Several years ago our family
took a vacation to the Smoky Mountains, and since my great-great-great grandmother was a Cherokee, we made the pilgrimage
to the original settlement of the Cherokee tribe in western North Carolina. We were part of a group that was led through
this reconstructed village, hearing of the way life was 170 years ago, before the tribe was forcibly removed to Oklahoma by
way of the trail of tears.
Our
tour guide was a young Cherokee woman, part of a remnant that has reclaimed the hills as home, where tourism is the principal
source of income. Our family got tickled listening to her, not because of her thick Appalachian dialect which was in fact
delightful, but because at each stop she would recite her memorized lines in monotone, while others would act out what she
was describing:
“Here
you will see Cherokee women using hides from the animals killed for food, and they stitched them together to make clothing,
shoes, and blankets… DO you have any questions?”
We trekked all over those hills, it seemed like, but at the end of each soliloquy, it was the same, DO you have
any questions?
For several years following,
it became a mantra for our family, when comic relief was needed to relieve some tense situation in our home, any one of us
was licensed to become the diffuser, simply by saying, DO you have any questions?
It seems to me that Isaiah is serving as a tour guide for the people of
Israel, and while it is a serious claim he is establishing in our passage this morning, there is an underlying thread of humor
if we can tease it out. He is talking to the people who are over in Babylon—their parents had been hauled off there
a half century earlier after their homes were destroyed. And now, Isaiah comes along and stands on a stump with his people
gathered around, and he tells them: “Good news, the Babylonians have been defeated, and we have been told by the Persian
conquerors that we can return home to the Promised Land. God has delivered us once again, and so it is time for us to leave
this place and make the journey home. DO you have any questions?”
Well, yeah, Isaiah, we do. Lots of them. Last time God led our people out of bondage in Egypt, they had to wander
in the desert for forty years! I don’t think I’m up for that. And, while we’re on the subject, they had
to survive on nothing but some flakes of bread, water, and quail. Quail’s a lotta work for just a little meat. I’m
thinking this place where we’ve landed is not sounding so bad.
But Isaiah remains undeterred, and he offers here, in Chapter 43, one of the most beautiful
songs in all the Bible.
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?
Get ready, let’s go! And
the people do go, and God does provide, and Israel is reconstituted, restored but in new ways.
Had not those ancient Israelites listened to Isaiah, it is hard to imagine
what setting Jesus would have had to work in. This morning we are told that it is six days before the Passover—Saturday
night probably…his last Saturday night on earth. He had to know the end was near, and so what does he do—he makes
the short trip out to Bethany, to the home of his good friends Lazarus, Mary and Martha—to have dinner, and talk.
You can imagine the chatter around the table, given
all that is going on lately. I suspect that at some point in the table conversation, Jesus nonchalantly mentioned that he
is going to ride into Jerusalem tomorrow morning, on a donkey—that is, in a manner fit for a king. Do you have any questions?
Well, yeah, Jesus, we do. Lots of them. And the din
of people talking over one another, trying to get their point across meant that no one got their point across…except
Mary, who didn’t say a word. She got up, went to the other room, returning with a small flask in her hand, and as she
knelt at Jesus’ feet, she unbound her hair.
At what point do you think the room went silent? The fragrance that filled the room when she uncorked the bottle
declared to everyone what this was—embalming oil, precious, decadently expensive. Judas is the one who declares its
value on the market—three hundred denarii—a year’s wages!
Kneeling at Jesus’ feet was the place of a servant, not a host. But Mary bowed down
before her friend—the one who had raised her brother from the dead…the one who had said that he would rise up
after three days.
She believed him with all her
heart; with all that she was and all that she had, she believed him…and trusted him…and presented to him her
allegiance, her treasures, her affection, her love, her life.
And in that moment, Mary becomes the quintessential tour guide for us all. What a gift!
My friends, in a time when much that is written and spoken of the Church
is expressed in meager terms, even dire terms, I believe we are in the midst of something big really, something that will
ultimately define the Church in new and rich ways. But we will only seize the magnitude of this defining moment if we are
willing to step out in faith, as the Church, and live into that to which God is calling us. It is something new, something
creative and life-giving…not with some self-aggrandizing goal in mind, but in the name of Christ. I hope we can hear
the voice of the prophet standing on a stump, DO you have any questions?
Well, yeah, lots of them. We are not engaged seriously in this life as
disciples of Christ if we don’t have lots of questions. And I hope you ask them. Let’s be honest with each other
and with God. Let’s listen to each other, respectfully, and in love—even when we disagree. We can discover the
answers together if we’ll just seek and serve Christ in one another.
What we are being asked to do is immeasurably harder than staying put—keeping things
the way they are, or trying to return to the ways things were.
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?
And
how do we respond to God working a new thing in our midst? Well, Mary gives us a clue, as she kneels before Jesus. She believed
him with all her heart; with all that she was and all that she had, she believed him…and trusted him…and presented
to him her allegiance, her treasures, her affection, her love, her life.
May we have the grace to do the same. Amen.
