Recap

The New Revised Standard Version God’s Mercy Remembered

7 I will recount the gracious deeds of the LORD,

the praiseworthy acts of the LORD,

because of all that the LORD has done for us,

and the great favor to the house of Israel

that he has shown them according to his mercy,

according to the abundance of his steadfast love.

8 For he said, “Surely they are my people,

children who will not deal falsely”;

and he became their savior

9 in all their distress.

It was no messenger or angel

but his presence that saved them;

in his love and in his pity he redeemed them;

he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.

Catching up on TV

I’ve been on vacation all this week.

And so naturally I’ve been catching up on a lot of old TV shows that I love.

One of my favorite things about jumping in to a marathon of the West Wing or Friends or something like that is the “Previously on...” part of the show.

You know, the recap!

They’ll show you a couple of clips of what has happened in previous episodes, so that you can catch where you are in the timeline.

But recaps do more than that.

If you pay attention, whoever directed the episode chose what they included in the recap to give you a clue about what’s coming.

They showed that one awkward conversation between two co-workers two seasons ago because this is the episode they’re going to get together.

They showed this secret mistake that a character made a few episodes back because this is the episode they’re going to get busted.

Things like that.

The recap, in other words, both shows us what has happened in the past, and how that past is going to impact the future.

Isaiah is Recapping What God Has Done

Isaiah starts this passage from the lectionary saying that he’s going to recount the gracious deeds of the Lord.

He’s going to sit back and think about what God has done for Isaiah, and the rest of God’s people.

He’s remembering times that God has shown favor to the house of Israel.

He’s remembering times that God has shown mercy.

He’s remembering when God dealt with them with “steadfast love.”

Essentially, in a season of turmoil and chaos, Isaiah is giving the people of Israel a recap.

If we would have kept reading, he goes back to that time Charlton Heston split the sea and the Israelites escaped the Egyptians.

He’s reminding people of what God has done.

So that they can understand what God is about to do.

What has God done for us?

We’ve talked a lot about what God has done for us in our advent and Christmas season together, and it might be worth a little recap.

Hope

God has reminded us that we have hope, but that hope is a verb, something that we have to do with our feet.

We can be the kind of change that we most want to see in the world as Ghandi said, when we take seriously our prayer “Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as in heaven.”

Earth can look more like Heaven tomorrow than it does today.

And we get a role to play in that.

Faith/Peace

God reminded us that our faith is what holds us, what we let hold us really, and that when we allow God to hold us it can lead us to tremendous peace.

We can have faith in the God who has said the lion and the calf shall lie together, and kids will play with rattle snakes and not get hurt.

I still struggle with that snake bit, but I’m trying!

We can lean back on God and let him and his peace hold us, like a skydiver places faith in his parachute.

Joy

We remembered that Joy has a lot of cheap imitations, and God really doesn’t want us to settle for any of them.

We should never settle for happiness alone, when we know that joy can pierce even our darkest sadness.

We should never settle for ignorance, but remind ourselves that joy isn’t afraid of our biggest challenges.

We should never settle for simply winning an argument, or making someone else suffer, because that’s just not anywhere near as beautiful as joy.

And we remember that whatever suffering comes in life, joy is powerful enough to push through and make us new.

Love

We looked at four different kinds of love in the Greek language, remembering that we only have one little word to cover a whole lot of ground.

But specifically, we looked at Agape love, a love that values the recipient above the giver.

We remembered that it’s the kind of love that Jesus shows to us on the cross by valuing our salvation above himself.

And we remembered that it’s the kind of love that Jesus asked us to share with each other, loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Light

On Christmas Eve, we shivered together and talked about how the light of the world has come to us, and the darkness cannot over come it.

For as imperfect as our attempts at hope, and faith, and peace, and joy, and love are, God shows up in the manger to be and do for us what we cannot be and do for ourselves.

And no matter how dark it gets out there, we’re basking in the light of Christ and his perfect love.

What direction is that pointing us?

That’s where we’ve been together as a church these last couple of weeks.

And as the busyness of Advent is passing this new pastor, I’m starting to wonder what direction it’s pointing us?

How can the recap we experience together inform our future, both as individuals and as a church?

Individual Recap

God Sightings

In previous churches I have worked for, we had the great pleasure that is known as Vacation Bible School, and I have to confess that I wasn’t a fan.

I have long said that VBS was trying to kill me, and then last summer I caught COVID at VBS, so I think it’s best not to tempt fate any more.

BUT! One of my favorite part of VBS was what we called God Sightings.

The leader would go out in to the sea of kids and ask where they had seen God in the day since we were last together.

And all the answers would be predictable for little kids.

I saw God in a butterfly that landed on my head.

I saw God in my friend when we went to the park.

I saw God in my aunt babysitting for us.

At first, it’s just a kind of a cute thing.

Until you realize that they really did see God in all of those things.

And that if we worked a little harder, maybe we’d see God there too.

How much of our days pass us by without any notice of what God has done in our lives?

How many events do we assume have nothing to do with our religion, when in fact God is right there in the center of it all?

Or maybe let’s put it this way: If we were asked to do an Isaiah-style recap of what God has done in our lives, could we answer?

Practicing Awareness

On a good day, it takes me about 35 minutes to get from my house to the church.

Unfortunately on the parkway east there aren’t that many good days.

But how many of you have experienced what I have over and over again.

You work a full day, you hop in the car, and the very next thing you are aware of is that you are in the driveway with no working memory of what happened on your commute?

35 minutes is a long time to be completely unaware of what’s going on around me!

And yet, we all have these experiences, don’t we?

There are seasons and times of our lives where we are sleep walking our way through, going through the motions and not really paying attention to what’s going on around us.

We can of course sleep walk our way through a daily commute.

