Something old, something new; Something borrowed, something blue.
That’s what the old rhyme suggests every new bride ought to have on her person come the wedding day. We’re not going to spend any time talking about "borrowed" and "blue," but we do want to spend some time on "old" and "new." Those words have a way of cropping up more than just occasionally. Nearly every day we hear them used. They are used religiously. "As for me," says Carol, "you can give me that old-time religion." They are used maritally. Remarks grandfather, "Grandmother and I are an old married couple." Remarks June, married one month, "My husband and I are newly married." They are employed when discussing a given methodology. One might easily overhear another saying, "The old school of thought suggests we do it this way; the new school of thought suggests we do it that way." The words are also used chronologically as when one group is referred to as the "older generation" and another group as the "younger generation." We toss those words around rather quickly and easily, but beneath them one often uncovers a depth of feeling.
That we hold deep feeling for what is "old" or "new" is evidenced economically. Consider to what extent the antique and collectible market has mushroomed over the past fifteen years. What you couldn’t give away and probably threw away a decade or more ago you don’t have to give away and certainly would never throw away today. On the other hand, there are a goodly number of people who pay out dear sums of money to be able to drive in new cars every twenty-five or thirty-thousand miles. The old and new command substantial sums of money.
Given the feeling we hold for new and old, we usually arrange them in a given way; and while we may never have declared that to ourselves, a little cogitation will reveal some operating, albeit it perhaps unconscious, principles suggestive of these arrangements. Generally, these principles are gathered into two schools of thought.
The first school of thought holds that new and old are in competition, and those who buy into this school of thought hold one of two positions.
Here is the first position. Old is better than new. This position is held by some medically. The television character Marcus Welby reminded many of us in our thirties and beyond of the old family doctor who would unhesitatingly make housecalls and not necessarily just in the daytime. My wife still remembers from her childhood one particular doctor who would come to her home and actually get on his hands and knees and pretend he was a dog. In that way he would gain her confidence before he zapped her with a needle. There is a tendency to romanticize the old family doctor and assume automatically that the old breed is better than the new breed.
Granting the point that there was something very wonderful about doctors of yesteryear, it is still true that present medical technology is more sound than past medical technology. During a recent trip out to Roswell Park, I heard the chief of the medical service dealing with soft tumors, lymphomas and leukemia, comment that progress in his field of cancer specialty has occurred so quickly that some physicians are treating those forms of cancer ineffectively; were those patients referred to a cancer center for treatment, their chances would greatly improve. Here decidedly, new is better than old, even though the old was couched in what for many was a more palatable form. When I go for medical assistance - while I like to deal with a physician who is a warm human being - sound and updated medical technology is higher on my list of priorities than whether or not I happen to personally like the doctor.
The second position in the school of thought holding that new and old are in competition is the converse of the first. This position holds that new is better than old. Being new, it is unswervingly better.
Once I had a wedding in a very old and gracious home. It was exceedingly well built. The roof was made out of slate. The doors were actually wooden through and through. And while I didn’t make a tour of the basement, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least if the plumbing were largely copper.
Much of the new construction cannot begin to compare with old construction. While we love our home, it cannot begin to compare with older construction. Without much effort I could puncture our doors with my fist because they are hollow inside. The holes in the rafters of our cellar, through which pass the electrical cables, were more ripped than bored. Then, too, the combination storms and screens that adorn our windows do not shut out the winter cold with the effectiveness of the old wooden storm windows that those of you who have older homes drag out of the cellar autumn after autumn.
No, it is not always true that new is better than old.
When examined, this first school of thought which sees old and new locked in battle has to be adjudged erroneous. Neither old nor new consistently has the upper hand.
But there is a second school of thought and it is the Christian school of thought. Declares this school, old and new are not in competition but in partnership. Each has its place in the shaping of a human life. A few observations will expand on this.
It is to be observed first that all of us participate in what is old. As congregations, we have histories, many of which are traceable back one or more centuries. As individuals we have personal histories that carry us back to England or France, to Africa or to Sicily. We have personal roots and we have corporate roots and our fascination with history bears witness to the fact that we feel history holds something for us. We are - at least in part - what our parents have been and what our grandparents have been. Collectively we have a heritage that we like to trace to the primordial couple, Adam and Eve. History defines us. We didn’t blow into town yesterday afternoon on the winds of a four o’clock hurricane. We have more depth than that.
The reading of the Scriptures Sunday by Sunday is really a way of abiding with a living past. The Scriptures are certainly old. They have been with us for hundreds and hundreds of years, but they have a vibrancy that is undaunted by their longevity. Through them we encounter historical men and women who faced many of the same problems we face and often their solutions become our solutions.
