I read once, in an old Smithsonian (January 2004), a piece about Tory Re-enactors entitled Divided Loyalties.  The Re-enactors are Maritime Province Canadians descended from loyalists who fled the thirteen colonies in the early days of the American Revolution. Many of these loyalists (53 regiments of them) returned to fight in red coats against Washington’s army.

            Re-enactors take their avocation seriously.  Anyone who has ever gone to our local battlefield for any of these events knows this. A re-enactor’s attention to detail, preparation, immersion in the milieu, and most of all, sincerity of passion allow the re-enactor to relive the moment, and to recreate it for the spectator in a palpable, often powerful way.

            What strikes me as interesting, and more than a little sad, is that the majority of re-enactors represent the loosing side.

            It is hard to stage a statistically accurate re-enactment of a civil war battle.  There just aren’t enough Yankee re-enactors to match up to the men donning butternut and gray – let alone to present a number commensurate with the numerical superiority the North almost always commanded.  Sons of the Revolution who are avid re-enactors are much fewer than their Tory counterparts.  The sons of the victors seem to have little interest in replaying the past.

            Of course we all wish we had a rewind button on life so we could keep at our failures until we get them right.  Unfortunately, there are no mulligans or do-overs.  What we do, what we say matters.  We can’t take them back.  This is true. But we try to live otherwise.

            How often do we turn every new school year, every new job, every new relationship, every board meeting, every day at the little-league field, every family gathering, every holiday, every reunion, every birthday, every wedding, every funeral, every negotiation, every argument into the last one – which we handled  miserably, and want to have another whack at? We are all, I suspect, historical re-enactors, at least at times, because at times we are all losers. I suspect some of us get rather good at recreating the old contexts, and dressing up whomever happens to be facing us into a remarkable facsimile of the enemy. The re-enactment is completed, as all accurate re-enactments are, with yet the same failure.  Lee can never un-surrender at Appomattox, and Cornwallis can’t un-humiliate himself at Yorktown. Neither can we un-do, un-say, un-betray, and un-hurt.

            We can not undo. We can, we must stop re-doing.

            We can start fresh.  God makes it so.  God makes it lasting.

 If anyone is in Christ, old things have passed away, behold all things have become new (II Corinthians 5.17).

 Forgetting what lied behind, and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press toward the goal of God’s upward calling… (Philippians 3.13-14).

            Those words from Paul are not just inspirational, they are experiential. 

Re-read                
I Timothy 1. 

Paul never ceases to be informed – no, to be formed by the fact that he, “the worst of sinners” (v.15), has become God’s instrument to deliver the message of Grace.

            All of this happens, of course, because of Christ, because of the cross.  Every Lord’s Day morning we gather around the same table to re-enact a meal, a victory meal.  Every Lord’s Day we are taken to the cross, taken to the body of Christ. There, we remember the grace we have received.  There we realize that to repeat, again and again, the old battles is a betrayal of that grace.

            Let us resolve, near the beginning of this year 2007, to receive grace – freely, appreciatively, thankfully – and to give it.

photo courtesy of www.amrev.org