There’s an old but true adage that says that the only thing you can count on, the one thing that is always constant is change. But then there is that other saying that declares that the more things change, the more things stay the same. Which is it? Is everything around us always changing, or is what we identify as change merely a ripple on a static lake? Both sayings, I think, are true.

It is true, change happens. Our lives are marked by one dramatic change after another. We get older. Occasionally we get smarter. Our health goes from excellent to dodgy. Our families grow and then diminish, as children are born, kids go off to school, grandparents retire, aunts and uncles grow old, get sick and die. Few of us stay in the same place our whole lives. Some communities, like ours, develop rapidly in ways and at a pace that makes our heads spin. Work places and institutions keep changing their rules, policies and procedures. Some computer programs are updated hourly. Our society morphs in ways that our grandparents would not recognize. The list goes on and on-and on.

But despite all the dramatic change, it’s surprising how much things do stay the same. Despite the fact that every politician’s campaign slogan always centers on the need for change, that he or she is the candidate of or represents the party of change, that the time has come to change course, policies, leadership, once they’re elected to office, it’s always same-old, same-old. We fret and complain constantly about the fact that things keep changing, and while the ground may indeed be shifting under our feet and the scenery and the personnel display a greater variety, the world we live in is still the same old world. Our technology keeps advancing, and our standard of living may be increasing, but the joys, frustrations, hopes, and dreams of people everywhere in every time remain constant. That’s why ancient Greek plays and Victorian novels still speak volumes to us about the human condition. We complain about the fact that things are always changing, but the one thing that really needs to change and doesn’t is that we are all frail, sinful, mortal human beings. One minute we bemoan change, while the next we find ourselves longing for it. At the end of the day, I wonder if we have any idea about what real change is.

The prophet Isaiah speaks the word of the Lord to Israel in exile. The Lord says that he is about to do a new thing: “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?” What the Lord was declaring to Israel was their homecoming, their release from their Babylonian captivity, and the resettlement and rebuilding of Jerusalem. Yet, the Lord is also talking about something more than just these practical changes to their current day-to-day experience. The Lord was also talking about something far greater and so radically new as to be life transforming. The Lord was talking about something completely outside the Israelites’ daily life and experience, about a greater and final homecoming if you will, entry into Israel’s final future; for the Lord proclaims the impending release of captives from Babylon in language and images that evoke scenes of paradise where rivers will run in the desert and the wild animals will give honor to their Creator. Isaiah delivers a message to Israel that while it addresses her current experience, is also about something much greater than Israel-in-the-moment. What God is about to do for Israel now will have significance for all humanity, now and into the future. The Lord’s message to Israel is also a message about the redemption of all humanity and of God’s good creation, the ultimate salvation to which Israel’s mundane and tortured existence points. The Lord declares to Israel: “I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.”

Paul echoes in more personal terms the radical nature and the decisiveness of the Lord’s about-to-be-enacted promise of total and never-before-experienced renewal. For him such renewal is to be seen, quite literally, as a death and resurrection. “I want to know Christ,” Paul says, “and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” Then, in the same vein, and after boasting of his past gains and accomplishments, he declares: “Yet, whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.”

The radically new element in all this is Jesus Christ. What he promises, brings, and affects is nothing less than a new heaven and a new earth. “See, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5). But Christ is also the continuity of God’s love and faithfulness to Israel personified, the one thing about God that remains constant and does not change. “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). So at the same time, Christ is both God’s new thing, and the seal and guarantee of God’s constancy. Nothing will ever change God’s determination to fulfill his promise to his beloved people, a determination that Christ carries through even through and in spite of death. And precisely in that act of self-surrender and sacrifice, Christ is also the personification of the new thing Isaiah long ago declared to a hopeful and expectant Israel. Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is the fulfillment of God’s intention for all humanity, the radically new thing that in the power and promise of his resurrection from the dead inaugurates history’s ultimate fulfillment, humanity’s final hope and promise, and the completion and expansion of creation’s beauty and purpose.

We live, however, between the times, with God’s promise on one side and with the promise’s fulfillment on the other. We live, that is to say, with hope and by faith. It is a tension and a reality that is expressed beautifully and evocatively by St. Paul today: “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

So while the life of faith does not eliminate struggle and it requires persistence, it also offers sure and certain hope that the God of Israel, the God whom Jesus prayed to as his heavenly Father, will never abandon or neglect us, nor renege on his promise of life and salvation for his people. For his promise is of a new heaven and a new earth, Isaiah’s “new thing,” that will bring life and hope and salvation such as the world has not yet seen, a radical change of heart and mind and soul, the “prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil.3:14).

-Amen-