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WHAT IS HAPPENING TO SOCIETY?

1/30/2022

Isaiah 58:6-10

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.

Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.”

This past week a United States Senator, who shall go unnamed here, railed against any form of government assistance for food-insecure children, saying: “It's not 'society's responsibility' to care for 'other people's children.’”

It’s not?... “It's not 'society's responsibility' to care for 'other people's children.’”

Checking definitions, I found, unsurprisingly, that a society is, “A network of relationships between people or between groups. The word is sometimes used interchangeably for ‘community.’” Another definition is that society is “a group that shares the same customs and works together toward the same goals.”

In the earlier years of our country, society was the place where people lived and worked together – where if your barn burned down, your neighbors came all together to build you a new one; if your crop failed, your neighbors helped you out until your next crop came in.

This is a somewhat romanticized image but it is also close to the reality of how this nation came together and grew strong together. It was far from perfect – some were always excluded from this neighborly compact – but this was at the root of how we grew. We worked together and we worshiped together – and we helped each other out.

This is still real, in many ways, in many of our societal interactions – not just in villages and small towns where we all know each other, but in interactions among complete strangers – people still help each other out.

And yet a seated Senator, a public figure, can speak out today and say that we owe no responsibility to help the needy among us. And this one man is not alone – he is only echoing what dozens have said before him. We don’t care anymore about others in need.

And so, my question for today is, if it’s not 'society's responsibility' to care for 'other people's children’, then what on earth is society for? If we cannot, as a society, even meet this threshold level of caring for each other, then our society is in serious trouble.

I am trying not to put this down this in anger, because anger rarely leads to common cause, but I am a Christian and it is my job to speak for what I believe. The Senator’s quote is, of course, one man’s opinion. I believe he is utterly wrong – that’s my opinion -- but it appears there are a great many others who agree with him whole-heartedly. People have elected him.

The question of what money goes where is so complicated by the multiplicity of federal programs that it is almost impossible for the average person to parse out where their tax money goes and so many of us seem to immediately decide that we they being ripped off – that’s their default position -- and their response to that confusion is that none of their tax money should go to helping care for any other people in any way at all. Simple answer.

Our society is broken. We have lost our way.

We, as believers, and as followers of the teachings of Jesus, have always had clear directions in this matter. The Old Testament is filled with directions just as clear as those from our reading from Isaiah with which we began today. To remind you:

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Every prophet, every teaching instructs us to do exactly what the Senator insists that we should not.

And that’s only the Old Testament, and then, of course, we come to the New Testament, and Jesus speaking:

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25:37-40)

I know that I am preaching to the choir here – those who already think as I do. And I know that the Senator was preaching to his choir – those who already think like he does. And I believe to the core of my being that there are more of us than there are of them. The majority of us do care and do believe it is our responsibility to help each other. But there is a goodly portion that does not, and that knowledge just affirms that our society is broken.

And then, at this point, I realize how easily I have arrived at us and them, and I am as certain as I am about anything I’ve spoken here today that this is not where I am supposed to be. There is always an arrogance attached to that word us, used as opposed to some them. As if we are intrinsically better, as if we are, of course, always right.

Jesus lived among us and talked and talked to us trying to help us see that in God’s kingdom there is no us and them. There is only all of us – God’s beloved ones. So how do we get to see ourselves as part of that all-of-us while still standing for the rights of the needy and the voiceless?

We cannot change the Senator’s mind, nor the minds of those of the people who agree with him by displaying smug self-righteousness or anger ourselves. Maybe we can’t change them at all. But neither can we allow them to take control of the conversation unchallenged.

So how do we change the conversation when they don’t want to hear us and, in all honesty, we don’t particularly want to hear them? All I can think of is to change my part of the conversation to love. And then to live and speak and act out of my truth – and do so with humility and compassion...and love, knowing God is with me as I stumble along, trying to find healing along the way, doing the best I can.

May God be with us all and heal our brokenness. Amen.

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SPEAK WHEN THE SPIRIT SAYS 'SPEAK'

1/23/2022

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There’s an old African-American spiritual that starts in the first verse with “I’m gonna sing when the Spirit says ‘sing.’“ Then in following verses we have “I’m gonna pray when the Spirit says pray,” and then “shout when the Spirit says shout.” I’m pretty sure it can go on for as many verses as the singers can come up with verbs to insert in it.

There must be a verse somewhere in this song that says, “I’m gonna speak when the Spirit says speak“ because that is what the theme for the week turns out to be. When the Holy Spirit tells you to speak then it is time for you to stand up and speak.

