delivered on 2 May 2010
by Rev. Dr John Evans
Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35
The world, it would seem is obsessed with newness.
We are all familiar with the marketing ploy that something is new. If it is soap powder it usually is “new, improved Sudso”. One certainly would not be seen dead with “the same old, same old”. Things have to be new; different from last season. It will not be long before we will have “The New Storm” rugby league club in town. It needs a new name to mark that break from its troubled past – we call an organisation, even a political party new. Tony Blair in England went so far as to re-brand the British Labour Party as New Labour.
Newness is extolled . . . and it would seem religious faith sees newness as one of its major underlying themes. Certainly this is true of the Christian faith – where transformation; transformation from being – well, in sin, out of relationship to God, to some different sort of life – being in relationship with God is a major theme. Change to a new situation is what is sought. So the Children of Israel in bondage in Egypt wanted something new; a different life – they set out for Israel, the promised land, a new place. All who suffer oppression, injustice, fear, illness, despair want something new. The “something” whatever it is, needs to be new. It becomes the basis of their hope – and this newness draws them forward. It means that the trouble of the present age may be endured – just that little bit longer.
If we turn to a dictionary it would seem newness comes basically in two varieties. My Shorter Oxford dictionary has two whole columns about this little word “new” so it can get rather complicated. Something is new in the sense that it has not existed before. Something is new if it is brought into existence for the first time. So Wilbur and Orville Wright brought something into existence for the first time when they flew a powered aeroplane. Something new was created. Or really was that just an example of the second understanding of the word new: something is different or changed. Many people from around world had dreamed of flight, and there had been many advances in understanding and design. Some of those had even taken place here in Australia – and the Wright brothers just happened to be the first to get it all together, and fly a couple of hundred metres. Newness in this sense arises from building on the old, the former – last years model or whatever.
Our readings today are about “newness”.
In Acts – this is one of the many stories that are recorded in that book, of how these followers of Jesus just acted and thought through things so differently to what had previously been the religious norm. Here belief in God – the God of the Jews it would seem, was not restricted to just good Jews – those who had followed all the ritual practices like circumcision. A relationship with God was available for Gentiles. Our reading is about how Peter had a vision and experience that “God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life”(11:18). Here is a story of how The Christian faith leads us to push boundaries – into the realm of something new.
Then from the gospel Jesus, in teaching his disciples on the occasion of the last supper, offers to his disciples a commandment, a way of living – he actually called it a new commandment: that you love one and other as I have loved you. A new commandment.
Then in the reading from Revelation – the seer, John in his vision
“Saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”
Here a new heaven, a new earth, a new Jerusalem. Indeed the first earth, first heaven had passed away.
What does all this newness mean, and what does it mean for us. What does it mean for a congregation that has declared we want to move in new directions; we hope and pray for renewal – all of which we will hear a little about in our AGM following the service.
Is newness to be understood as a sort of back to the future approach?. One continues on in a way that has always been the case, or used to be the case; but meanwhile the world and society changes so much that the old ways of doing things – say in worship – comes across as being new. In the world of fashion they do it all the time. There is a revival of a particular style from yesteryear – like my bell bottom trousers and long side burns and long hair. In fact is this what Jesus is saying when he says this is a “new commandment” I give to you. If you go to Leviticus 19:18 you find that within the priestly code we are to “love our neighbour as yourself”. Jesus of course adds “as I have loved you”. “You are to love one another as I have loved you.” However, the point is still there – is newness, or renewal –about going back to where we once stood. Political parties delight in this approach – getting back to basics. It also has been a basis of very powerful movements within the church – the so called Oxford Movement or Tractarians of the Anglican Church in the middle to late 19th centrury was about doing just this: restoring high church ideals of earlier times into the church.
