Lent 5, Isaiah

Isaiah 43.16-21

“I am about to do a new thing;
Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43.19)

This week once again we heard prophetic words proclaimed to a people in exile—they have been forced from their homes and marched across the wilderness to a strange land; they have been uprooted from their homeland. The Israelites had been conquered by Nebuchadnezzar and removed from their homes in Judea. Far from all that is familiar, cut off from the temple which has been the center of their faith, they even feel cut off from God because they believed that God dwells in the ark in the center of the temple. They despair.

But the prophet has a message from God—God will do a NEW THING! “Do not remember the former things….I am about to do a new thing…..I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” God announces to a people who have lost everything—their homes, their lands, even those who feel estranged from their God—that all will be restored.

This is the promise that Palestinian Christians cling to; it is what they hear when they read scripture…..God’s promise that all will be made new, that all will be restored. Their suffering is not the end of the story.

Their hope is not based on hopeful signs from US, Israeli and Palestinian leaders on the nightly news. Their hope springs from good news like this from the prophet Isaiah.

This week I’ve listened to the tally of fatalities, as Palestinians march in protest of the seizure of their lands and Israeli actions limiting access to their farms and crops. They have also been marching in memory of Rachel Corrie, who was killed in Gaza seven years ago, run over by the bulldozer she tried to stop, hoping to prevent the destruction of another Palestinian home. These non-violent protest marches have been met by Israeli soldiers, tear gas canisters and rubber bullets, and, apparently, even live ammunition.

Doctors have provided x-rays that show live ammunition in the skull of nineteen-year-old Ousayab Qadous who died over the weekend in a demonstration in his village of Iraq Burin, near Nablus. http://palsolidarity.org/2010/03/11855. Following midday prayers on Saturday, the villagers were marching to protest the restrictions that prevented them from accessing their lands beneath the nearby Jewish-only Israeli settlement of Har Brakha. The marchers carried no weapons.

Similar events took place this weekend in other areas of the West Bank and Gaza, and Israeli security forces, deeming the marches to be “an existential threat” to Israel, arrived in the village with tear gas and rubber bullets http://palsolidarity.org/2010/03/11724. This is in the West Bank, on land that most of the world believes will someday become a state for Palestine. http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/03/21/israel.clashes/index.html

This weekend four, Palestinian youths have been killed in these incidents. And Palestinian militants fired a rocket that killed a Thai farmworker in a greenhouse in an Israeli agricultural community just north of Gaza on Thursday. Israel retaliated with airstrikes on Gaza that killed twelve.

To see how Palestinians are resisting the Israeli security wall, read a story and watch video of the weekly protests in Bi'lin in the West Bank: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/02/2010219142048591226.html.

Even the news that peace talks will soon start again does not give hope to people yearning for peace in their communities in Israel and Palestine. It is God’s promises that bring hope into communities like the ones Isaiah addresses.

You may note that the verbs in this passage from Isaiah are in the present and future tenses. Yes, God has saved God’s own people in the past, but this God of past miracles is also a God of a future we cannot imagine….a future of liberation and homecoming and refreshing waters in the desert. A God who can make what seems impossible a reality.

O God of liberation and new life, you have shown us your ways—of restoration, reconciliation and homecoming. Help us to follow where you lead. Give us courage to do our part to make the world a reflection of your good creation; strengthen us for your work to bring home the captives and bring refreshing waters of hope and well-being to parched, inhospitable lands. Amen.