I’ll be using bits from three of today’s lectionary readings—first from the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, and then from Luke’s gospel account and finally from Paul’s first letter to the people of the Greek city of Corinth. So rather than one reading before my message, there will be at least these three scattered throughout it. Taken all together they give us an interesting picture of the Spirit working among God’s people down through the generations and the centuries.

We’re going to begin with Jeremiah, who lived in Judah and ended up speaking for God in the latter years of the sixth century and the early years of the fifth century. This reading comes when he was still very young, but sets him up for the rest of his long life:

Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.
”Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.”
But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.”
Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, “Now I have put my words in your mouth.” (Jeremiah 1:4-9)

This is how it began for Jeremiah—with him unwilling and frightened and God quite insistent. It made no difference that Jeremiah didn’t feel at all capable of this job. God assured Jeremiah that he was indeed the one God wanted for this task and, furthermore, God had it all covered.

It wasn’t an easy time to be a prophet of God. The people did not at all want to hear what Jeremiah had to say to them. They had wandered quite far from God’s worship and many were openly worshiping other gods and following their ungodly practices. The priests of these other gods hounded Jeremiah—“prophesying” against him--and tried many times to kill him, but he lived a long life—through the reigns of three different kings and even, ultimately, through the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar--speaking always whenever the Spirit said speak.

The second reading for today is the gospel reading from Luke, chapter 4:16-19. Jesus, having just come out of the wilderness after the forty days alone and following his baptism, has returned to his home territory in Galilee—and there he begins his public ministry. The one the locals had only ever known as Joseph and Mary’s son, now following that inner voice that would direct him for the rest of his human life, began to speak in a way that others now listened to him and began to follow him in order to hear more. Luke tells us:

He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

From Jeremiah to Jesus was a span of roughly 600 years. There had been many other prophets besides Jeremiah in this timeframe. Some had been heeded and others had not. The prophets had tried—speaking as the Spirit led them—but now it was time for Jesus himself to speak—from his own Spirit.

Jesus was/is The Word, present from the very beginning, come to share his Father’s word with a world sorely in need of that word. In quoting Isaiah he spoke the truth of his Spirit and reminded the world that he was here to bring good news to the poor – and, in Isaiah’s words, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. He was here to tell us we are loved and that there is always a place in God’s heart for each of us.

The third person we are hearing from today is Paul who once was Saul, but was filled with a new Spirit and learned a new way to be. Paul spoke out to remind us there one very important aspect of the Spirit’s word for us. He wrote it in his first letter to the people of Corinth:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-2)

That’s from First Corinthians, roughly a generation or less after Jesus.

We may speak when the Spirit says speak, and we may think we are doing so in the voices of angel/messengers. But if there is not love in what we speak then the words are not God’s words.

There are so many in the wider church today who claim they are speaking for God and yet, so many listeners hear only anger and selfishness and fear. How can those be words spoken at the Spirit’s urging? How can anyone claim those words belong to God? Someone needs to speak out and say that those words are not God’s. Perhaps “someone” is you?

God’s Spirit speaks through us across the ages. We are still, today, two thousand years later, likely to be moved by the Spirit to speak out God’s words where and when they are needed.

Most of us, most likely, like Jeremiah, will respond at first with something like, “Who? Me? Not me, Lord! I can’t do that! Get someone else!” But – are we really ready to tell God that they don’t know what they are doing? Hopefully, not.

And hopefully, we won’t have to be struck blind, like Paul, before we accept that the Spirit is indeed calling us to speak out.

If it makes you feel better, few of us are ever likely to be called to stand before kings and other leaders to speak. But we may be called to speak to friends and neighbors when the truth needs to be spoken. We can be called upon at town hall meetings, at the office, or church social hour, or school board meetings--anywhere untruths are being spoken and harmful actions are being planned.

Speaking when the Spirit says ‘speak’ is not always as dramatic as Jeremiah preaching to kings, or Paul traveling around Europe introducing strangers there to Jesus.

But whenever, and wherever, the Spirit calls, may we be brave enough stand up and say “no, your joke is not funny, your plan is discriminatory, that idea is hurting people...” To do so is speaking when the Spirit says speak – and doing it with love.

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ESCAPE TO EGYPT

1/16/2022

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Matthew 2:13-15

When the Magi had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

My message last week, if you will recall, dealt with the visit of the three Magi – sometimes called the Three Kings – who followed a star to Bethlehem to honor the newly born King of the Jews. I mentioned then that there was not enough space in one Sunday message to deal with the complexities of that story but that one day was all the lectionaries gave us before jumping straight to John the Baptist and the adult Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan.

