Isaiah 43: 18, 19; John 12: 3; Philippians 3: 12-14

What is your reference point?

The theologian Peter Marty (Christian Century, March 2, 2016, p. 3) writes: “When the train I was taking into Chicago’s Union Station stooped about 500 yards short of the platform, most of us on board took it in stride. We thought it was a momentary delay. It turned out to be 15 minutes long, which is the rough equivalent of eternity for a frantic commuter. A cheer went up in our car at around ten minutes.  We thought we were finally moving. The joke was on us, however, when we realized that it was only the train beside ours that was moving in the opposite direction. It is a strange sensation to discover you are going nowhere when everything in your brain is telling you otherwise.  What tipped us off to our foolishness was a reference point: a large brick building that came into view after the other train had passed. ”

Friends, whatever we observe in life, we always need to get our bearings.  This is visual, or through our hearing, or by smell, or in our thinking or through feeling.  We always have a reference point for everything.  For the people on the train that reference point disappeared for a moment. We all have had similar experiences.  In Isaiah 43 the people find themselves in a time of exile, a time when the people’s reference point was the past, a past that was starting to fade beyond memory, but nevertheless a past that they always referred to.  So when Isaiah proclaimed that “God is doing a new thing,” and that the past is no longer, he offers them a whole new point of reference.  In Philippians chapter 3 Paul “presses onward” to the future.  He does so only after pointing out how much confidence he has as person accomplished on earth to make him a credible and acceptable religious leader, but then unexpectedly he makes it very clear that credentials are all “garbage” to him.  What matters is the future and his heavenly prize.  So Paul shifts the point of reference both horizontally (forward to the future) and vertically (upward to the heavenly).   But the most significant change in point of reference comes in the lectionary text in the Gospel of John:  Mary is honoring Jesus with expensive oil and Judas objects: the oil is too expensive and the money could be used to help the poor.  Jesus sets Him straight: “the poor you will always have with you.”  Jesus Who is already wounded emotionally feels ministered to by Mary and that moment of attention helps him and strengthens Him for the awful things that are about to come.  What all three of these texts have in common, friends, is that the point of reference changes in ways the audience does not expect.  Isaiah’s audience is used to the past or the terrible present.  Paul’s congregation in Philippi expects him to show them all his diplomas, but instead he hurls it all out the door.  Judas and other disciples expect Jesus to say the morally correct thing, but instead Jesus rebukes him.   And this is one of the things that make the prophets and Jesus and Paul so powerful in their message time and time again: the people expect their train to be moving, but it stands still while another train is moving.  The point of reference is different.

Friends, much of our life is like this.  We have our eye on one thing, waiting for it to move, but then something else moves.  We have things we count on and we have gotten used to counting on them and then suddenly we can’t.  We lose the brick wall as our point of reference and don’t know which train is moving.  We think we have it figure out.  We accept the well known words of the French writer Alphonse Karr: “the more things change, the more they change the same.”  But maybe that is wrong and that ancient saying:”the only constant in life is change.”  Things can be the same for decades and then there is something with our work, our money, our health or our relationships.  It can be bewildering.  The Bible is interesting that it is always challenges our point of reference, it is always calling stability into question.  Theology also changes.  For instance now that we know that our star, the sun, will burn out one day in the far away future,  we know that our earth as we know it will not always be there.  This changes how we view life as Christians.  Now that we know how much we contribute to global warming as the human race, it changes how we view God’s creation all around us.   YET, at the same time the core message of the Bible remains the same:  Jesus Who shows us the degree to which God loves us.”  That is unchanging.  That point of reference is firm.  “Jesus loves me this I know so the Bible tells me so,” is another way of saying that.  It is a firm point of reference.

Friends, I know faith is not an easy thing.  I know understanding a book as old as the Bible is not an easy thing.  Our views on parts of it and what they mean changes over our life time, whether we like to admit it or not, but the suffering Jesus is the point of reference that remains.  And much of the ultimate meaning of our lives is determined in reference to that point. Thanks be to God.