Looking Ahead to New Things

 Thank you.

You may be seated, people of God.

And before I read the Older Testament scripture, our preaching text this morning, let me just say welcome and thank you for having me here.

It's so good to be here.

I'm a new face to you.

For many of you, you're a new face to me.

And I'm delighted to be here.

My family's delighted to be here.

We drove on Friday all the way down from Chico, California to be with you this morning.

And so everything's new for the Medina family.

 everything new place new house new church new faces new names and maybe you can understand people of god a your own sense of newness like for many of you for some of you at least it's a new school year we are at the dawn

 of a new school year i'm sorry to remind you of that for some of you that may not be good news that may be bad news but it's also exciting too because there are new opportunities before us maybe you're also in a new season of life maybe you are entering um grandparenting or parenting

 Maybe you are entering into a work new or a retirement new, or maybe your new just is new for you.

Like maybe you've moved or you're new to church or you're new to faith.

Whatever your new looks like this morning, all of us approach new a little differently.

A little differently.

New can be exciting.

New can be interesting.

 New can also be anxiety producing.

I know I get a little anxious as I'm up here right before a new crowd, but you know what?

Comforts me a great deal.

I'm not nearly as anxious right now as the committee that hired me.

They're way more.

So that gives me comfort.

That's new.

That's new for them.

It's new for you.

And I hope you know this morning that God

 does new things.

God does new things in our lives.

In fact, that's the great news is that God is a God of renewal and God invites us into the new thing that God does.

 That's a beautiful thing.

And I want you to think about that as we read from our Older Testament scripture this morning.

And that, by the way, the New Testament correction was from Simeon, not Zechariah.

It was his prophetic oracle.

So Simeon was thinking about God's new in Luke chapter two.

I was in the same general vicinity in the gospel of Luke, but here we're jumping back.

 hundreds of years to the sixth century BCE to the prophet Isaiah.

And we're going to look at Isaiah chapter 42 verses one through nine.

I invite you to hear God's word from the Older Testament this morning.

It reads, Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights.

 I've put my spirit upon him.

He will bring forth justice to the nations.

He will not cry or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street.

A bruised reed he will not break.

In a dimly burning wick he will not quench.

He will faithfully bring forth justice.

He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands.

Wait for his teaching.

 Thus says God, the Lord who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it.

I am the Lord.

 I have called you in righteousness.

I have taken you by the hand and kept you.

I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison, those who sit in darkness.

I am the Lord.

That is my name.

My glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols.

See?

 The former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare.

Before they spring forth, I tell you of them."

Friends, this is the word of the Lord again, and so we can say together, would you pray with me a prayer of illumination this morning?

God in Christ, we give you thanks because you are the God who opens our ears and opens our eyes, opens our minds to all things new.

 So as we lean in this morning, as we seek to hear from your word, great God, we pray that you would enliven and enlighten our spirits and minds, that the word of God would be just that, your word, spoken and proclaimed, and that we might bear good fruit as a result of hearing it and allowing it to be in our very beings.

We pray this in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and all God's people said.

 Not about you, but when I was growing up, new was a very exciting thing.

I remember growing up and not everyone approaches new the same way I did as a child.

But for example, when a new album came out, like if there were had Taylor Swift been around when I was young, if a Taylor Swift drop party had happened, I would have been all about it.

My bands were a little different.

I'm not going to name them because that would date me.

But

 But I loved new releases.

New releases in theaters, for example, were so fantastic.

I remember, and this will date me, I was very young, but when the first Batman movie came out with Michael Keaton and Kim Basinger and Jack Nicholson, I was so thrilled.

I had grown up with Batman and I couldn't wait to go to, we had to go to the theaters back then, you may remember, but we had to go and to see this new premiere movie.

New was so fun, even new school year, though I wouldn't have admitted it as a high school kid.

 I anticipated the new school year.

I did.

I would have never told you that had you asked.

I'd have been like, no, I'm not looking forward to it.

But I really did anticipate new friends.

And maybe this year I'll make good grades.

And maybe this year I'll be a new me.

Like I had expectation and anticipation about what was new.

 Now, as I got older, I have to say, new isn't like that as much anymore.