Well, we’re in Cycle C and will be reading from Matthew’s gospel this year, and I’m not finished with the infancy story as Matthew tells it – there is a bit more to the story than just the three Magi. So I am ignoring the lectionary this week and continuing this last bit of the Epiphany story. It’s a small bit of a story concerning what happened after the Magi left for home. The information we have for this time in the young Jesus’ life is scanty, at best, and largely anecdotal. I’ve never taken the time to parse it all out and try to establish a coherent story line – a why and when and where. Perhaps you are as curious as I am.

If you recall from last week, Herod, the frightened and jealous Roman-appointed king, wanted to get his hands on this new “King of the Jews’ (and not, I’m afraid, to ‘honor’ him). So once the Magi left, Joseph was told in a dream to pack up Mary and Jesus and go to Egypt, out of Herod’s reach – and so they did, in the middle of the night.

Before we go any further there is some background information needed here. There’s a lot of it and it is complicated so I’m going to try to keep it as short as possible.

The first question is “why Egypt?” Wasn’t Egypt always the enemy? The bad guys of the Exodus story? Well, yes and no. In the Exodus story they were definitely the bad guys, but the Exodus took place anywhere between 1200 and 1500 years before the birth of Jesus, and much had changed over those long years.

The Egyptian dynasties had changed over the centuries, but one other important feature was that the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar had laid siege to Jerusalem, destroying the city and the Temple in the process. This took place around 600 BCE. As a result, the was a great dispersal of the Jewish population, of which a large segment ended up settling in a now open and accessible Egypt.

There was a further major shuffling of the near eastern political scene around 300 years later with the world-conquering tour of Alexander the Great who brought the Greeks into the region, followed a couple of hundred years later by the appearance of the Romans, in the Shakespeare-famous persons of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Cleopatra, which led to the eventual annexation of Egypt as a part of the Roman Empire.

A lot had changed since the days of Moses. The current Romans of Egypt were not likely to be at all interested in the drama centering around a minor vassal king from Judea.

In short, the Egypt of the time of our story was not the Egypt of the Exodus, and the Jewish community there was not a group of maltreated slaves. It was, actually, a logical place for Joseph to take his family to a relative safety.

Egypt today apparently has at least two dozen sites which purport to be the place where Joseph, Mary, and Jesus stayed. Whichever might be the real site, they stayed there for something like three years until word came that Herod had died, at which time they set out to return home, but that didn’t turn out to be as simple as it should have been.

As we’re told a little farther down in Matthew:

[Joseph] took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.

Archelaus was one of Herod’s sons and just as unpleasant as his father. He would later be deposed by the Romans because the Jews hated him so much. So Joseph didn’t settle anywhere near the seat of Roman power in Jerusalem, but traveled on to Nazareth, well to the north, in the area of Galilee, roughly 80 miles or so from Jerusalem. And there Jesus was raised.

And here Matthew ends the infancy/childhood of Jesus. This part of the story – the whole journey to Egypt -- is found only in Matthew, nowhere else. Luke, the only other gospel with any childhood mentions, tells us that at eight days old Jesus was taken into Jerusalem, to the Temple to be circumcised, and that his family went back every year for Passover. Later, Luke has the story of Jesus as a young boy, returning to the Temple to discourse with the elders.

That’s it. Everywhere else the story of Jesus begins when he wandered out of Nazareth down into the desert reaches where a wild man named John was baptizing people.

In the centuries leading up to Jesus’ time it was common practice for men who would become leaders to have semi-mythical birth stories attached to them. The mother of Alexander the Great always insisted he was the child of a god – conceived when she was serving a required time in a temple sanctuary. Even King David’s story begins when he was just a boy – the youngest and smallest of his siblings – who did the unheard of deed of killing off the giant Goliath.

So did these things actually happen to Jesus or was Matthew just seeking to make him seem more kingly material? Who knows? And does it really matter?

This story is interesting but all in all it tells us very little about Jesus the person or about his mission here among us. The most important thing it tells us is what the people of Matthew and Luke’s time thought of Jesus – not just as a teacher, but as a great king and not a simple country boy from Nazareth. As someone to be associated with the Messianic prophecies from the Hebrew Scriptures.

We begin to learn more about this Jesus with the stories that come next and the three years he lived and walked among us as one who came from God. We will dig into these mission-beginning stories in the weeks between now and Lent. Stick with us here and journey with us as we learn.