We can sleep walk through another day at the office.

We can sleep walk our way through a friendship if we’re not careful.

We can sleep walk our way through church, never quite sure what’s going on as we go through the motions.

The cure to these sleep walking moments is to practice awareness.

There’s a reason I use the word practice here, because this is really hard!

It’s hard to notice what’s going on with your emotions through the day.

It’s hard to notice what your friend’s experiencing in your conversation.

It’s hard to notice the natural world around us on a grey and rainy day like today.

It’s hard to notice what God is up to in our lives if we’re too busy trying to live them for ourselves.

Documentation

I don’t really love new years resolutions.

For starters, only 9% of people actually stick with them through the year. That’s not a super high success rate!

But also it just kind of feels like a promise I’m making to myself without any kind of accountability if I miss it, so!

I’m telling you all one of my new years resolutions, and maybe inviting you to join me in it!

Every day, I hope and plan to journal with one simple question: Where have I seen God at work in my life?

Can I think back through the day, through the moments I was practicing awareness, and see God’s hand?

Can I think back through my day and see mercy?

Can I think back through my day and see steadfast love?

Can I think back through my day and see favor?

I’m just going to write it down every day, so that I can come back to it.

I can come back and recap where God has been at work in my own life, so that I can see better where I think God is taking me.

Personal Growth

I think it’s ok to try to plot out where God is taking us in the coming year.

It’s ok to try to grow in your relationship with God.

It’s ok to try to grow in your prayer life and habits, to set aside extra time in the day for that discipline.

It’s ok to name areas where you would like to grow as a person in your walk with Christ, whether that’s being more generous, or merciful, or patient, or kind.

It’s ok to try to grow in your community of faith, the church.

When we are acutely aware of where God has brought us, when we’ve paid attention to the recap, we can see where God wants to take us next.

Speaking of the church...

Church Wide Recap

History is great

One of my favorite parts in coming to a church like Beulah is the remarkable history we have behind us!

When your church is older than the country, you’ve probably seen a thing or two!

Our church has seen the revolutionary war, the birth of a nation.

We’ve seen that nation ripped apart by civil war.

We’ve seen that nation stand up for what’s right in two global wars.

We’ve seen the huge boom in church attendance in the 1950s and 60s.

And we’ve seen the great decline that all churches are experiencing in our current era, yet still managed to stay true to our mission and vision through it all.

Our history is great!

But our history isn’t just history.

It’s the record of what God is up to in the neighborhood.

It’s a reminder of what God can do when faithful folks gather together and ask how to help those in need.

It’s a reminder of what God can do when faithful folks gather together to ask tough questions.

It’s a reminder of what God can do when we as a community are paying attention to God’s favor, and mercy, and steadfast love.

History isn’t just history, it’s a recap of what God’s been up to in our community for generations and generations of Christians.

But of course, that leads to a question doesn’t it?

Where are we going next?

Communal Discernment

I’ll admit, I’ve been excited to get around to this question.

When you’re a new pastor in a church at Christmas time, you find yourself reacting to what’s coming next more often than not.

And that’s all lovely, but I’m a dreamer and I love to imagine!

I wonder what it would look like to leave a season of reaction as a church, and enter into a season of communal discernment?

I wonder what we would come to discover if we as a community asked ourselves where God was taking us next?

I wonder what kind of adventures we would go on if we as a community looked to the horizon of our faith and dreamed big?

I wonder what kind of life change we would see in those gathered here if we invited them into this work of imagination and vision?

I wonder how our community would change if we used where God has brought us to inform where God is taking us next?

Invitation

I can feel it in the room, some of you are starting to twitch and sweat a bit.

Because this all sounds a little like Presbyterians least favorite word: Change.

I actually had a member in my previous congregation who said she felt like she was allergic to the word change.

She wanted her church to stay the way it was when she grew up, because (rightly so) that was a comfort and a source of peace for her the way things were back then.

Of course they were!

The recap has some power behind it, doesn’t it?

So I made an invitation to her that seemed to be helpful:

What if I replaced the word “change” with the word “grow?”

The plants in my office are (miraculously) growing, which also means they’re not the same they were a few weeks ago when I moved them in., because growth will naturally lead to good change.

What if we weren’t trying to change the church, we were trying to grow the church?

What if we weren’t changing who we were as people, we were growing in to who God made us to be?

What if our neighborhood around us wasn’t changing, but growing into what God has called into being?

My invitation to us this year as a congregation is to grow together.

Don’t be shy about it either!

If you’re experiencing growth, come tell us!

Write me a note, give me a call, I’ll take you out to coffee.

We want to celebrate growth, and healing, and yes, even change as a community together.

Because the recap isn’t just about where we’ve been.

It’s about where we’re going.

Don’t just watch the recaps

It wouldn’t be any fun if I fast forwarded to the end of a particular show, and just watched the recap from the last episode, would it?

To be sure, I would probably get a pretty good glimpse at everything that had happened!

I’d be caught up!

And it would probably save a whole bunch of time!

But, I’d be missing the experience of the show.

Recaps of what God has done in our lives, both as individuals and as a church, are fantastic.

It’s great to be reminded of God’s favor toward us.

It’s fantastic to remember seasons of God’s mercy.

It’s wonderful to relive moments of steadfast love.

But don’t settle for the recaps alone.

Remember God’s favor, but now go show it to other people.

Remember God’s mercy, but now go live that mercy in your interactions with the community.

Relive moments of steadfast love, but never stop looking for it in each other.

Remember the history of this congregation and what it has meant to you, but never stop looking for ways to grow in hope, and faith, and peace, and joy, and love.

Don’t forget what God’s up to in the world, but may it always point us in the direction of where God is taking us in the world.

And may we always remember that God will walk with us every single step of the way.