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My heart beats for love. I want to be different. I want to be who I am called to be. WORTHY and LOVED!

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Isaiah 43: 16-21

We have reached the end of 2016, with 2017 approaching from just around the corner. As we gather for worship this evening, we come both to remember and to anticipate. To look back and look forward. 
While the world around us is getting ready to flip the calendar we have gathered together this evening for a holy time of worship. For centuries, Christians have gathered together on the evening of New Years Eve for watch night services - to think about the past year and to make confession in order to prepare for the year ahead. John Wesley held the first watch night service in the Methodist tradition in 1740 - following the lead of the Moravians who had been having such services years earlier. Tonight we join the chorus of the Saints who have went before us in worship.
When selecting a text for this evening, I could not help but go back to one of my favorites, found in the book of Isaiah. Close your eyes for a moment as we set the scene. The people of Israel are in exile. Years prior they had been taken captive by the Babloyians. They have lost everything - their homes, the temple, their sense of lively hood, their community. They are in a foreign place where they have been told to set down roots, and surely they asked themselves time and time again where God was and why this happened to them?
Brothers and sisters, over the last year how many of us have felt like we were in exile as well? Maybe we were in a familiar place geograpically, but we found ourselves going through situations that we would rather not have faced. Death of people that we have loved. Illnesses that we didn’t see coming. Hospital stays. Surgeries. Relationships that were important to us ending. We have walked through some dark valleys, brothers and sisters, some of which we are still wrestling with. We have faced impossible things, some of which almost seemed to destroy us. We have went through grief - there wasn’t a way around it. Yet here we stand, about to enter into a new year.
As we look back on 2016, some of us may have questions about why these things happened to us. I stand before you this evening, and honestly say I don’t know. I cannot fully comprehend why we went through some of the dark valleys and challenges that we have faced. But I can confidently say that Christ walked with us the entire time, even when we could not perceive him. 
The people of Israel were on the brink of losing hope. They had been in exile so long that a generation, the keeper of their stories and traditions, had begun to die off. They were forgetting who they were in. And in this time of seemingly complete despair and exile came a word of hope - God is doing a new thing and they are going to return to the land that they left so long ago. 
There is hope, because even though the people of Israel had no idea how God was going to do it - they were going to return to a land they were on the brink of forgetting. A place that seemed like a distant memory. The Lord was going to make a way for them through the sea- just like God did so long ago for their forefathers and foremothers that were fleeing Egypt. They were going to be promised a new beginning.
But here is the thing about God making a way - it usually isn’t the way that we would choose. People don’t wake up in the morning and say that they easiest path they want to take for the day is to go through the sea. And yet, that is the path that God is creating in order to bring newness - new life, new beginnings. Our God makes a way when there seems to be no way - it may not be the way we would choose - often through instead of around - but God makes a way.
The real question for us on the brink of 2017 is this: are we willing to follow wherever God leads us on this path to newness? Are we willing to risk going into the unknown with God at our side? 
The problem that we face on New Years Eve - the delimma if you will - is whether we are willing to move forward into a new year or whether we want to stay in the past - as painful as it may have been for us. Because at least with the past we know what we went through. God has a word for us about the past this evening - don’t remember the former things because God is about to do something radically new.
This is hard for us to hear. It was certainly hard for the ancient Israelites to hear. God was just speaking to them about making a path through the waters - something God did for them when they were fleeing Egypt! How could they help but remember the former things - they were their story, their identity. Thing didn’t go well for them when they forgot the former things of old. Yet, here is God telling them not to dwell on the past, because it could prevent them from moving forward into the future.
So it is with us, brothers and sisters. We know that we worship a God who has delivered us in the past, and we need to tell those stories. Especially this evening. But we can’t become so rooted in the past that God cannot use us in the future. We cannot become so focused on 2016 or years gone by that it keeps us from faithfully following where God may lead us as individuals and as a congregation in 2017. 
What if God wants to lead us on a different path from the exile of 2016 into the freedom of 2017 then what we expected? Then what we are comfortable with? Are we still willing to go? What if like the Israelites, we are being led out of exile to a place where we need to rebuild? Would we chase after God? God is making a way, through the wilderness, and we might not know exactly where we will end up, but we know that God will not fail us! 

So what is holding us back? Are we ready for what 2017 may bring and we trust our faithful God!