Normal for Now But Not For Ever
Thoughts on Isaiah 62.6-12
1st Mass of Christmas
24 December 2022
Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral
New Westminster BC
Earliest this year as the government was lifting many of the COVID-related restrictions, a small group of us were having coffee in the Parish Lounge following the Wednesday eucharist. COVID was the main topic of conversation and someone said, ‘Well, we’ll have to get used to the new normal.’ Before anyone else responded, one wise person said, ‘Not the new normal but normal for now.’ It’s a perceptive distinction.
The new normal implies that we can plot a new trajectory with some confidence. Normal for now suggests that the future is not as clear as we might wish it to be. Perhaps our new stance needs to be one of vigilance and agility in the face of an ever-changing present rather than planning on a more static state.
Two thousand five hundred years ago the people of Israel were permitted to return to their homeland after decades of exile. They had lost their independence and their cities and religious centres had been destroyed. at first, the promise of a return to Judah had been greeted with joy and excitement by the exiles. But now that the people had actually returned and were trying to re-build their homes, their lives and the Temple in Jerusalem, things weren’t as grand as they had hoped they would be.
The economy had tanked and people were struggling to survive. After years of living in a foreign land, some of the returnees had abandoned the traditions of their ancestors and were following the religious practices of their former captors. Charlatans who promised quick foxes for what ever aliment or difficulty a person might were bewitching the people and playing upon their fears.
Then there were the traditional religious authorities who were charged with keeping Judah a peaceful neighbour to their overlords to the east. High on their agenda was the re-building of the Temple and re-establishing the patterns of life as they were before the exile. It was a massive project designed to restore society back to a new normal, something like the old days, just a little different.
To this dispirited people a prophet in the tradition of Isaiah offered not so much a message of hope as a message of divine purpose. God’s purpose is not a new normal, the restoration of the ways things have been. God’s purpose is significantly more global. God’s purpose is the creation of a new people, a holy people, the redeemed of the Lord. God’s purpose is not a mere re-creation of the past nor a sanctification of the status quo. God is working on more than ‘normal for now’; God is raising up things which have been cast down, making new things which had grown old and bringing to perfection all things.
The Child whose birth we celebrate this night has been born to show us how we live in the ‘normal for now’ in order to work with God to bring about the ‘normal for ever’. The challenges we face are not God’s ‘normal’ but conditions of a world as it has become rather than a world as it is meant to be.
· Civil strife and violence are ‘normal for now’ but not God’s ‘normal for ever’.
· Social inequality and poverty are ‘normal for now’ but not God’s ‘normal for ever’.
I recently read an article by a writer who described herself as a cultural Christian. She expressed her appreciation for some of the elements of the Christmas even as she distanced herself from the faith that holds this story at its core. I agree with her that it’s not easy to believe in a God of justice, of steadfast love, of a humility that reveals itself in a child born in a manger. But I think that she and I are looking at the world differently. What she sees as ‘normal’, I see as ‘normal for now’.
My faith leads me to believe that tonight we’re celebrating the revelation of the ‘normal to come’, the promise of the ‘normal for ever’, a world filled with the glory of God – human beings fully alive and free, the creation as it is meant to be.
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