Now a new school year is like the same old morning routine.

Ugh, I dread it every time we get into the new school year because I know the routine.

It's the same old, same old routine, and we've got to get the kids to school.

And I approach, actually, films that way.

Now, I've seen them all, it seems.

A new superhero film?

Do we really need another Batman?

I don't know.

 There's been six iterations.

Now, Spider-Man, that franchise, maybe, because Into the Spider-Verse really blew my mind.

But that's beside the point.

I've been there, done that, same old, same old, seen that movie, seen that actor, know his reputation, not all that exciting anymore for me.

And when it comes to newness, we can get stuck in the same patterns in our relationship with God.

 Without renewal in our relationship with God, scripture and church and the routine of going to God in the day in and the day out can feel, well, routine.

Same old, same old.

 Nothing's really new.

And how do we get out?

How do we experience?

How do we embrace and recognize what God wants to do if indeed God wants to do a new thing in your life?

Doesn't God want to do a new thing in your life?

 I think so.

I think God wants to do a new thing in my life and God wants to do a new thing in us as a church together.

What does that look like?

How do we embrace it?

How do we not allow cynicism to get in the way?

There's a deep streak of cynicism in our culture about newness.

 about what's new.

In fact, you may hear it in things like this.

I've heard this quote time and time again.

People don't change.

They just get stuck in their ways as they get older.

Have you ever heard that?

That people get stuck in their ways as they get older?

I don't know what they're talking about.

I'm as

 Yeah, it's out there, this cynicism about people and change.

Generally speaking, you can find that quote attributed to almost anyone on the internet, by the way, that people don't change.

Nothing's really new.

You may even quote the book of Ecclesiastes to prove that nothing really changes.

The book of Ecclesiastes, the wisdom book in the Older Testament, you may know it.

Here's what the book of Ecclesiastes says.

This is the message version.

I'll show it on the screen.

It says,

 Nothing really changes.

Does anyone say, hey, what's new?

Nothing.

Don't get too excited.

It's the same old story.

 That's from Ecclesiastes.

And one might wonder, if you're wondering with me now, does anything really ever change?

Aren't we just repeating the same cycles of history over and over and over with new gizmos, with new technologies?

Isn't that what's really happening?

Is anything really ever new?

And while we should listen to the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, cynicism is not what the author is targeting right there.

And cynicism can get in the way.

It can get in the way.

 of our embracing God's new for us.

So cynicism, the attitude that says nothing ever changes can get in the way.

But the other thinking that can get in the way, kind of on the other end of the spectrum, is certainty about what God's new should or ought to look like or feel like.

That can get in the way of our embracing and recognizing God's new.

I remember my

 Second ordained call.

We moved from Pennsylvania to Northern California to Chico.

This was in February of 2020.

And that was a long drive, by the way.

That's about three days, that trip.

I know because I counted.

I was in the car, every single one of them.

And I had ample time to myself.

I was driving alone.

And my role in this new church was to be the pastor of Emerging Adult Ministries, 18 to 29 years old.

And I thought, my question was, what does it mean to be the church?

 for young people today.

And so I had already started before the road trip doing my homework, looking at the research, reading the books.

But by the time I got to California, I had ingested about five more books and 30 more podcasts.

 I mean, I walked into that office in Chico thinking to myself, wow, I really think I get it.

I know what it means to be a future church for young people, because after all, I've downloaded about 15 terabytes of information.

That's how, I mean, I was ready.

I knew what new should feel and look like.

That was February of 2020, and then March hit.

Do you remember March?

 of 2020.

I don't know if you remember this, but there was a virus.

I forget what it was called.

I think it had to do with a crown.

Anyways, there was a virus and everything shut down and everything I thought

 about what it meant to be the church for young people changes.

There was no podcast, no book.

There was no study that helped me know how to be the church during a global pandemic.

I was completely unprepared.

I was also unprepared for how the church reacted to how to be the church in the pandemic and the heated exchanges that took place.

Totally unprepared for that.

 God's new didn't look like what I was so certain it ought to or should.

Certainty can get in the way.

If we're absolutely certain what we think God's new should look like, should feel like, or if we're cynical, both those things can get in the way of our embracing and recognizing God's new.

