Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Easter - The Rev. Elise A. Feyerherm - May 15th, 2022

To view a video of the Rev. Elise A. Feyerherm’s sermon, click HERE.

I’m not much for shopping these days, but I do like to poke around second-hand stores when I’m in need of a piece of clothing or flowerpot or small furniture item. It can be frustrating to find exactly what you need, but if you go in with open eyes and mind, there are treasures to be had. My two winter coats are examples of this – a grey tweed I found at a Good Will store in Columbus, and a purple car coat I snagged at the St. Paul’s yard sale back in 2018. It didn’t matter to me that they weren’t “new,” or someone else’s cast-offs. They were in good condition, and they were new to me. And of course the price was right!

I wonder often about our culture’s obsession with all that is brand new, hot off the press or assembly line. In contrast to that, there’s a parallel obsession these days with rehabbing – making old houses, or furniture, or clothing, or even people – fresh and new again. There’s something so hopeful, miraculous even, about taking something that is tired and beat up and broken and restoring it to a new beauty and purpose. I never tire of those stories. They are like resurrection to me.

I have been thinking about this because our readings for today are in a certain sense all about making things new. Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment; in Revelation we see the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven, and the One seated on the throne saying “See, I am making all things new.” And in Acts, Peter describes his call to a new way of thinking about and relating to Gentiles. What does all this business of “newness” really mean?

In Peter’s case, his identity as an apostle of Jesus meant that he was being called into new territory. He was confronted with the question of whether Jesus was the Messiah of the Jewish people only, or also of the gentiles, and whether he, Peter, would participate in that new mission. 

We should beware of seeing this newness as somehow dismissing – superseding – Jewish tradition of maintaining distinctness, or labeling Judaism as xenophobic. That’s just not the case. The newness into which Peter is being invited is an expansion, not a rejection or replacement, of his particular identity as a man of Israel. It is the same with the “New” Testament – it does not reject or replace the Hebrew Bible, but invites us gentiles into relationship with the God of Moses and Miriam, the God of Jesus and Mary.

And when Jesus tells his disciples, “I give you a new commandment,” in a way there is nothing new about it. Torah has made it clear that loving God and loving neighbor are the foundations of religious life. So perhaps it is our understanding of “new” that needs to be explored. 

My friend and colleague the Rev. Kit Lonergan, who serves at Trinity Copley Square, wrote this recently: “I wonder though whether we limited the idea of new to unused rather than restored, revealed, uncovered…” She was reflecting on the experience of her mother cleaning their apartment every Friday, giving fresh new life to objects and surfaces that had gotten grimy from the daily practice of living. Every week the apartment was made truly new. And I can’t help but reflect on whether this is how God makes all things new – not by erasing what has been but by restoring it to its original beauty and goodness.

At the end of the book of Revelation, in the vision we heard just a while ago, John sees a new heaven and a new earth, and the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. Our unfamiliarity with the book of Revelation, and the dominance of fundamentalist views of this book, make us think this is about annihilation and violent destruction, but I think there is another way to read it. For these last chapters of Revelation make it clear that God’s intention is to heal and restore creation and all that is in it, in both heaven and earth. Making all things new is the result of God making a home with us, dwelling with us, wiping our tears and easing our sorrow and pain. 

Notice that the One seated upon the throne says, “I am making all things new,” not “I am making all new things” (from the annotations of The New Interpreter’s Bible, Abingdon Press, p. 2239). It seems to me that it is the presence of God, and the indwelling of God in Jesus, and Jesus in us, that is the key to making all things new. 

The “new” commandment to love one another is only possible because Jesus sets an example of servant love in washing the disciples’ feet, and sends the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, to fill the disciples with love and with power to serve. What is “new” is our capacity to live into what God has created us to be. 

There is so much more beauty in something that has been restored, than in something that is brand new and never been used. Restoration reveals the beauty of ancient use, of tarnish and dirt and breakage born of honest human life and labor. Restoration digs down to the past and releases the ancient beauty residing beneath the layers.

I have a priest friend who is also a woodworker; we were sponsored for ordination by the same Anglo-Catholic parish back in Columbus. As he was refinishing an old prayer desk that had been in the sanctuary for decades, sanding down all the layers of varnish, he suddenly realized he could smell incense. All the years of worshiping the Lord in the beauty of holiness were revealed and released in that moment of restoration. 

I think that is, in some way, how God restores us, restores the world, makes all things new. Everything we have been, and all that we continue to be, is not destroyed, but is restored, released, fills the world with its fragrance. As Thomas Aquinas famously wrote, divine grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it.

Restoration also reveals the beauty and care of the one who is doing the restoring. Making things new is an act of diligence, patience, and of love. When Jesus says that the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him, it is the glory of lovingly restoring creation that is being revealed. A glory that looks like kneeling down and washing feet. A glory revealed in the painstaking, hard work of making a beautiful but damaged world new. “Made new, restored,” as my friend Kit writes,  “with love, attention, and elbow grease” 

I think God has definitely been applying some elbow grease on me these days; there’s been a lot of scrubbing and getting the dirt out of the crevices. But I pray that my own restoration is making me more able to join in God’s work of making all things new. I think I can see it happening in all of us. Can you?