Sunday Communion & Prayer - January 2nd, 2022: sermon – “Mary Hopkins only got it half right!”
(Please read Isaiah 43: 15-21 & Philippians 3: 7-14)
“And so this is Christmas and what have we done? Another year over and a new one just begun… and so happy Christmas…we hope you have fun… the near and the dear one, the old and the young…” (John Lennon)
Another year over…a new one just begun…more questions arise…what will the New Year be like; what will become of us; how long will this go on; will we ever get back to normal; what should we do? Some events are life-altering, like our “pandemic”. Where do we even begin; should we even bother?!
Generations of people have lamented their experience of exile. Isaiah 43 was written for Jewish exiles who had been away from home for decades. They are in Babylon, not Jerusalem. Year upon year hope had ebbed away like a tide that (seemed) would never flow in again. Their children and grandchildren only knew exile. They sound a bit like us, I think!
Our church memberships have declined; our demographic has changed; churches have combined or closed. That downward trend didn’t happen over-night; it began a century ago; we have long lived with this reality in the UK. We still reminisce, though, about the glory days when the whole town, old and young, sang together in the building and ‘everyone’ in the land believed in God.
So, how might we (Sion Baptist Church) begin this New Year? We begin with God’s word… a motto for 2022 which is…
18 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 19 See, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? (I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland).
1. Remember - The first word is not (ironically) forget but ‘remember’: remember our God, who he is, and what his track record is. I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick (verses 15-17).
Remember God, the Holy One, the Creator of Israel, the King, and the God of the Exodus who delivered Israel at the Red Sea from the Egyptians. This is the powerful and holy God of our faith. In times of discouragement and decline we forget the track record of our powerful and majestic God. But he has not changed. He is still the same. We may have declined but he has not. Remember, just because there are clouds in the sky, doesn’t mean the sun isn’t shining. People have grappled with this hiddenness of God. God is harder to find when we (like the exiles) become complacent or lazy or presumptuous. He may retreat from us in order to make us serious in seeking after him and responding to him.
God also seems to be hidden when we have deliberately turned our backs on him. That was what happened to the Jewish exiles in Babylon: they were in that desert because they were no longer a people devoted to God. So it may be that the hiddenness of God calls us to examine our own hearts and see whether there is anything to confess there. People in exile often blame God or others for the state they’re in…
Sometimes we think God is hidden, when he isn’t. We think God is present only in joy, in health and wealth. We forget that God is the God of the Cross as well as the God of the Resurrection. God is present in the suffering and the brokenness to redeem these for his loving purposes. We may assume he is hidden or absent but (with unaided vision) we cannot see his presence in the darkness – but he’s inescapably there (Psalm 139).
These are not the days to reduce our belief in him or our expectations of him, but to affirm that ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever’ (Hebrews 13:8); the days to encourage one another to go on believing in the God of the Exodus, the God who brought back the exiles; who raised his Son from the dead and who poured out his Spirit in power at the first Christian Pentecost. Communion is for remembering the God of the past is the God of today: ‘Lord, we remember you. We believe in you. We trust you. We are here to respond in service because of your unfailing love…’
2. Forget:
If God’s first word to us is ‘remember’, his second word is ‘forget’: 18 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 19 See, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? (I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland).
The former things or the things of old…. What are they? God has just been reminding them of his mighty acts of deliverance in the Exodus: how can he tell Israel to forget the very event that forged them as a nation? It’s like telling Christians to forget Easter. That’s a bit strong! But strong words are needed to encourage the spiritual discipline of forgetting. The problem for Israel was not their allegiance to the God of the Exodus, but the way they lived in the past – like the sentiment shared in Mary Hopkins’ 60s song, “Those were the days, my friend; we thought they’d never end – we’d sing and dance for ever and a day…we’d fight and never lose…” It must have been wonderful back in those good old days!
The LORD seems to be saying, ‘it is one thing to learn from the past but it’s quite another to live in the past…’ Living in the (success or failure of) past is disabling. You will never be satisfied with today. You cannot see the new thing God is doing, or hear the word for today – now. We speak of people looking at the past through rose-tinted spectacles. Living in the past imagines things were great and ignores the problems. That’s “just my imagination, running away with me…” That’s an affront to God, like saying ‘I know best; I trust my perception that the best has been…’
We do get nostalgic – but it’s wrong for Christians who only ever look back; who think, “I have more life behind me than ahead of me!” Pagans think that way. We have the hope of heaven! We have much to look forward to. To look back and not to expect God to be at work today is simply a lack of faith and a recipe for misery. Lot’s wife famously looked back at Sodom and ended up as a pillar of salt. When in Isaiah God says, ‘Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old’, he warns of the dangers of being pillars of salt, petrified spiritually.
Paul put it this way: Beloved I do not consider that I have made it my own but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14)
Forgetting is a difficult discipline - devotion to the past leads only to complaining about the present. ‘Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living’. It’s one thing to remember the tradition that tells us of the mighty God we love, serve and trust; it’s quite another to stay shackled to the tired (old) ways that squeeze the life and hope from us – that wants “business as usual”. The first we should remember, the second we should forget. We want a living faith, an in-the-present-Spirit-filled-faith…
3. Look Forward…
Remembering sets firm our foundations; forgetting clears away the debris; looking forward means building:
“I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honour me… for I give (them) water in the wilderness…rivers in the desert (and I) give drink to my…people…so that they might declare my praise. (Verses 19-21).
God was making a way through the desert, sustaining folk for the journey, and calling them home… Exile does not last forever. Decline is not the final word. God has other plans. He will have the final word, not the pessimists inside or outside the church. Individual churches may close and denominations that don’t adapt may suffer but Jesus said that he would build his church on the confession of faith in him and the gates of Hades would not prevail against it (Matthew 16:18).
God wants us to look forward to a future of hope. He wants to preserve and build his people. He says in verse 21 it is ‘so that they might declare my praise.’ Not just praise, you notice, but ‘declare [his] praise’. We are to be preserved not only for praise but for mission. We look forward to a calling to declare God’s praise, and that means witness. It means mission.
God can lead his people (out of exile) to new places of refreshing where we are to declare his praise and sing; not those were the days – but these are the days of Elijah!
The arrival of a new year brings a great opportunity to renew our faith and love for God and Jesus and to remind us of who we are: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come".
2021 may have brought success and joy or grief, setback, and struggle – or some combination of both; but you can (you must) press on into 2022 with hope... "for I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
Let's end this year with a thankful heart and start the New Year with peace and faith. Let us forget the (former things of) bitterness and frustrations of the past year. Let us move into the next year knowing that God loves us and wants the best for us. Let's pray that the New Year will be focused on healing through repentance and the renewing of our minds.
We really don’t have a choice but to remember…to forget…and look forward…
MFR (30/12/21)