Happy Friday everyone.   Get your bible out and read Revelation 21: 1-5.

I was waiting in line to check out at the car wash and my eyes fell on the rack displaying the “New Car Smell” things you can hang from your rear-view mirror. What is it about that fragrant combination of plastic, leather, paint, and other possibly hazardous chemicals? You can buy it and hang it up but that’s where the newness stops…it’s a shame that the new car smell doesn’t bring along with it a new transmission, tires and a paint job. I guess for those among us who want the illusion of newness, then here is the answer, at least for the car. It’s a great marketing idea because isn’t that the first comment you make when you get into a new car? It must be important, that sense of newness. Think about it. You can re-create that soul satisfying novelty with something you hang on the rear-view mirror! That’s when my mind started to wander as I imagined this concept being applied more broadly. Perhaps there could be other things that could as readily give us that same sense of newness. The olfactory sense being so closely associated with memory and emotion I thought that it would be great if someone could come up with “New Marriage Smell,” you could hang it over the bed … or “New Job Smell,” you could hang it over your desk or even “New Life Smell” something you could hang around your neck. It’s all about “new.”

One of our favorite words in the English language is the word “new”. The word new often has hitched behind it a long train of other words like clean, fresh, bright, young,

you fill in the rest. New is the favorite word of anyone advertising anything. Politicians are always promising something new…a new society…a new frontier…new ideas or at least a new approach. This was driven home for me a few years ago, when I was celebrating the rite of Confirmation. After the anointing with sacred chrism, a highly scented oil, I overheard one of confirmands say, “I feel like a new Christian.”  His sponsor said, “yes and you even have that new Christ smell!”

Experience, however, has taught us that new is always temporary. Today’s shiny new car is tomorrow’s tired trade-in. The new house soon becomes just the house…and we all know what happens to campaign promises which raises the question: is everything advertised as new doomed to obsolescence?   The answer is offered in the imagery from the Book of Revelation. The one who sat on the throne said to me. “See I make all things new!” Great. But for how long? It seems to imply that this promise refers not only to the hereafter but also to the here and now as a foretaste. This is good news because it is an assurance that God is always with us. The passage goes on to say:  This is God’s dwelling among men. He shall dwell with them, and they shall be his people and they shall be their God who is always with them. That assurance that God is always with us evokes a response because deep in our hearts there is a longing for someone who will accept us for who and what with warts and all. Someone who will love us and support us in sorrow and hold us up in failure. That was the role our parents played for us when we were little. As children we all had the experience of being lost…that sudden loss of security draining from us leaving us feeling exposed and vulnerable. Sometimes that feeling came not from getting lost but getting betrayed. Children who have had their childhoods stolen or yanked away from them. By people they trusted, by those who themselves were lost.

These experiences are carried throughout their lives such that they are all secretly afraid of being hurt again or that their efforts at friendship and love will be rejected… that they will be let down, hurt, or abandoned by someone they love and trust. Afraid of when the old wound is reopened, and fear of loneliness is reinforced.

If this sounds at all familiar Jesus is saying to us: “See, I make all things new!”  

When no one else understands, there is one who does. When everyone else seems to ignore us, to reject us, to condemn us, there is one who accepts us. When I can’t find the other person to accept the love that I want to give, and to receive, there is one who does accept and receive and who loved me before I loved him and who loves me more than I can ever love him, who will go on loving me no matter what. And all this from someone who knew greater loneliness and more horrific betrayal than we can imagine. John records for us the departure of one of Jesus’ closest friends, who left to betray. The next words from Jesus’ mouth were not words of dismay but victory,” “Now is the son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him.”

What gave Jesus this ability to view the cross of betrayal and pain as the place of triumph?  It was his faith in a God who does make all things new. God fulfilled that promise for his son, however, not by delivering Jesus from death but by raising him on the third day to a new life beyond death. In his resurrection Jesus experienced the fulfillment of the great promise contained in the Book of Revelation where we hear about no more death or mourning, weeping or pain, for the former world has passed away.

For us the complete fulfillment of those promises belongs to the future. We heard in Acts: “We must undergo many trials if we are to enter into the reign of God.”  As long as this life endures, God’s promise to make all things new means not preservation from trial, but rather support in trials. God’s promise to make all things new is not like all those other promises. It isn’t a subterfuge or a distraction…It is a glorious reality.  But it is a reality which is both present and future. We live at the intersection of the “already” and the “not yet.” Already God is with us, supporting us in many ways: through his word, his sacraments, the discipleship of others. Already God is fulfilling his promise to make all things new.

Complete fulfillment of that promise belongs, however, to the “not yet.” Only in future life will God wipe away all tears from our eyes. Only beyond death shall we truly know what Jesus experienced in his resurrection: “no more death or mourning, crying out or pain, for the former world has passed away.” Life really is not a cheat in which everything new today turns out to be tomorrow’s burden. At least life is never a cheat as long as we consent to living it in the heart of Christ… Jesus Christ makes all things new, and he can make your life new. He will never do it, however, without your consent.

His assurance is certain, but it comes with strings attached. A willingness to let go of the old. And in the letting go discovering a new heart. A heart that sees past pain and betrayal. A heart that forgives. A heart that does not give up. A heart that makes it possible to enjoy that new Christ smell for all eternity.