21st March 2010 - "Don't dwell on your past, I am about to do something new"

Stephen Fielding - St Peter's, Tewin and Ayot St Peter
Isaiah 43: 18-19
Passion Sunday

Over the last few weeks, we've been thinking about the time Lent gives us for repentance and the time it offers for a complete change of heart and mind. A time of looking back in reflection and a time of looking forward in commitment. A mixture then of past and future. I want this morning to speak about the past and the future as it affects us, using some words of the prophet Isaiah who urges us to honour our past but not to dwell on it, because God is doing something new.

As you know, some of my professional life consists of helping people settle disputes, most of them in fact involving wills. So you might for example have a dependent child or a dependent partner seeking some money from an estate from which they have been excluded or in which they have not been sufficiently recognised. Last week I spent days in Birmingham and London doing just this, working with people who were seeking a proper share in an estate. For them it involves reliving the past, showing the reality of a relationship which should have been recognised but hasn't been, and the hope of people in this situation is that there will be some settlement which will enable them to move on and live life afresh. So a woman who had been in a very long relationship with a man not her husband was hoping to obtain from his estate a sum of money that reflected her 28 year long dependence on him. And she was successful. She got a sum of money that in some sense reflected her dependency on him. This mediation process is extremely painful because the people concerned have to go through the past relationship; they relive the pain as well as the love and it is always overlaid with grief, even if the dispute itself has tended to freeze or delay the process of grieving. So my experience as a mediator tells me that the past is unbelievably significant; you can't abandon or ignore it, because the past is part of the life history that will shape the future and make it different. And I also observe that resolving the past is the necessary condition for starting afresh.

Two weeks ago our new Bishop, speaking at the diocesan Synod, invited us to think about our future together, our strategic future, to ask ourselves – ‘what do we want people to be saying about this diocese in 2020?’ But before we began that work in groups, the bishop had invited each deanery to speak about the achievements of Vision for Action over the last five years. And so we heard about the achievements right across the diocese - the full range of things that show signs of Christian life in our recent past. What the bishop was doing was honouring and celebrating the past before inviting us to move on and shape the future.

The prophet Isaiah is keen to tell the children of Israel about what God has done. ‘I formed you, I called you by name, I redeemed you’. The prophet is keen to tell the children of Israel about their glorious past. He reminds them of the exodus, the great moment of their liberation from slavery in Egypt. And what he says to the children of Israel is, remember your past. Remember the exodus, remember your great kings like David, remember the building of the Temple and the great city of Jerusalem. Remember all these things. But don't dwell on them. Don't brood on them. If you live in the past you will miss the new thing that I'm doing. Because, says God, I am doing a new thing. Can't you see it? And the new thing that I'm doing is rescuing you afresh, I am going to bring you back from exile in Babylon to the great city of Jerusalem. I am going to bring you home. We can surely hear echoes of this exile and coming home in the parable of the Prodigal Son that was our theme last week. The exile is over. You are coming home.

On Tuesday, a selection panel will be choosing the new rector of the Welwyn Team. It is a really important moment in the story of our parishes. Each of those parishes has a great past and is doing great things. A new rector if they are wise will honour those things. But their main task lies in the future, and it will be their task with us to point to the new things that God is doing. What do we want to see God doing here in this parish as we go forward

All of us have a personal history. A CV. A life story. We are to honour it. It is what it is - the good, the bad, and the ugly. Remember it but don't dwell on it. God is about to do something new. He always is. Where we are going is always more important than where we've been. What are the signs in my life and your life that God is about to do something new? And do I want God to do something new in my own life? Because if we have a strong enough ‘why’, God will find the ‘how’ to do it. Well then, says God, ‘Brace the arms that are limp, steady the knees that give way. Be strong and do not fear. I am doing something new’.

So let us pray: Heavenly Father we thank you for all you have done and are doing for us in our lives. Help us to see the new thing that you are doing, to honour our past but not to dwell on it, to trust in you to do something new. This we pray by the power of your Holy Spirit and in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Amen.