5 Lent.C.25
Isaiah 43:16-21
The Rev. Melanie McCarley
Our Old Testament reading from the prophet Isaiah is replete with images and metaphors from the history of God’s people. You might say it is steeped in tradition. In this reading we hear references of the time of Israel’s captivity in Egypt as well as the Exodus, complete with the parting of the Red Sea, Isaiah proclaims: “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…” These words are followed by a moment of incongruity as the Lord continues: “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing…” (and then—referencing once again Israel’s time in the wilderness) God says “I will make a way in the wilderness…I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people so that they might declare my praise.” So, what is it—something new or something old? Or perhaps, it is a bit of both.
Christian theologian Jaroslav Pelikan once said: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so that all is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.”
All of which reminds me of the Fosbury Flop. It was 1968 at the Mexico City Olympics, and Dick Fosbury, a lanky college student from Oregon won the high jump and revolutionized the sport, achieving an Olympic and American record at the time. How did he do it? By going at things backwards. He jumped with his back to the bar—the way you see everyone doing the high jump today. But in 1968, this was revolutionary. Until then jumpers faced the bar while jumping. It was, you see, Tradition, to face the bar and jump. It was the way it had always been done….since, who knows when.
The Fosbury’s flop originated during a 1963 track meet. Fosbury knew he kept knocking off the bar with his rear end. During a jump, his body responded instinctively. Fosbury is fond of saying ‘I like to live in the moment,’, and that moment told him, ‘lift up your hips, pal.’” And it worked. Fosbury began to win even with a jumping style that was decidedly…well…weird.
Fosbury speaks of his priorities, saying: (What I wanted was) “First of all, stop losing, and second of all, stay on the team. And if I was going to be different from everybody else, so be it. That would be the way that I play the game.” As he developed the technique, Fosbury says opposing coaches questioned whether it was legal. It was. Fosbury continues: “When I got to the Olympics, though, that really was the first time where I began to talk to other coaches who insisted and told me I would never succeed with this technique I’d developed. All I could do was shrug my shoulders and say this is what I do and it’s a game. Let’s go see what happens.” Today, the Fosbury Flop is the norm for high jumpers everywhere.
Doing a new thing. In the Old Testament lesson for today, we learn 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.
Take the epistle reading for today as an example. Here St. Paul is writing to the people of Phillipi. He begins by citing his lineage as a person of Jewish faith. He writes: “circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” And then he speaks of his encounter with the living Christ, and how that moment changed his perception about himself and the trajectory of his life. He writes: “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”
The Old Testament scholar, Claude Westermann, in his insightful exegesis of Isaiah argues that God, in commanding the people to forget the former things, was not telling Israel to forget the mighty acts of God…”. What God is saying is to stop mournfully looking back and clinging to the past and open your minds to the fact that a new, miraculous act of God lies ahead of you.” He goes on to say “Israel (needs to be) shaken out of a faith that believes it has nothing new to learn about God’s activity and therefore nothing to learn about what is possible with God. The great danger which threatens any faith that is hidebound in dogmatism, is that it has ceased to be able to expect anything new from God.
The prophet Isaiah was speaking to the Israelite people who had been living in captivity in Babylon for years. In fact, they had been in a foreign land so long that for most of them, captivity was all they knew. So, when Cyrus the Great sets them free, permitting them to return to their homeland, they will have to travel through the wilderness, across the rivers and burning sands. Like their ancestors of old, they will have to make their way to, what for most of them, would be a new homeland. The question for them was “How would they receive this news?” That is their question.
In truth, it is the same question that faces us. How should we receive the news that God is capable of doing something new—something utterly outside the conceivable realm of tradition—something—well….something rather like the Fosbury Flop. Something strange, ungainly….something unexpected and…well, to put it plainly. Weird. For us, this is the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. An empty tomb which shattered expectations and brought a new understanding as to the role and mission of the Messiah. It is something so outside of the expectation of the day—yet, also so completely in line with the history and prophecies of God, that it is nothing less than divine. In Jesus’ name. Amen.