If we were to take a survey of which Old Testament offering is most widely remembered, I think it would have to be the twenty-third Psalm. The Book of Psalm, as we know it, has been in existence since around 100 B.C. This means the twenty-third Psalm was probably around long before that. They are old words -
The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want,
He makes me to lie down in green pastures,
He leads me beside still waters,
He restores my soul.
Nevertheless, their oldness is not mildewed oldness. It is an oldness like unto the oldness of a treasured piece that one finds tucked away in an attic. It is an oldness saturated with worth and value, its worth and value being resident in its power of mediation. Those words mediate to people the presence of the One to whom they point. Through them God becomes as real to us as he was to those who mouthed them hundreds of years ago.
This is precisely why the Scriptures are important. This is why tradition is important. This is why history becomes living history. As we identify with people and events in the past, their stories and events become relived.
I think we gathered a sense for this handling of history in the film "Patton." You may remember one sequence in the film where Patton is viewing an old Carthaginian battlefield. As he describes what had happened hundreds of years before, his description is so real that an aide remarks, "It is almost like you were there, General." Reflective of his belief in reincarnation, Patton responds with a haunting laugh, "I was." Regardless of one’s position on reincarnation, Patton demonstrated that history can be living history.
Second, it can be observed in this partnership between old and new that the new builds on the old.
A colleague once remarked to me that a new vocational assignment should grow out of an old one. This is clearly discernible in newspaper accounts that tell of a retirement party and recount how the retiring individual has arisen through the ranks of a company or institution. Mary began her teaching career as a third grade teacher. During her early career she went to SUNY during the summer and took courses in administration. She was then appointed assistant principal. From there she became principal and later an administrative assistant to the superintendent. Finally she became a superintendent in her own right. The old became the foundation upon which the new could rest.
The newness of being a toddler rests upon the oldness of being an infant; the newness of late childhood rests upon the oldness of being a toddler; the newness of adolescence rests upon the oldness of late childhood; the newness of young adulthood rests upon the oldness of adolescence. Continually throughout our days, the new is built upon the old.
William Wordsworth, in thinking back on his own early life, seems to be suggesting this partnership between old and new in some words for which I hold great fondness.
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Or splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what lies behind.1
The strength of the old is the scaffolding for the emergence of the new.
Third, in this partnership, old recognizes the need to step off into the wings as the new becomes stronger.
Remember back to those not so long ago years when trips into space were rather frequent? The people in Houston did a good job of showing us diagrams of how a given space trip would proceed. I remember particularly how one part of the rocket would drop away as another part of what was came into prominence. As the new came forward, being sent into space, the old fell away.
What our technology displayed is illustrative of what Jesus is getting at when he says, "... no one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; if it is, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved."
Just as new wine cannot be adequately housed in old wineskins, so the astronauts needed a vessel alteration to carry them further on their way into interstellar space. Yet the principle has application back on earth too.
Take a newly married couple. The new wine of their marriage will not be well contained in the wineskins of their old lifestyles. The lifeblood of their new estate needs a new corporality through which it can flow. That means, among other things, an alteration in their responsibilities. Both now assume more responsibility for each other than for their nuclear families. Their emerging traditions become more important than the traditions that have shaped them. Their priorities become more weighty than the priorities of those who have nurtured them. John and Mary cannot simultaneously sustain three lifestyles, only one.
Let it be observed, finally, that God is at the same time what the Scriptures have termed the "ancient of days" and the author of what the New Testament calls "new creation." God is both old and new. God is both established and establishing. There is an eternal newness at work that fills life with enthusiasm and delight.
Childhood remembrances are somewhat spotty, but as a child I remember always having a special fascination for Saturday. As best I recall, that special feeling goes back far. Saturday always felt different than other days. It had an exhilirating aspect about it. Saturday could never come soon enough. Saturday represented for me newness, refreshment, re-creation and delightful departure.
Newness is really the work of God upon the human heart. I think Sam Keen put it in a dandy way:
Every man has Bethlehem where new possibilities and hopes are born, where his history is invaded by novelty and the potency for new action. At such times the tyranny of the past and the terror of the future give way before a new time of open possibility - the vibrant present.2
Each Sunday as we gather for worship, we stand in praise of God who "makes all things new," who takes our sin and by his grace makes us his "new creation." That is happening even right now in the heart open to God’s redeeming presence.
Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away; behold, all things have become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Newness - newness of faith, newness of perspective, newness of attitude, newness of hope. Such newness can be ours and is ours, in both our waking and sleeping hours. Says God anew this day:
Behold, I am doing a new thing,
Even now it is springing to light.
Do you not perceive it?
A way will I make in the wilderness
And rivers in the desert! (Isaiah 43:19)
1. William Wordsworth in Masterpieces of Religious Verse, James Dalton Morrison, ed., (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1948), p. 269.
2. Sam Keen, To a Dancing God (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), p. 31.