All four Gospels begin with a look in the mirror. They glance over their shoulders, backwards in time, to an earlier age. And so they connect the new era, heralded by Jesus, with the history of God’s faithfulness in prior generations.

Mark, for example, links Jesus to Old Testament prophets several hundred years before, saying that the newly arrived Messiah fulfills promises they made in ancient days. That’s good & important. But his mirror is the smallest.

Matthew goes back further, before the prophets – to Father Abraham – offering a lengthy list of “begats” in the King James Version. (“Abraham begat Isaac; & Isaac begat Jacob,” & so on … 42 times!) He’s letting his readers know that the whole of Jewish tradition leads to Jesus.

Luke, in turn, refuses to be outdone. He grows Jesus’s family tree for a whopping 76 generations, all the way back to Adam. For Luke, writing to a Gentile audience, the Man from Nazareth doesn’t just fulfill Jewish tradition, but all of human existence.

It’s hard to be more thorough than that. But John succeeds. His Gospel drops us in a veritable hall filled with mirrors, reflecting & multiplying the single light of Jesus. John takes us back before Adam & Eve. Before animals & plants. Before water & dry land. Before stars spangled the canopy of heaven. Before time itself, or ever God said, “Let there be light.”

In John’s telling, Jesus is the Light that has always existed. When the earth was formless & void, and nothing else had been created – even then – “the Word was with God, & the Word was God.” It was shining in the darkness, & would not be overcome.

As we step across the threshold from one year to the next, & from one decade to another, many news sources are taking their own look back. Lists are compiled for every category imaginable – best films of the year, best movies & novels of the decade. Important events. Notable deaths. (I heard on the radio that someone even decided the food of the past decade. Yogurt!)

For many people, looking ahead is an unwelcome event. And tacking a new calendar to the wall brings little satisfaction. It hints that we’re getting another year older, with new aches & new worries ahead, & perhaps a few less friends.

Still, we don’t have to be gloomy about it. As I already mentioned, all four Gospel writers locate hope for the future by recalling the past, & God’s faithfulness in it.

That’s also the approach Bonnie Stafford & John Wettengel took with Adult Enrichment in December, as they introduced us to the practice of Sankofa.

Sankofa, as they described it, is an Akan word from the West African country of Ghana. It means, “looking back in order to move forward.”

John & Bonnie helped us see, for instance, how much we can learn about Christ’s birth by looking back further to the Hebrew prophets.

And on a secular level, I wonder if the folks we call “The Greatest Generation” might be that because they lived through the Great Depression & a horrific World War. Over the course of much testing, they learned (subconsciously, at least) that if God can help us survive those things, God will get us through anything.

Looking back enables them to go forward – even as loved ones grow old & die, or knees & hips wear out, or lifetime savings (which looked robust two years ago) seemingly evaporate overnight. But give it time, they’ve learned. We’ll be all right. We’ll get through this setback too.

Without the context of God’s steadfast faithfulness in the past, panic is the likely result in such situations. But Sankofa & the long historical perspective of the Gospel writers provide an alternative resource for faith – one that enables us to ride out life’s storms when they inevitably come.

Looking back to go forward is also Jeremiah’s message today. The gloomiest of all truth-tellers in ancient Israel pauses at the start of chapter 31 to look backward … in order to move Israel forward.

He wrote at a time when God’s people were in exile – so he had reason to be gloomy. The Babylonians had taken them from their homes, their cities, their temple in Jerusalem. Hope was shattered, the future looked bleak. Life was in ruins.

But in the midst of deep trouble, Jeremiah finds a single word, & uses it several times in today’s reading to signal that all is not lost. The word is “Again,” & the prophet sounds it repeatedly, like a drumbeat – or heartbeat – of hope:

Again, [God says] I will build you & you shall be built …

Again you shall take your tambourines & go forth … [&]

Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains

Every time he says “again,” the past is upheld in promise for the future. What God did in the past God assuredly will do again. God’s mighty deeds of salvation from a bygone era open a sturdy path to step patiently, confidently, trustfully, & reliably into the future.

Not once, but many times, a fresh start has been (& will be) given – “Again … again … & again!” the prophet says. The same love that loved Israel from the beginning of time, & even before, won’t soon let her go.

Jeremiah knows that the people have suffered. He lives close to their hurts, & shares in them.

But he also lives close to God’s heart. So he knows that God won’t forget the covenant people. Israel will be built & rebuilt many times over, joy will be restored with songs & percussion, & vineyards “again” will yield their harvest.

As Julian of Norwich would famously say in the late 1300s, “All shall be well, & all manner of things shall be well.” God’s fidelity over the long haul has been tested, but it remains undaunted.

Jeremiah’s word of hope isn’t pie-in-the-sky or generic. When he mentions tambourines, he recalls Miriam, the sister of Moses, who gathered all the Israelite women to dance with their tambourines after God led the Israelite slaves out of Egypt to freedom. Vineyards likewise hearken back to Noah, who planted a vineyard after the floodwaters subsided, or to the Original Garden occupied by Adam & Eve. And the work of building & rebuilding hints of David & Solomon, when the nation prospered greatly, though at considerable cost.

In these three ways, Jeremiah looks back to reassure his people about the future. In every misadventure or heartbreak, every time of exile, flood, hardship, & blessing, God gave the people a way to go forward, the prophet affirms. And God will do so “again.” Past becomes prelude … at least for those who remember it & read the signs of the times.

The Church’s primary symbol for Sankofa is the Communion Table.

Here, at this family meal, past becomes present & the future is reconfirmed. The risen Christ comes to us over centuries of time & renews God’s covenant with us.

The crucial step occurs when Jesus calls us not to look forward only, but to remember. “Do this,” he says, “in remembrance of me.” It’s a glance in the mirror, a call to look back, balanced by the Apostle Paul urging us forward. “As often as you eat this bread & drink the cup,” he says, “you proclaim Christ’s death until he comes.” Out of remembrance comes hope.

As people of faith, therefore, we start this new year, not by clinging to the past, but recalling it & what God has done. And we step into the future knowing that the ancient covenant is renewed & upheld in the sharing of simple bread & a common cup.

The God “who was & is & forever shall be” continues to move us out of the past, & over the years … into a new day.