And if there was ever a time when the people of God needed to

 be open and receptive to the new thing God was doing.

It was during the period we call exile.

We read from Isaiah and that was the historical context, exile.

You may know the story of Israel.

You may know the story of God's people.

There were some really good moments throughout the older Testament with God's people.

There was the promise made to Abraham.

You remember that?

You will be a blessing to the nation's peak moment.

 for God's people.

There was liberation under the leadership of Moses out of Egypt.

That was a peak moment, parting the Red Sea.

They would sing about that for centuries, the people of God would.

There was the reign of King David and the political success of King David, subduing his enemies on all side, peak moment.

But there were some really, really dark valleys.

 that the people of God, the perpetual cycles of idolatry, the continuing conflict with neighboring nations, the division between North and South, real dark moments for God's people, really low moments.

But nothing was quite as low

 as the forced migration from the Holy Land to Babylon under King Nebuchadnezzar.

Nothing was as low as that.

That was the loss of temple.

That was the loss of Jerusalem.

That was the loss of land.

That was the loss in many ways of God's promise when that happened.

Nothing was so low as exile.

And into that moment, into that dark valley, here's the prophet Isaiah.

The prophet Isaiah covers 200 years of Israel's history.

 before, during, and after exile.

And when we're in chapter 42, that's late in the game.

Israel is in exile, anticipating, asking new questions.

What does God's new look like?

Here into that dark place, God, or excuse me, Isaiah, God through Isaiah says this.

He says, behold, I declare to you new things.

I'm declaring new things to you.

Like before they're even taking place, I'm letting you know.

That's the scripture we read this morning.

 And I wonder, I wonder with you, like, what does it look like for you?

Does that fill you with excitement to think about your life right now and to say, what new thing does God want to do in me, in my family or in my life?

God wants to do and will do a new thing.

Like that pattern of thought will be altered.

That habit will be changed.

That relationship will be mended.

That's the new thing.

 In you, in your family, in your church, God wants to do a new thing.

And God is telling the people of God in that low place, hey, I'm doing a new thing.

And what if God were telling you that here right now?

What would that look like?

How would you be ready and receptive and open to God's new thing?

I wish when it came to God's new, I had like instructions.

 Do you wish you had instructions?

Very specific steps that I could take when I'm trying to figure out what new thing does God want me to do?

What job should I take?

Who do I marry?

What school do I go to?

What do I do with my kids or my grandkids now that they're at this season of life?

 Why aren't there instructions?

Some people say the Bible is basic instructions before leaving earth.

Have you heard that acronym?

I don't experience the Bible like that.

Often I'm in the Bible's world, not in my own when I'm reading it.

And I don't know how exactly the one applies to the other.

So if we don't get instructions, what do we get in the scriptures?

 How does God prepare us for God's new?

Well, interestingly, Isaiah 42 is not instructions for the people of Israel in exile.

It's a song.

It reads like a song.

 It reads like a sonnet.

It reads like prophetic prose.

And the first verse goes something like this.

We read it, but I'll reframe it.

There's Isaiah 42, 9, but I'll reframe the first verse.

It says something like, here is my servant, my chosen one in whom I uphold, in whom my soul delights.

He will bring forth justice to the nations.

He won't...

 or he won't break a bruised reed, he won't sniff out a snuffed wick, all this language about the gentle, persistent way of this mysterious servant who's gonna do a new thing.

 We don't know who the servant is.

We just get a song about what the servant's gonna do.

The second verse goes something like this.

It's like, I'm the Lord.

I am the creator of everyone and everything.

I put life and spirit in everyone and everything.

And the servant he is addressing, God is the servant now.

And he says, the servant will open blind eyes and lead prisoners out of the dungeon and bring them out of deep darkness.

 So again, the second verse of the same song, a song about a servant.

You might be wondering, as I was when I read this text, what in the world does this have to do with new?

And what does this have to do with the people of God in exile or us for that matter?

Why do we get prophecy in the form of song?

Well,

 I was thinking about the way in which cynicism and certainty can get in the way.

And I often wonder if what we need to experience, to be receptive to and embrace God's new are bigger imaginations.

