Isaiah 43:16-21 Commentary

But you just said..

This week’s lectionary in Hebrew Scripture is replete with images and metaphors from the history of God’s people.  A path through the sea recalls the people’s journey through the Red Sea, away from enslavement into the hope of the Promised Land.  The destruction of the chariots and horses recalls that the oppressors chasing them out of Egypt were drowned in the sea behind them.  Then there is talk of a way in the desert and a path through the wasteland, the Hebrew parallelism recalling the wilderness wandering of God’s people. Even there in the desert, God made water appear to quench the thirst of God’s people. This kind of memory motif is central to this middle section of the book of Isaiah. It is a reminder of God’s providence as an assurance to those in exile that the promise of their deliverance can be trusted because God has been shown trustworthy in the past. Of all of this, Robert Alter observes, “History is thus seen in a pattern of cyclical recurrences, with differences.”

So then, isn’t it strange the way that verse 18, embedded in the midst of all this memory tells us: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!” Well, so which is it?  Remember the past and, by it, build hope for God’s work? Or chuck all that history and only look to the newness on the horizon? Assuming Isaiah would not be nonsensical on purpose, what point might we draw from this obvious textual disconnect?

God’s people likely received this portion of Isaiah’s prophecy while in exile in Babylon. Unlike Egypt, some of the people have prospered in the land of exile.  Now it seems the restriction on being able to return home is lifting but the people have become comfortable.  They are not, like their ancestors enslaved in Egypt, ready to run from their oppression.  This time, they have created comfortable lives for themselves within their oppression. The startling disjunction in the text is, according to Paul Hanson, “a challenge to muster sufficient theological imagination to see how divine purpose is unfolding in profane political events.” It is not sufficient that God has acted in the past.  Are the people prepared for God to act again on their behalf.  When God makes a way for them, will they join up? Rather than being stuck in the merry-go-round of memory, God is inviting the people off the ride, out of their playground into real life. “Second Isaiah portrays a procession led by the God who acts in the events of history, a procession not circling the temple shrine but leading from political bondage to the dignity of rebuilding community on native soil.”

My God is bigger than your gods

This text demonstrates that, not only does God work in continuity with God’s past actions but, in fact, God is capable of doing new things that surprise, derail and recenter us. For example, even though Isaiah is depicting historical events, he overwhelmingly opts for on-going or present tense verbs.  In this way, argues John Oswalt, “the exodus is brought out of the dim past into the present, and Israel is reminded that their faith is not in these events, real and constitutive as they are, but in the present God who does those kinds of things.”  In an excursus in his commentary, he reflects on the ancient near eastern conception of gods — that they are knowable and reliable from their past actions. According to these belief systems, if you want to know the future, you can map the trajectory from the past to the present and forecast the same trajectory from the present to the future.  These gods do not surprise or adapt or respond to new information or realities. Idols literally set the past in stone, representing previous glory. Idols do not move forward into the future with new ideas or actions.

Thus, one of Isaiah’s purposes in proclaiming a “new thing” is undermining all the other gods and their claims to power and supremacy. Again from Oswalt, “His attack also illustrates the breathtaking difference between his (and the Bible’s) conception of God and that of Israel’s neighbors. What kind of God is he who knows what has not happened?” This God is not beholden to the system of this world.  This God has made the world and all its systems and is well capable of existing outside of them and doing something other than what has been done before.  Finally, “Isaiah says, in effect, that anything worthy of the term “god” must be more than the system itself.”

This plays quite well with the Epistle text this week in which Paul reminds the Philippians that, in the old order of things, he has every reason to boast. His credentials as a leader within Judaism are impeccable.  And yet, “whatever were gains to me, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.” This new thing has pulled Paul out of his comfortable seat in the Sanhedrin and has propelled him out onto the dusty road, proclaiming Christ throughout the Roman Empire.  He hasn’t “arrived” but, instead, presses on “to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” On this journey, he even seems to reach back to the language of Isaiah, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.”

[Note: In addition to these weekly sermon commentaries on the CEP website, we also have a resource page for Lent and Easter with more preaching and worship ideas as well as sample sermons on the Year C Lectionary texts.]

Illustration:

I remember a theological consultation I once had with an astute elementary schooler who asked me, “How come God doesn’t have to follow the rules of the world. If God made the world, shouldn’t God have to follow the rules (I.e. not perform miracles, exist outside of time, etc.). I asked him if he had a favorite cartoon TV show and he readily supplied the answer to my question.  Then I asked him whether the creator of the TV show are, themselves, cartoons.  Whether they have to abide by the conventions of the world established by the television show.  I think that clicked for him.  But for the lover of visual art or opera in your congregation, you can offer the same apologetic argument.  To the best of our knowledge, Salvador Dali never melted, Seurat is not made up of tiny dots and Puccini and Verdi did not sing their every thought in real life. God is God in like fashion.  God made — but is not constrained — by the world.  Thus we declare that God can do new things.