new earth;

the former things shall not be remembered

or come to mind.

¹⁸ But be glad and rejoice forever

in what I am creating;

for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,

and its people as a delight.

¹⁹ I will rejoice in Jerusalem,

and delight in my people;

no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,

or the cry of distress.

²⁰ No more shall there be in it

an infant that lives but a few days,

or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;

for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,

and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.

²¹ They shall build houses and inhabit them;

they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

²² They shall not build and another inhabit;

they shall not plant and another eat;

for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,

and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

²³ They shall not labor in vain,

or bear children for calamity;

for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD—

and their descendants as well.

²⁴ Before they call I will answer,

while they are yet speaking I will hear.

²⁵ The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,

the lion shall eat straw like the ox;

but the serpent—its food shall be dust!

They shall not hurt or destroy

on all my holy mountain,

says the LORD.

Nice thought…but that’s not gonna happen! Admit it, isn’t that what we think sometimes when we hear descriptions like this one in Isaiah 65? Or in Revelations 21 which talks about a new Jerusalem coming down out of the clouds with no more crying or pain? Or even when we hear the familiar story of an empty tomb in John 20? Unrealistic, right? You might well be thinking, “What are you asking me to believe here, McDonald?” Well, I read about one of these new Bible theme parks where a lamb lived in the cage with a pack of wolves in fulfillment of this Isaiah verse. One spectator remarked to a zoo keeper, “I have read the scripture, but I can’t believe that this is possible!” “Oh, it’s possible,” said the zoo keeper, “but every morning we have to put in a new lamb.” The playwright Woody Allen is notorious for having said, “The lamb may lie down with the lion--but the lamb isn’t going to get much sleep.”

Isn’t this glorious future vision really just mythical language designed to get us through the struggles of life without becoming frozen by fear or crushed by cynicism? Karl Marx, not criticizing religion but trying to describe it objectively, said that religion was just the “opiate of the masses,” a way to cope with the pain of living. Cynics back in my home state describe it as “pie in the sky by and by when you die.” And to be honest with you, I have never been able to stomach that brand of theology. I disagree with the attitude that says that existence is nothing but travail, a tortured journey of tears that will never be salved until we die and go home to Jesus. “Life is evil; wait for heaven.” I just can’t believe that. When I start reading my Bible from the front cover, very soon it says that God created life and proclaimed it good. How can we then call it evil and wish to flee from it? But we humans do have a capacity for messing up good things. So you and I are called upon to ensure the goodness of life that God intended for all people. To promise them not just pie in the sky but to set a place for them at the table today. Jesus’ resurrection and Isaiah’s prophecy speak to me about a new place that is attainable spiritually, communally, and eternally.

It was the early 1970s and our church camp in Casey County was tumbling down around our ears. I had recently come from doing camps at Bethany Hills in Tennessee, a sprawling, forested camp of hundreds of acres of timber and trails, a comfortable complex of cabins and dorms, equipped with small group shelters, enclosed pavilions, crafts sheds and even a small store. Now at Camp WaKonDaHo I gathered with a pile of middle school campers in a small, hot concrete mess hall, a dilapidated and off-limits lodge, and cramped, scorpion-infested sleeping huts called hogans. The hogans had no electricity, rotted wood floors, walls of torn canvas, and mildewed bunk beds. They were structures that only insects could love. And oh, the insects loved them indeed. I rolled out of bed one morning and pulled on my cutoff jeans only to discover a large lump in one leg after I got them on. When I rolled the pants cuff back, the biggest spider to have ever touched my skin crawled out and down my quaking knee. One morning one of the campers, a boy named Jonathan, woke up exhuberantly, stretched his legs into the air and rolled out of the top bunk--and went all the way through the rotted floor boards to the ground below. The worst thing though about the camp was that when it rained, there was nowhere to go. That week it rained every day, all day. My small group of ten huddled for hours on bunks in the dim dampness and sulked, playing games with a soggy deck of cards. Finally the despair got to me and I shouted, “I’m not staying here any more! I’m going to a new place!” Of course there was no place to go, but, my being their trusted leader, they put on their wet tennis shoes and out the flaps we went into a drenching rain. Within seconds we were soaked to the skin and suddenly staying dry held no interest for us. So we hiked through mist-shrouded woods, we slid on our rumps down muddy slopes, we sailed sticks down rushing rivulets, we laughed and danced and rejoiced at the fresh, cleansing waters pouring from the heavens. We were free! We were suddenly surrounded by the miracle of God’s good earth, snatched up by a spirit of wonder, adventurers together in a new life, a new place. “Ain’t going to stay here! Gonna go to new place!” You and I huddle feeling trapped by life’s circumstances, when all we have to do is open the flap and step out into God’s promised world. Easter and Isaiah are all about letting your spirit loose to find a new promised place, which is all around you already, all the time. Jesus’ resurrection calls us to a new place spiritually.