We need bigger imaginations.

Our imaginations are by nature limited.

This is why cynicism and certainty are such things.

 are such stumbling blocks on the journey to embracing God's new.

And I thought of this story my friend told me.

My friend was invited to a grill out.

In Texas, if you're invited to a barbecue, that's 4 a.m., we're gonna get on the smoker.

In California, if you're invited to a barbecue, that's 10 a.m., we're gonna fire up the gas grill for burgers.

It's a different thing.

So we're gonna call it a grill out.

My friend was invited to a grill out and it was a bring your own,

 like steak kind of vibe.

Have you ever been to a party like this where you brought your own steak?

Neither have I. It was a unique moment apparently.

I never, but anyways, my friend decides to go to his neighborhood grocery store and to look for the best

 thickest, most deep steak he could find, and he did.

Man, it was a beautiful red, and it was like, I don't know how many inches.

And he was so excited, and so the butcher wrapped it up for him, and he put the paper around it, and he brought it, and he goes to the grill out, and there's the grill, and there's steaks already on the grill.

He's very excited now, and he unwraps the steak, and he puts the thing next to it, and the first thing he noticed is the steak next to his, which was bigger, which was darker, and which had like a more beautiful marble pattern throughout.

 And what he thought was a beautiful steak now looked very pale and weak and small in comparison to this other steak and his masculinity already compromised.

He decided to ask who the steak belonged to.

And this one gentleman came forward and he said, I got to know, where'd you get that steak?

And he said, oh, I got it at a butcher shop.

And that was all the difference.

 See, my friend didn't know what a good steak ought to look like because he was shopping, God bless them, at the neighborhood grocery store.

He didn't know that the butcher shop, the one down the street, actually had a much bigger, deeper product.

 And I wonder, it's a silly analogy, but I wonder if we're often thinking that God's new looks like the grocery store steak when God wants to offer the butcher shop, but God is in the butcher shop.

That's the connection in the analogy, you follow?

All right, good, good, we're tracking, good.

Okay, it's a terrible analogy, but it works for me because I want to, I know that my imagination is limited by virtue of the fact that I've been stopping at the grocery store and I need to, God's at the butcher shop.

It's bigger, it's larger, it's deeper.

 than anything we could offer and possibly imagine.

But C.S.

Lewis said it way better than this.

C.S.

Lewis, the great 20th century theologian, he said, we are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us.

Like the ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.

 we are far too easily pleased.

Now that, that is a good invitation to what God's new looks like, a holiday at the sea when what we're used to, when what our imaginations are working with are mud pies in the slum.

It's the difference between God's new and what we think new should feel like and look like and be like.

So where does this leave us though, when it comes to the particulars of our lives?

 when it comes to our stories, like what choices to make in the day to day.

What did it mean for Israel in exile?

I mean, this is great that God introduces a song about a servant, great.

And that that expands our imaginations about what justice should look like and what truth should look like and what the prisoners being freed should look like and what people bring out of darkness and blind eyes open should look like.

But where does that leave us in the future as we just try to figure out how to muddle through life?

 It's a real question.

It was a real question for Israel.

It's a real question for us as we think about what does God's new look like?

And I heard it best.

There was a podcast I listened to.

It's called Conversing.

And a friend of mine, Michaela O'Donnell, she wrote a book called Make Work Matter.

And in that book, Michaela describes what it looks like to be people who treat work, all work,

 our careers, our jobs, but also just like who we are and how we're built in this world as vocations.

So no matter what season of life you're in, work or retirement or you're studying, all of life is a vocation, a calling.

And she said something remarkably good that had to do with nesting dolls.

This is going to make sense in a second.

 But do you know these Russian nesting dolls?

The one fits inside of the other until you get to the core and the core is solid.

You follow me?

I know we're jumping from song to nesting dolls, but follow.

So she said, you know, calling is like this.

She said, this is how we think about what it means to embrace the future when we're thinking about how we're called to be in the world.

She said, the center, the middle, the core, the thing that's solid is that we belong.

 We belong to Christ.

That's the center.

Everything out of calling starts from there.

By faith, you belong to Jesus.

And that's where you start.

That's where you start in the world.