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NEVER THE EXPECTED ONES

1/9/2022

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Matthew 2:1-5a (The Message)

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem village, Judah territory—this was during Herod’s kingship—a band of scholars arrived in Jerusalem from the East. They asked around, “Where can we find and pay homage to the newborn King of the Jews? We observed a star in the eastern sky that signaled his birth. We’re on pilgrimage to worship him.”

When word of their inquiry got to Herod, he was terrified—and not Herod alone, but most of Jerusalem as well. Herod lost no time. He gathered all the high priests and religion scholars in the city together and asked, “Where is the Messiah supposed to be born?”

They told him, “Bethlehem, Judah territory.

Thursday of this past week was Epiphany, the day of the arrival of the magi -- the misnamed “Three Kings” – bringing gifts to honor and acknowledge the birth of the recently born King of the Jews. These magi or “wise men” were most likely not kings at all, but astrologer/priests from Persia.

Such men read the stars for revelations from the universe and found there the news of the birth of a new king to be born among the Jewish people – one who would bless the whole world with his birth. And so they set out and followed the stars across the desert lands to Bethlehem. Upon their arrival, they found, not a royal prince, but a child of the poor.

Along the way they encountered Herod, current king of the Jews, courtesy of his Roman masters, who was, understandably, greatly put off by the magi’s news of a new-born king. He tried to trick the magi into returning to tell him where he, too, could “honor” this child, but being wise men after all, they tricked him instead, and made their way home again, after seeing Jesus, by another route – by-passing Herod entirely.

Upon discovering he had been outwitted, Herod embarked on a search of his own, which was foiled by an angel sent to Joseph to tell him to flee the area with Mary and Jesus to escape Herod’s plan.

Herod, finding he had been tricked yet again, went on a murderous rampage and ordered all male children in the area who were under the age of two, to be slaughtered. This was unlikely to have been more than a handful of children, given how small Bethlehem was, but the death of even one child in such a manner is a horror.

With all this going on we still find no word that – beyond providing the first information about Bethlehem to Herod -- the Temple priests and scholars ever even bothered about any of this again. You would think they would have been interested in finding answers themselves, but I don’t think there is any word in scripture about them being involved in any follow through or showing any further interest in the birth of such a child.

Theologian/storyteller John Shea explains this puzzling behavior this way. He says,

The story of the Magi, as told by Matthew, is built on a massive, many-layered irony. The Magi Gentiles, through their own calculations, knew about the birth of the king of the Jews. The Jewish leaders, who have the prophecy of the birth in their own scriptures, are ignorant of it.

Epiphany is such a complex story with so many issues built into it that we could easily use a whole Epiphany season in the lectionary -- and we actually have one – but, besides this one day, it is devoted to the earliest beginnings of Jesus’ adult life and not to this fascinating, convoluted story.

There were two fairly brief posts on-line this week that caught my attention. Each alluded to, and each, I think, illuminated the Epiphany story. The first is from Nadia Bolz-Weber, Lutheran pastor/teacher:

"Epiphany tells a story of two masculinities: Herod, who is a ruler on a throne of power, and Joseph who is a peasant in an unconventional marriage. One man is powerful and one man is not. And yet the text only describes one of these men as being afraid ... And it wasn’t the peasant."

Herod was a king with a king’s power but only through his Roman masters. He had a very tenuous claim to the throne of David through his lineage, but was never seen as a legitimate occupier of David’s throne by the people he ruled. He was a carpetbagger, at best, a puppet of the hated Romans – kept in power by the Romans just as long as he maintained peace in the country.

He was a man terrified of any rumor that might lead to rebellion –such as a rumor of the birth of a new, legitimate king of the Jews. He was terrified and willing to do anything to stop it – including slaughtering babies.

Joseph, on the other hand, having been assured by God’s own messenger angel that everything was as God wanted it, quietly packed up his family and moved to Egypt – away from Herod – away from the might of the Roman empire – secure in God’s protection and guidance.

Power backed by armies lends only one kind of strength, the kind associated with violence. Herod had that kind, but Joseph had the kind of strength that comes from knowing that one is in the right.

The second of the two postings I saw this week was posted by a man named Carlos A. Rodriguez who, according to his facebook page is a preacher, pastor, teacher, and activist. What he posted moved me.

It’s an unwed woman who carries God. It’s the pagan astrologers from the East who recognize God. It’s the workers in the field who hear from God. It’s the marginalized neighborhood who welcomes God. It’s God who chooses the lowly and the broken to rise.

