Sunday Sermon: "Naked Streets"

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PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION
Please pray with me: Holy Spirit, as the Scripture is read, open our hearts and minds to hear the truth; shine your light into our dark places; convict us where our hearts have been hardened; and call us to respond with joy to your Word to us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

INTRODUCTION TO SCRIPTURE
I think we are all pretty familiar with the first Exodus event—when God freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and led them through the wilderness and into the Promised Land. But did you know there was actually a SECOND exodus event? There is a second time that Israel ended up getting kicked out of their homeland and put into slavery in Babylon.

That’s what the book of Isaiah is all about—the second Exodus. In particular, our reading this morning is encouraging the Israelites, who are in the midst of the second Exodus and probably feeling pretty sorry for themselves, to forget about the things in their past and to look ahead to the “new thing” God is doing for them.

SCRIPTURE READING: Isaiah 43:18-25
18 "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. 20 The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, 21 the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.

22 "Yet you have not called upon me, O Jacob, you have not wearied yourselves for me, O Israel. 23 You have not brought me sheep for burnt offerings, nor honored me with your sacrifices. I have not burdened you with grain offerings nor wearied you with demands for incense. 24 You have not bought any fragrant calamus for me, or lavished on me the fat of your sacrifices. But you have burdened me with your sins and wearied me with your offenses.

25 "I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.

The grass withers and the flower fades but the Word of the Lord endures forever.

SERMON-INTRO
It’s weird that God is telling the Israelites, through Isaiah, NOT to dwell in the past and remember the former things. God is ALWAYS telling the Israelites to remember their past, right? Before this, He always calls them to remember back to the Exodus . . . to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy . . . to remember the commandments of God.

In fact, forgetting was what got them in so much trouble in the first place. Usually, they are getting yelled at because they have forgotten how faithful God has been to them. When they forget all that God has done for them, they get themselves into hot water.

So, what’s up with God now saying, “Forget the former things; do not dwell in the past.” Why is he suddenly telling them to stop looking backwards.

Apparently, God wants them now to focus on something else. “See, I am doing a new thing,” God is telling them. “I am doing a new thing and I want you to be looking FORWARD now, instead of backwards all the time.”

#1
Essentially God is telling the Israelites this: all those things used to guide your lives, all the signs you counted on in your past—they’re all going to be gone, because now I am doing a new thing.
It’s like this: imagine if one day, someone took down all the road signs. Every stop sign, every traffic light, every speed limit sign, every street name sign, even the lines on the road—all gone overnight. The streets would be naked.

Suddenly all the traffic laws that we had to learn to get our drivers’ licenses, all those rules that we obey to keep us safe on the roads are gone. What do you think would happen? Well, what do YOU think would happen?

City planners in Holland, Germany, and Denmark are actually trying this.[1] It sounds like a recipe for disaster, BUT they are finding it actually makes the roads SAFER and that travel times are actually FASTER than with signs and lights.

They have found that by removing traffic lights and signage, drivers and bike riders and pedestrians are FORCED to make eye contact and adapt to the flow of traffic, rather than just focusing on a red or green light and plowing ahead.

Without lights and signs and lines on the road, everyone SLOWS DOWN. Everyone calms down.
There’s no chaos, no horns honking, no road raging, no obscene hand signals. The selfishness of driving—wanting to be first in line, to go the fastest, not wanting to wait—all those things of the past are gone and a new thing is emerging: civility is emerging. The golden rule is in effect each time a driver gets in the car.

In Holland, Germany, and Denmark, people are taught to forget the things of the past because a new thing is happening. This is exactly what God is trying to tell the Israelites.

#2
How would you feel if you woke up to come to church this morning and there were no signs or lines or speed limits? You’d probably be pretty uncomfortable about it. Maybe even a little afraid. I mean, maybe it would be ok if you were trying to go from here to Burgettstown or Weirton—we don’t need signs to get us to those places. But what if we needed to get to Indiana or Kentucky or Massachusetts?

We’d feel lost! We LIKE directional signs. We don’t want to give them up. We LIKE rules—we get nervous when there aren’t any rules, or when we don’t know the rules.

That’s EXACTLY how the Israelites felt when God told them to forget about the past. All their road signs were gone—“Do not remember the former things, God says, do not dwell in the past.”
But maybe God intends for this lack of signage to actually BE the sign for them. Maybe this lack of signage—this turning away from what is familiar in their past toward what is unfamiliar in their future—is God’s way of helping the Israelites to slow down, making them more careful and more cautious, like driving on a street with no signs.

Maybe we, like the Israelites, are too busy looking for signs that we don’t notice what’s right in front of our faces. Or rather, what’s right inside our own hearts. God has written all we need to know—all the signs we could ever ask for—on each of our hearts. Jeremiah says it like this: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer 31.33).

And we have Jesus, who is God-with-us, and the Holy Spirit, who is our companion in the journey of faith. The signs we really need for how to live our lives aren’t found out there; we have all we need in here.

CONCLUSION
Christians shouldn’t really need signs from God. We shouldn’t need a sign that says “be kind to this person because they’re having a hard time.” We shouldn’t need a sign that has eight sides and is outlined in red that says, “Forgive.” Or a sign that is shaped like a triangle that says, “Feed the hungry here.”

We know what we should do. We don’t really needs signs telling us what the right thing to do is.

The city planners who have given up signs say that if you treat people like idiots—and plaster a million signs all over the place—people will act like idiots.[2] If you remove the signs and treat people as intelligent and compassionate, they will respond in kind.

God sees us in the same way. God gave us a brain to think and a spirit with which to pray, and hands to reach out to others. It’s not that complicated to figure out how God wants us to live.
If you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, then you know how to follow God.

Once you get the hang of it, I think you’ll discover that you don’t actually need those signs after all.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.


[1] http://www.contextsensitivesolutions.org/news/item?item_id=41000
[2] http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=93000120