Thank You & Goodbye

A Homily for the 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time

When God says to the Prophet Isaiah or to the visionary, John, in the Book of Revelation: “See, I make all things new!” Or when St. Paul tells us “all that matters now is a new creation.” Do we realize that for God new means new? God doesn’t just take what we are familiar with, the old ways, the old structures, our old habits of being, and polish them up so they look nice and shiny and just like new! No, when God says new God means new.

I recently revisited a couple of places that have occupied a very dear space in my heart for, at least, the last few decades. And it wasn’t just the places themselves but what they meant, how they lifted my spirits, gave me a deeper sense of hope, and provided me a connection with God like no other places I had known before. But upon return to these places I found myself feeling frustrated, disoriented and agitated. I looked and the place was still there, but everything it had meant was gone.

Sometimes the most necessary spiritual act we can engage in is to simply know when it is time to say “Thank you & Goodbye.” Otherwise, we might live our lives clinging to shined-up and polished old places and miss out on the radical, new creation God is inviting us into today. There are simply times in our lives when we realize, with some sadness perhaps, that the old habits and structures of our being in this world no longer correspond to the new life God is inviting us into right now. So, we have to choose: Do we say “Thank you & Goodbye” or do we cling and furiously, with futility, work to recreate what is no longer there?

Notice, in our gospel passage this morning, the subtle shift in the language that St. Mark employs. When Bartimaeus is given his sight, Jesus says, “Go on your way!” But the evangelist tells us Bartimaeus got up and followed Christ on the way. With the gift of, not just, restored sight, but the gift of utterly new vision, for Bartimaeus there was now no longer “his way.” There was only “the way” and joyfully Bartimaeus began to walk down the path of that totally new and transformed journey.

I have always believed that the one thing harder for the disciples to face, other than the crucifixion of Jesus, was his resurrection! The brutality, the injustice, the horror of crucifixion in some strange way was at least familiar. We can become too numb and insensitive to just how cruel we human beings can be. But resurrection, which is not resuscitation, meant the introduction to an utterly transformed and forever new reality. The evangelists struggle to articulate to us just how dramatic, shocking, and even fearful the resurrection of Christ was. Yes, the disciples knew it was Jesus but it was him in a completely transformed way. The kind of newness Christ offers us can be terrifying. We may long for a New Creation, but we best be prepared for when it arrives, because it will likely knock our socks off!

This is why I think the New Creation God promises unfolds to us in stages. But we have to realize when we’ve reached a stage so we can freely let go of what is done and gone and receive with joy what it is God is calling us to now. The time comes again and again for each of us when we realize the old habits of being, the old structures of our own reality no longer correspond to who it is God is calling us to be. And we have to choose: Do I cling? Do I strive mightily every day to try and recover a lost place, a lost past, a lost feeling, a lost relationship? Or do I simply say: “Thank you & Goodbye.” Thank you with sincerity and goodbye with hopeful finality to people and places, and yes, maybe even most especially, to that familiar old self who can simply no longer satisfy.

And then we in our own turn will hear God say to us: “Behold, I make all things new.”