That's how you walk into the future.

You belong to Christ.

We belong to Christ.

 That's where you start, that's the core.

But then there's another layer and the core fits inside that layer.

Picture the nesting doll.

And the next layer is that we're part of God's redemptive mission in the world.

We are called to do justice, to set the world right, to love our neighbors.

We're called to bless and to feed the hungry.

We're called

 to come alongside others in every stage of life and walk with them and help them flourish.

When we do that, we are participating in the mission of God in the world.

When we tell others about the great Christian story and the promises we've received in Jesus Christ, we're inviting others into that relationship that we have with God.

God's redemptive mission in the world is the second layer of calling.

You are called to that as am I. And we can walk into the future knowing that truth, but there's a third layer.

 You take the, we belong to Christ, we're called to mission and you put it in the third nesting doll.

And the third nesting doll is that we are also given creative agency because we're made by a creator God.

You heard that in Isaiah 42, I am the Lord.

I give life and spirit to everyone and everything.

So you friends are wired, wired is the wrong word, created in a very particular way.

 And it's out of that, the more you know yourself and how you're created, the more you can operate with creativity about what choices to make in the world and how to participate in the mission of God, how to belong to Christ.

It's your creativity and your work and in your family and your relationships that makes you, you.

 And that's the third layer of calling.

And we can walk into the world confident the more we know ourselves, the more we know how God has created us and the creativity given to us.

And finally, there's that fourth outer layer, that last nesting doll.

I know there's five up there, but work with four, because it gets too confusing.

But the fifth or the fourth layer of calling is all the particulars.

We're called to people, we're called to places,

 We're called to work.

We're called to the unique circumstances of our lives.

There's no instructions for that.

There's no step-by-step process when we're walking with God.

But when we know how we're created, and we know that we're part of God's mission in the world, and when we know that we belong to Christ, we can do so with courage and confidence and embrace God's new plan.

 What I love about the servant song in Isaiah 42, and in this dark moment in Israel's past, God says, I'm not gonna give you instructions.

I'm gonna give you a song.

And the song is about who you are.

You are chosen.

Well, the servant is chosen.

The servant is blessed, but you, this song is also about you, Israel.

This song is also about the church.

This song is also about you, friends.

You are chosen.

God delights in you.

You belong.

 And this servant, the song goes on, will do justice to the nations.

This servant will open blind eyes.

And so will you.

You will, in God's mission in the world, participate.

As you follow this God, you also will take up the mission of this servant.

 And you're creative because God is a creator.

The song mentioned that.

So Israel's imagination given the song was expanded.

I invite you to think about how this song could be expanding your imagination.

How this song could be about you, even though it's about a servant.

Because 500 years later, this servant will be named Jesus.

Israel didn't know that, we do.

 But when we friends, when we find ourselves belonging to him, this Jesus, and when we come to recognize that it's his mission that we follow, when we say our yes to him, when we friends recognize that we're created uniquely and we get to be creative with our lives, when we friends know those things by faith, when we're part of that song, that changes everything.

 not certainty, not cynicism, but we're part of this beautiful song that's sung over Israel in its darkest moment, that's sung over the church in its darkest moment, that's sung over you.

And whatever valley you're in, know that you're part of this great story, this song.

 that you belong to the servant, that you're called to mission in the servant, and that you're created uniquely to do unique things in the world because God is a creative God.

That is how we say yes to God's future.

When we find ourselves in the song of Isaiah 42, do you find yourself in the song this morning?

Are you part of the music?

Can you hear the tune?

 that God has created and singing over you.

As we stand to sing and sing our praises to God in worship, would you join me in that song?

And would you with me anticipate the new thing that God wants to do in you and in me?

Amen?

Will you pray with me?

Lord, we give you thanks.

Thank you that this somewhat obscure ancient

 Prophetic prose can be for us a new song, can be for us a new way of living into your future.

 We don't have instructions, Lord, but we do trust that our imaginations can be expanded because of who you are, because of what you've done in the world and what you're continuing to do in us.

Help us.

Help us to hear the music, Lord.

Help us to sing a new song together and help us to embrace all that you are doing in us and through us.

Lord, we pray this in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and all God's people said, amen.