Skip to main content

God’s promise to do a new thing

Just this week there is a major meeting of the UN to discuss progress in limiting carbon emissions and also to update progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There is not much good news to report. Cuts to global emissions are happening too slowly to limit warming to the 1.5 degC target of the 2015 Paris Agreement. Already in July and August of this year this threshold was crossed, with 2023 destined to be the hottest year in recorded history. Fossil fuel usage needs to be phased out urgently but is beholden to powerful market forces.

How are we doing as a global community in providing justice to the poorest as set out in the 2015 SDGs? Again, not well. Of the 170 targets grouped under 17 key areas (e.g. poverty, hunger, access to education, affordable clean energy), only 15% are on track to be met by 2030. Partly this shortfall is caused by the Covid pandemic and more recently the ongoing war in Ukraine. Both of these crises indicate, however, that the wealthy nations of the world can work together and can find the money to fund major challenges if these pose a threat to their own people or way of life. Sadly, the needs of the poorest people don’t generate the same urgency or generosity of response.

The reading in Isaiah 43 was written at a similarly bleak time in history for the people of Israel. They were living in exile in Babylon with no real hope of any change to their situation. Wealthy and powerful nations were firmly in charge and had no mind to help the poor Israelites. Into this gloom the prophet speaks a word of hope, that God is not oblivious to their suffering and will soon do something new and unexpected. God will open a new path for the people to return home to Jerusalem and will make rivers flow in the desert.

Such a bold and subversive pronouncement is part of what OT scholar Walter Brueggemann calls the prophetic imagination – looking at the world in a new way with current constraints removed. How our world needs a similarly bold imagination! There are selfish vested interests, of course, that want the status quo maintained – so that they can continue to hold onto their power and wealth. But the way of God offers a surprising challenge to the status quo. New ways of thinking and new priorities are possible if people have the courage and will to make it happen.

From the Minister

God is doing a new thing

The theme for this year’s Synod meeting is taken from Isaiah 43:19 that reads:

I am about to do a new thing;
 now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
 I will make a way in the wilderness
 and rivers in the desert.

Heavy summer rains leave the desert across the Ngaanyatjarra Lands teeming with life.

The message to the Israelite exiles living in Babylon was not to give up hope, for God still loved them and had not abandoned them. As is so often the case in the prophetic Scriptures, the task of the prophet was to change the conversation and use poetic imagination to paint a different story, one of new hope and new life for the nation.

What are the stories that we tell each other? Do we share our worries about the future of our congregation or even of the Uniting Church? Or do we look through the eyes of faith and imagine a vigorous and flourishing congregation that is a signpost to the world of an alternative way to live? God is the one who brings life, even in the wilderness, like a desert that blooms after rain.

From the Minister,