The great American novelist William Faulkner once said, “The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.”

 Faulkner was speaking of a fundamental reality, a reality that Americans often like to ignore: the society in which we live, indeed the world in which we live, is formed and shaped by all of the decisions and choices which have been made before.  Just as the society as a whole has been shaped in this way, so too we, as individual members of society, are shaped by this communal past.

 As individuals, we carry that communal past around inside ourselves.  It is part of who we are.  It impacts the way in which we view the world.  It also has an impact on the decisions and choices we make in our own individual lives.  Indeed, the life that each one of us lives is a product of all the choices and decisions (both good and bad) that we have made throughout our lives.

 The past is a reality that we cannot ignore.  We cannot simply pretend that it has no influence on our lives today.  On the other hand, we cannot allow ourselves to become so “wrapped up” in the past, that we become bound by it and unable to see new possibilities for our lives and for our future.  The past is part of who we are, but we are not slaves to it.  It is part of us, but it does not have to be what defines us.

 The ancient Israelites treasured their communal past.  The event which defined them as people was the Exodus from Egypt, for it was in the Exodus that God constituted them as His people.  Every year, they commemorated that defining event in the Feast of the Passover.  Observant Jews today continue to celebrate the Passover from Egypt.

 For centuries following the Exodus and their arrival in the Promised Land, the ancient Israelites lived as God’s people in that Land.  But they strayed from His ways and sinned.  Eventually, they had gone so far away from God, that He allowed them to be carried off into exile by the Babylonians.  It seemed to them that God had abandoned them to the consequences of their sins.  It seemed to them that they were no longer going to exist as a people.  They no longer had the land, but they still had their past.  And it was to their past that they continued to cling.

That is the context of our first reading today.  In the reading, we hear the words of God to His people spoken through the mouth of the Prophet Isaiah:

 “Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new!  Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  …for I put water in the desert and rivers in the wasteland for my chosen people to drink, the people whom I formed for myself, that they might announce my praise.”

 The Lord is not telling His people that their past is completely without consequence, but He is reminding them that it is not their past that defines them as a people.  It is not the Exodus, nor is it the possession of the Land, nor is it their sins and unfaithfulness that define them as a people.  It is God who defines them.  It is He who makes them a people.

 He is telling them that He remains with them, and that He is about to do something new for them.  And so He does.

 The Babylonian Empire is eventually defeated by a new power on the world stage: the Persians.  And one day, the Persian king Cyrus issues a decree, seemingly out of the blue, telling the Israelites that they are to return to their land.

 That is the context of the psalm today: “When the Lord brought back the captives of Zion, we were like men dreaming.  Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with rejoicing.”

 Brothers and sisters, this is what the Lord wants each of us to know as well.  All of us, every single one of us, lives with the consequences of sin in our lives.  Every one of us, if we are honest with ourselves, can point to at least one sin (and probably many more) and say, “I wish had not done that, for it has led to this, and this, and this, with the result that I have messed up my life, my relationship with others, and my relationship with God.

 Like the ancient Israelites hauled off into captivity in Babylon, we have to live with those consequences.  That is what the Church is talking about when she talks about the “temporal consequences of sin.”

 But that does not have to be the end of the story.  Those sins do not have to be the definition of us from now on.  For we do not have to live with what the Church calls the “eternal consequences of sin.”  Just as God did something new for the ancient Israelites and restored them to the Promised Land, so He is willing to do something new for each of us as well.

 It is summed up in the words of Jesus to the woman caught in adultery: “Neither do I condemn you.  Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.”

 “Neither do I condemn you:” the eternal consequences of the sins of each one of us have been paid for by Christ on the Cross.

 “Go, and from now on do not sin anymore:” the temporal consequences we take care of, by cooperating with God’s grace and living lives of faith, hope, and love.