What’s Old Is New Again

And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”—Matthew 13:52

They say fashions cycle.

I’ve reached the age where the clothes we wore as a teenagers are cool again—at least some of them. In recent months I’ve seen high-waisted jeans, Swatches, checkered Vans, along with Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine t-shirts. (One of my favorite pastimes is asking the young people wearing these shirts their thoughts on the music of the band shirt they are wearing. We’ll save that for another time.) Our fashion memories are short. In the search of the new, we inevitably come back to what we’ve already tried.

It’s not just fashion. This is why Hollywood remakes movies. The older among us want to relive the nostalgia. The younger among us will find it new and fresh.

Sometimes we return to the old simply because it’s better. I’ve been cooking more lately, rediscovering some of the recipes we used to make when I was a young man. There’s no arguing: butter is immensely better than any attempt at substitution. Over the years I’ve tried margarine, Pam, and any number of other cooking fats, but diced onion sautéed in butter creates an angelic magic that cannot be replicated. My arteries may harden, but older is undoubtedly better.

I’ve watched this return to the old play out in my personal faith, and, in some ways, the larger evangelical church. There have been any number of innovations—from music to lighting—in the way churches have operated. The church has tried earnestly to take her message to the masses using any number of available methods.

I’m in favor of that—keeping fresh methods in order to reach new iterations of culture. I love plenty of the new songs; I appreciate creative approaches.

But I discovered that while the methods may change, I need the story to stay the same.

Confession: Fifteen or twenty years ago I “explored” a bit theologically. In one sense, I think such exploration is a normal part of maturation. Young people often explore, testing the foundations upon which they have previously built their lives. And for a season, I was the stereotypical young person. I marched into the ideological underbrush, hacking away, looking for any sort of theology that was new, that was fresh. At first many of the new theologies I discovered seemed new and exciting.

But in the end they turned out to simply be recycled philosophical fashions. They had new names, but the ideas were the same. They were just old theologies gussied up in fresh window dressing.

When I returned to Jesus, in all his glory, his message seemed like something I had never heard before. Looking back, I am not certain. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention; maybe I had selective hearing, or maybe I had never been fully exposed to its beauty. And it was beautiful. It was a treasure house, and I was bringing out old and new treasures—the old ones I remembered and the new ones I was finding in orthodoxy for the first time.

Once I found it again, I knew I would never leave.

Once I found it again, I knew I would tell everyone its beauty.

Here, in Eastertide, I find myself contemplating truths of the Resurrection I never contemplated when I was young. In fact, in discovering the depth of the Resurrection, those other “theologies” I once “explored” to find now seem like faddish fashions. Meanwhile, Jesus seems timeless, bottomless—impossible to fully fathom. The Resurrection alone is incomprehensible. Think on this: God plans to one day resurrect the cosmos and, in the process, to bring the church along for the ride. Yes, you read that correctly. God plans to resurrect our bodies, to involve us in the eternal work of remaking the universe. The new heaven and new earth will somehow be better than anything we have ever experienced on the day we first arrive, and yet we will work together—forever—to make it even more glorious.

The Resurrection of Jesus is stunning in its implications: if the Resurrection of Jesus is true, then Jesus is God. If the Resurrection is true, then we can live the Kingdom of God with full faith. If the Resurrection is true, the very Spirit of God has entered us and given us power to live with freedom. If the Resurrection is true, I do not fear death. If the Resurrection is true, I can fully live now, and I will live forever. And that’s just one plot point in the Old Story.

Take that, recycled and faddish theologies. I don’t need you.

What’s old is making me new all over again.