I grew up in Memphis during the 1950s and early 1960s. When I rode the school bus home in the afternoons, I sat in the front with the rest of the white kids. The African-American kids from the nearby junior high had to sit in the back. I could never imagine what they felt being consigned to the back of the bus. But then, not many years later, someone made it all clear to me. A quiet little lady named Rosa Parks, on her way down the aisle to the back of a bus, decided, “I’m not going to stay here any longer. I’m going to a new place.” So she sat up front. And, as the saying goes, “when Rosa Parks sat down, the rest of the world stood up.” She was thinking not only for generations of African-Americans but for European-Americans as well. She took us all to a new place, to higher ground in the moral swamp of segregation and discrimination. She opened doors that have given us all access to brilliant leaders, to creative thinkers, to inspiring artists, to deep friends. She caused us as individuals, as separate races, and as a nation to say, “We’re not gonna stay here any longer! We’re going to a new place!” And, oh, how wondrous that new place is. Not pie in the sky, but sharing the pie on earth. Jesus’ resurrection calls us to a new place communally.

Dawn broke today across a world where laborers toil on land but never taste its produce, where wealth abounds within eyesight but the people waste away in poverty, where refugees are driven from their lands and their homes are occupied by those with more powerful weapons, where ravenous diseases strike down children and cut down adults in their prime and governments do not invest in cures, where peace is a pipe dream. But dawn also broke across the gaping mouth of an empty tomb, calling us to involvement in this new life, this new earth. Of our Isaiah text Paul Hanson says, “The medical doctor in Somalia, laboring in the midst of endless need, perseveres not by scaling down objectives to save one infant out of ten but by working indefatigably out of yearning for the world in which there shall no longer be ‘an infant that lives but a few days.’ The relief worker in Bosnia steers the food-laden truck up a dangerous mountain pass in commitment to the world in which ‘no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it.’ Albert Schweitzer left the limelight of cathedral and university for the villages of Africa, Dag Hammarskjold kept landing his plane in dangerous trouble spots, Mother Teresa maintained her ministry to the outcasts of Calcutta, not out of programs designed on the basis of human pragmatics, but out of a vision of the world in which ‘they shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity.’ It will be a sorry world that takes a vision of God’s new heaven and new earth out of its social justice equation.” The empty tomb and the full words of the prophet speak to us of a new place, meaning a new world and a new role for us in it.

A new place spiritually, a new place communally, but, something else as well, a new place eternally. It is hard to know what to say when you stand at the open casket of one you loved with all your heart. Beyond a repeated “I love you,” words tend to fail. When I was a little boy, my mother used a certain formula to tuck me into bed. She would say: “Goodnight, I love you, sweet dreams, I’ll see you in the morning.” So that’s what I said to her as the funeral director stepped forward and took hold of the lid of her casket. I said, “Goodnight, I love you, sweet dreams, I’ll see you in the morning.” And you know, I swear to you, as the lid was closing, I thought I heard her say, “I’m not going to stay here! I’m going to a new place!”

Every one of the four gospels records that the women who followed Jesus were the first to come to his tomb when the Sabbath ended and Sunday dawned. Why the women first? Matthew, Mark and Luke all claim that the women were also the last ones to see the tomb sealed off on Good Friday. Perhaps, before the huge stone slammed shut over the entrance, perhaps they heard a soft voice say, “I’m not going to stay here. I’m going to a new place.” Perhaps they came back to see if what they heard was true. And it was.

Jesus lives and asks us to walk with him into a new place--spiritually, communally and eternally. That’s what I am asking you to believe.