Induction of HA to Hospital Chaplaincy
Isaiah 43:1-3a, 16-21
“I am about to do a new thing. Now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?”
So writes the prophet Isaiah over two and a half thousand years ago. How do we understand his prophetic words on this day?
It would be the easy option for me this morning to sentimentalise the words of the prophet Isaiah into this moment in HA’s life.
“God is about to do a new thing in HA’s life.”
“God is about to do a new thing in St Andrews.”
“God is about to do a new thing in UnitingCare.”
Such sentimentalising of the reading would feel nice and recognise a simple truth that is occurring – HA is about to start work in a new placement. I think that the poem that HA has chosen for us to listen to as part of this liturgy taps into the human everyday fear and excitement of starting something new. But such a focus would reflect the domestication of the scriptures to the individualism of our era and pull our human activity to the centre of the sermon rather than who God is and what God has done.
Such sentimentalising also helps us to step around the complexity of the context of Isaiah’s prophecy as we think about his broader message. Whilst the words we read from the prophet today have an uptick of hopefulness they are set against a much bigger picture. The ancient geopolitical implications of the prophet’s words have an undertone of violence and war between Israel and its neighbours, particularly the Babylonian Empire. The vision of God’s involvement in setting aside patches of land for chosen people are still being played out in our contemporary world. Not simply for Israel but for those who see such visions might justify the concept of a Christian nation. Stepping into this complex space feels inappropriate for today’s sermon but needs to be acknowledged.
As Christians hearing this text I wonder if it might be helpful to dwell on the following phrase a bit more deeply:
Do not remember the former things
or consider the things of old.
As I contemplated this question, I began to wonder how God even perceives doing something new. In his book The Afternoon of Christianity Tomáš Halík reminds us of this confronting insight from the mystical traditions into the mystery of God. God is nothing. Let me say that a little differently.
God is no-thing. In other words, the concept of substance or matter is irrelevant to God’s existence. God is utterly transcendent and beyond our human comprehension.
To push this mystery a little further of God is no-thing then we should also then contemplate the possibility that God is also no-where. Prior to the creation, if prior is even a relevant category, there was nothing and nowhere and maybe even more baffling is the idea God is no-when. The physicist who later became a theologian Victor Pannenberg explores in depth the complex relationship of linear historical time with the eternity of God.
So how do we make any sense of God who is no-thing, no-where, and no-when doing something new within created reality. How can there be new or old if space and time are irrelevant.
At the beginning of John’s gospel, we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being … and the Word became flesh.”
In Christ, God who is a mystery utterly beyond us and transcendent, becomes entirely immanent. In Jesus we discover this utterly perplexing and amazing revelation:
God is some-thing (or some-one). God is some-where. And God is some-when.
Pannenberg wrote, “Only in the history of Jesus of Nazareth did the eschatological future, and with it the eternity of God, really enter the historical present.”[1] This event of God doing something new within the creation has an effect that ripples back and forth through time and space and touches the whole cosmos. As Paul later wrote to the Corinthians, “In Christ God was reconciling the whole world to himself.” (2 Cor 5:19)
The incarnation has cosmic implications as the transcendence of God intersect with created reality and invites all things to find their home with God as God finds a home with us. The breaking down of the barrier between the creator and the creation is symbolised as Jesus dies. Mark tells us that “The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom,” (Mark 15:38)
This tearing of the temple curtain as a sign of God’s presence in the world is made clearer as the resurrected Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit on the disciples and later, on the day of Pentecost. The particularity of the incarnation as the meeting place between the divine and human finds its universal expression through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Through the power of the Holy Spirit God is in everything. God is everywhere. And God is everywhen.
Paul theologises Jesus’ presence in the world when he writes to the people at Ephesus. “God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made him head over all things for the benefit of the church. And the church is his body; it is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with himself.” (Ephesians 1:22-23)
In the book of Lamentations we hear those well-worn words, “God’s mercies … are new every morning.” God who relates to us from beyond time now comes to us within time, in all things and in all people. Each and every moment a moment in which the eternal life of God the resurrection hope is present. This is the good news which we carry and offer to others, and which takes me back to where I started.
“I am about to do a new thing.
Now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?”
The new thing that God is doing is being in the world and in our lives through the eternal Word and the power of the Holy Spirit. Pastoral Crae takes on fresh meaning for us when we embrace this truth. In pastoral care our sentimentalising and our practical responses to people’s pain and suffering is done in the context of knowing that God is already there. We are there to point beyond ourselves and whatever is occurring to this presence of God which is the hope by which we live.
There is an image from the Easter stories which I think might be a helpful story as we contemplate our place in all of this. Maybe the best that we can say as people who seek to do pastoral care is that we wait alongside those who are suffering, sick, or sorrowing outside an empty tomb. We stand with them longing to hear Jesus’ reassuring voice speak our name just as he spoke Mary’s. For it is in this moment of hearing his voice that we truly know that we are not alone. We know that God is with us. Sometimes it is through our voice as carers that God’s presence becomes known. And sometimes it is through the voice of those we care from that we come to know God’s presence as we hear our name spoken.
HA. May the mystery of the transcendent and immanent God found in Jesus be with you in your personal pastoral encounters as you share in the hope of a God’s whose love knows no bounds and touches all things.
Amen
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