Fifth Sunday of Lent – April 6, 2025
Last Sunday’s backstory of the Israelites crossing the Jordan River as they had once done at the Red Sea is a good lead-in to today’s first reading. But it also seems to contradict what God had instructed them to do in setting up twelve memorial stones on the other side of the river (Joshua 4:1–24).
How could God say to them through Isaiah, “remember not the events of the past,” when the same God had commanded them over and over to memorialize in various rituals those turning-point moments in their people’s history?
There is no “golden age” or going back to a simpler, more perfect time. Because God is faithful in every time.
In all these instances of remembering—whether the Red Sea, the Jordan, or our past struggles with sin—the people were called to be on the move, to keep going on the journey, whether physically, emotionally, or spiritually. The act of remembering their past was not to take them back in time to stay there—whether out of nostalgia, refuge, or guilt—but to propel them forward with hope into a new reality that only God could create.
There is no “golden age” or going back to a simpler, more perfect time. Because God is faithful in every time, there is only here and now where God takes everything we have and are—our experiences, our gifts, and our sins—and calls us forward into a new future united more closely to him.
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