What Lately?
It has made it into a common, modern conversation, essentially as an idiom. I mean the comment, “Yes, but what have you done for me lately?” The question lives in the corporate experience where the efforts are organized into divisions, and division heads are looking for new accomplishments and breakthroughs. There is no luxury, to quote another idiom, “to rest upon laurels.” We find ourselves in the culture of pushing ahead in environments of competition.
We find a different twist on the notion of what has been done lately when looking at the movement of God in human history and the lives of people. A central practice of ours as Judeo-Christian people of faith is to remember. We remember God’s deeds of power through the Covenant. The courage and faith of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel, Moses and Zipporah. We stretch our faith by remembering. God acted through them. Do you remember the deeds done through the later prophets, Elijah and Elisha? Remember David battling with Goliath? Remember earlier wonders, such as the walls of Jericho crumbling down for Joshua and the pilgrim people in the promised land?
Our faith record through the New Testament moves us to remember the acts of God through early followers of Christ. We remember the miracles of Jesus, and chiefly the love is shown in his saving death on the Cross and his astounding Resurrection. We point to that, to locate our salvation in the redeeming work of God. Regarding the Old Testament, we point to its consummate act of deliverance: the children of Israel passing through the Red Sea to escape the army of Pharaoh. When I ask, is remembering more than remembering? It’s in hearing Scripture, re-envisioning the acts of God in human history In this, the happenings are re-called into our presence again.
The passage from Isaiah in our liturgy, Sunday, does a remarkable thing. The prophet knows that Yahweh’s faithful will always look to Moses and the story of escape through the divided Red Sea. As mentioned, this pinnacle tale of rescue from death in the Old Testament—this story of stories—screams to be remembered. But through Isaiah, the Lord demands the people not remember this or other former things. The Lord tells them to look to the new thing being done in divine power. God says, in effect. Let me show you what I am doing for you lately:
Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty water who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; … Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? (Isaiah 43:16-21)
In Isaiah’s day, the new thing signaled is the return of the exiled people to Jerusalem. For Christians, the new thing is the ultimate act of salvation, the coming of Jesus the Messiah, culminating in his paradoxical victory, his death on the cross for love’s sake. What you and I need to do is to look for this victory happing in the present. What God is doing lately, even currently, is to save you at the moment, and to bring you to life today. I would say do remember all that God has done of old, but look also deeply, strongly at what God has done for you lately; look at the new thing God does for you now.