In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

On the CBC news this week there was a report that Dame Vera Lynn turned 90 years old this week. For a number of you who are also of that generation that name will be met with instant recognition. For those of us of a younger stripe, we may recognize the name or it might simply be met with a lack of recognition. But I am sure once you heard her sing two pieces in particular, “White Cliffs of Dover and We’ll meet again”, there would recognition. And it is those two pieces of music that evoke memories for many of you.

It is funny how music and memories are so closely intertwined. Each generation has its singers and its bands that seem to define a period of time. The other night I was doing the dishes (yes, I do the dishes) and a song came of the radio, early U2 – Sunday Bloody Sunday, of course that baby had to be cranked and I found myself dancing around the kitchen.

There is something about the music when we were teenagers or in our early twenties that seems to bring back memories. Maybe it is because in that period of our lives we were making those first steps of independence from our parents, finding our identity. We were discovering ourselves as individuals. I think the same principle holds for church hymns as well.

A particular hymn will evoke memories that might be happy or sad. Maybe it was a piece sung at your wedding or at a funeral, or on a glorious Easter Sunday morning. I think the same can be said for the stories of the Biblical tradition. Certain stories evoke memories as well.

Now memories or memory in the singular can be both a wonderful and a dangerous thing. Psychologists urge us to dredge up our memories, for they are the source of many of our actions, good and bad. Memories recalled can bring about healing, and memories forgotten can cause considerable confusion and pain. Memories can leave us trapped in the past or they can give the courage to face the future. We see the present through the lens of our past experiences.

Now the people of Israel knew all abut the importance of memory. Indeed one could say that Israel built their religious identity on memory. “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy” proclaims the commandment. “When your children ask you what this means, you shall say , ‘A wandering Aramean was my forebear.” Over and over, the people of Israel were exhorted to remember the past. And the prophet Isaiah was no different which brings us to our passage from Isaiah 43.

This unknown prophet of the Babylonian exile urged those in exile with him to remember. To put it briefly, after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 587 BCE God’s people were carried off into slavery in Babylon.
And God, known to Israel from the remembered past of the Exodus and the settlement of the promised land, became the ‘hidden God’, who had turned ‘his face away from Israel’ in judgement. You will note the references to the exodus in verses 16-17. Referring to God’s liberation of his people from slavery in the past.
But at verse 18 there is a sudden and drastic shift with the words, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

Isaiah proclaims something new at the hands of God. The God of history is also the creator of a new future. What is new does not emerge from the old, it is not simply the old in new form. It is truly a new creation. And I want you to notice the grammatical tense of v.18. It is in the present tense, God does not say, “I will do a new thing” but rather “I am doing a new thing. NOW, it springs up! God is doing a new thing now in our present moment.

As Christians, the word ‘new’ is our watchword. On nearly every page of the New testament, we meet the key word: the new covenant, the new commandment (mandatum novum), the new wine, a new being, a new heaven and earth and finally the God who says, “Behold, I make all things new.”  And it begins here in our passage from Isaiah, “See, I am doing a new thing, do you not perceive it?”
So, do you perceive it in your own lives? This new thing that God is doing.
Do you sense/feel it? It really depends on how you view the world.

John Calvin spoke of scripture as the “lens” through which we look at the world. Reading the Bible, the stories of our tradition”, is like putting on a pair of glasses whereby certain things come into focus which we have not seen before. That collective memory shapes then how we view the world. Where one person sees simply a tree, Another sees a part of God’s creation infused with grace. Where one person sees a homeless loser, another sees a child of God or the face of Christ himself.

I think as modern people living in the 21st century we have to a certain degree lost the skills necessary to read the Bible. Now, I don’t mean that we literally can’t read. But we live in a narrowly defined world where only a limited range of data is considered or admitted into view, a world which is flat. It is devoid of mystery, accessible, explainable and utterly narrow. We have lost to a certain degree the imagination and the openness to God’s work in the midst of our lives. “now it springs up, do you not perceive it?

I think that an important discipline for us, especially in our culture, is the weekly cultivation of a sense of openness to the world and to God. A discipline where we are reminded that there is something afoot in our world, often small and overlooked. As Christians, we need some imagination in order to be in tune to the weird. Sometimes things happen in our lives that are not mere coincidence.

And it’s quite alright with me if you want to think of reading scripture and gathering on a Sunday morning for worship as having that goal – being in tune with the weird. Our God keeps promising us, “See, I am doing a new thing! Do you not perceive it? Lord give us the hearts and the eyes to see it.
THANKS BE TO GOD, AMEN.