Alternatively does newness come from constantly pushing the boundaries in the matter of faith and belief. Here the story from Acts is relevant. Peter, or all people, breaks this Christian movement open to the Gentiles. It is a movement of the Spirit – a new understanding is reached. We see this approach to newness in the arts: pushing conventions, old patterns of doing things in theatre, flim, literature, painting whatever. They become “art nouveau”, which in turn is then challenged as a stale and traditional genre which needs to be pushed aside. Now I am not suggesting this is what Peter was doing in his encounter in his vision, and encounter in Joppa – he at least was grounded in that he saw all these changes as being a movement of the spirit, tied back to the spirit of Christ. But at the same time the church in the name of newness pushes boundaries – such as its opposition to slavery and advocating for the role and place for women – but other times may have gone into unhelpful blind alleys in the name of progress and renewal. Personally I wonder about a movement that call itself “progressive” if all it does is pushing boundaries. Many shibboleths I agree need to be broken down, but what are we then left with if we push too far?
In a sense these two understandings of newness stand in tension with each other – nothing should change on one hand and everything should be open to question on the other. Both indeed can have their merits. Is scripture however, hinting at yet another understanding of newness?
This newness is perhaps difficult to describe – but can we call it being say “forever new”. This “newness” is not dependent on what is happening round about us – that people are drifting away from the church and we have to go back to the future; or that to cope with all the newness around about us, we ourselves also have to be new.
This is where both the vision, the revelation or apocalypse, of John the seer, in the book of Revelation and the setting of the New commandment are helpful. At the best of times the book of Revelation is difficult. The language and imagery is far fetched and we do not know how to deal with it. This insight of the British theologian Richard Bauckham may help – and give a glimpse of another sense of new.
“John, and his readers with him, is taken up into heaven in order to see the world from a heavenly perspective. He is given a glimpse behind the scenes of history so that he can see what is really going on in the events of his time and place. He is transported in vision into the final future of the world, so that he can see the present from the perspective of what its final outcome must be in God’s ultimate purpose for human history. The effect of John’s visions, one might say, is to expand this readers’ world, both spatially (by going into heaven) and temporally (by going into the future), or to put it another way to open their world to divine transcendence. The bounds which of Roman power and ideology set to the readers’ world are broken open and that world is seen as open to the greater purpose of its transcendent Creator and Lord. It is not that here and now are left behind in an escape into heaven or the future, but that the here and now look quite different when they are opened to transcendence.
The world seen form this transcendent perspective, in apocalyptic vision, is a kind of new symbolic world into which John’s readers are taken as his artistry creates it for them. But really it is not another world. The righteous suffer, the wicked flourish: the world seems to be ruled by evil, not by God? Where is God’s kingdom? The apocalyptists sought to maintain the faith of God’s people in the one, all powerful and righteous God, in the face of the harsh realities of evil in the world, especially the political evil of the oppression of God’s faithful people by the great pagan empires. The answer to this problem was always, essentially, that despite appearances it is God who rules this creation and the time is coming when God will overthrow the evil empires and establish his kingdom.” (Theology of the Book of Revelation, Cambridge University Press, 1993)
God is forever new, . . there is always a new heaven and new earth in our complex often harsh world.
And in a sense it was the same with the new commandment. The new commandment was new – because of who Jesus was and what was going to happen to him; not because it was some reworking of a text from the book of Leviticus. It was new that in the midst of despair, betrayal and shortly his death; there was still going to be newness, a new way of living a new hope. In our reading from John – Jesus had just addressed his disciples that he was to be betrayed – denials, panic, questioning ensue. Judas departs, As John says. “It was night.” (John 13:30) In this darkness, in this despair – or to use the language Bauckman uses about the setting of the book of Revelation “in the face of the harsh realities of evil in the world, especially the political evil of the oppression of God’s faithful people by the great pagan empires” – this is where and when the Son of Man is glorified.
“Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” (John 13:31)
Here is the new heaven and new earth – this possibility of newness – right in the midst of our difficult world. This is the new commandment – the new way of living, because Jesus has first loved us; indeed is glorified in the darkness of despair.
The empires of the world will come and go; the world will change. We may wish to resist all of this, or move with the times. There is however always – a newness that will keep us hopeful; and a newness that will forever call us to love because we have been loved. This is a different sort of new.
A new commandment I give unto you.
