So Nu, What’s New?

Reflections on newness in the new year.

Among the best-known words in the Yiddish language is the word “nu”. It is a word most Jewish people are familiar with and depending on the context means “so what?” “so?” “hurry up already”? An example would be “Nu – tell us already! Out with it!”

So Nu! What’s new about the new year? After one of the most challenging and difficult years in living memory, many of us would have hoped and prayed that 2021 would bring an end to the COVID-19 Pandemic and a return to normality. Instead, as many are realizing, while we may be getting closer to a “new normal”, the new year has not brought an end to the difficulties of 2020.

On a personal level, we have probably all experienced that the “new” year does not magically fulfill its promise of novelty. Each year, we keenly anticipate a fresh new start and make bold new year’s resolutions only to discover a few weeks later, that the new is but a continuation of the old.

So Nu! What’s genuinely new? What truly brings about positive changes in the world and within us personally? As Jewish believers in Jesus, we have experienced personally that the only true source of newness comes through putting our faith in Jesus the Jewish Messiah!

Now, I can already hear the mocking scoff of the sceptic, “Jews who believe in Jesus? Pfft that’s not new at all!” In some ways this is true, after all, Jesus himself was Jewish as were most of his disciples. Indeed, in every generation since, there have been Jewish people who have responded to the call and put their faith in Jesus, and as a result seen their hearts and lives newly transformed.

This new transformation is actually the fulfillment of a promise in the Old Testament, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah… I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts… and no longer shall each one teach his brother, saying, “Know the Lord” for they shall all know me… for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. (Jer 31-34). When a Jewish person accepts the atoning sacrifice of the Messiah, God promises a radical internal transformation, and the entering into an intimate and personal relationship with God!

The prophet Isaiah explores the theme of newness in the Messiah in Isaiah 42. “Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them. (Isaiah 42:9) Isaiah teaches us that the Messiah would be given as “a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind…” (Isaiah 42:6-7) Again, God promises us that the Messiah would bring about a radical new transformation of both our outer and inner world for all people, Jew and Gentile alike.

This promise is best summarised by Paul, the Jewish Rabbi who had such a radical personal transformation that he went from mercilessly persecuting the believers of Jesus, to becoming the apostle that wrote much of the New Testament. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away; behold the new has come” (2 Co 5:17)

It is this promise of God’s, to make us a “new creation” which motivates us as Jews for Jesus, to share the love of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah with our Jewish brothers and sisters. So as we enter into 2021, we invite you to pray with us that more and more Jewish people would put their faith in Jesus the Messiah, to be newly transformed by the Spirit of God and to be partakers in God’s eternal promise for salvation. We long for the day of Messiah’s return when the Jewish people will welcome Jesus back saying “Blessed is he who comes in the name of Lord”. (Matthew 23:29)

So Nu, What’s new? Jesus, that’s who!