Bolz-Weber's posting has more to do with our understanding of the particular Epiphany story – offering us a different way to view just what happened there,

This posting leads us to consider that, perhaps, we have been considering the entire Christmas/Epiphany story from the wrong angle all along.

Nothing in the whole birth saga has to do with the powerful or the important people. With the exception of the three magi (who clearly had both status and connections to finance such a journey as they undertook, not to mention the calm courage to simply flout a king’s direct demands) – except for them the “important” people are almost entirely missing from this story. Herod is here briefly but he is made to look a fool. Not a good image for a tyrant.

Instead, we have an unwed mother plus her still likely somewhat confused-by-it-all husband/partner (were they even married yet?) – both from among the lower classes. We have three so-called priests who aren’t even Jewish for Pete’s sake (and how did they get into this story?).

We have shepherds who are among the lowest-of-the-low, class-wise. Shepherds were actually considered ritually “unclean” and shouldn’t have been allowed around “decent” people). And a baby born in a stable which was most likely just a lean-to thrown up against the side of the main building – the bare minimum definition of shelter.

And yet, these are the people who matter here -- the story makes that abundantly clear. The ones invited into this greatest of all stories. Maybe those of us today – any of us, anywhere – need to consider this cast of characters and question whether we would have been among those invited in or would we have been left on the outside with those of power and influence?

If this story is being enacted anywhere today, are we part of it or are we among the blissfully unaware, like the priests and the scribes? Are we too secure in our own positions to be part of a story like this one?

By grace, we are invited in – we’re all invited in. Who do we include in our versions of this story? Do we recognize the grace that invites us in and, in our turn, help to lift all those others that God loves so much?

Thank you, Jesus, for being here for us all – the expectant and the oblivious. Live and walk and act among and through, always.

Amen.

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NEW THOUGHTS, NEW HOPES, NEW WINESKINS

1/2/2022

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2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creature; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.

Today is the Second Sunday after Christmas. It is also the second day of a brand new year. In all my years of preaching here I don’t recall ever preaching about the New Year and what it means. So I thought I’d try that today.

Various cultures have always celebrated the ending of the old year and the beginning of a new one. The ancient Babylonians celebrated in Spring at the vernal equinox – the day when the light and the darkness were equally balanced. The Chinese chose the second new moon after the winter solstice (for some reason I don’t know), while the Egyptians marked the new year from the Nile’s first flood each year. The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, can fall any time, usually in either September or October.

If it had been left up to me I think I might have set the start of the new year at the winter solstice— when the world is at its darkest and then signals that humankind is not, after all, to be left in the dark forever by the return of the sun and light. But then, no one asked me.

The Romans originally celebrated the start of another year, like the Babylonians, at the vernal equinox, but over the centuries they bounced their New Year celebration around several times while adjusting their yearly calendar. They finally settled on the first day of January, the month named for the god Janus, the two-faced god who looks both backward to what has been and forward, to what will come.

Today, we in the western world still celebrate by looking both backward and forward on January 1st although few of us still worship Janus. Any marking of a “new year” is like drawing lines on a map. The lines are purely imaginary and only exist by common consent. Nothing marks the earth itself, and no visible cataclysmic events mark the turning of one year into another. It is simply an arbitrarily chosen turning point that we all agree to observe.

Since New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are not religious holidays we don’t have any particular scriptures for this time. There are a number of scriptures referring to instituting a “new thing,” or “leaving the old things behind us.” There are even a couple about “starting anew,” but before we can find the right scriptures we need to decide just what it is that the New Year is all about.

We tell ourselves it’s all about that second – or third, or fourth – chance. Starting all over again. All those things we believe we failed at in the last year can come around again and we’ll get another chance to make them right. That’s the “looking-behind-us” view of a brand new year.

How about if we consider really leaving the past in the past? Let it go. How about if – instead of dragging our past mistakes and short-comings along with us forever – we simply leave them in the past and turn and face the future with an open mind and an open heart? What might we become if we open ourselves to whatever God has for us today instead of trailing our past failures along everywhere we go?

We are, by and large, the accumulated years of all that others have told us about ourselves—and maybe a bit of what we have told ourselves. And for some human reason we tend to hang on the longest to any derogatory things we’ve been told.

A young girl, told she is unattractive, will somewhere deep inside still believe that when she is a grandmother. A boy, told that he is stupid, will fight against that assessment forever, in spite of successes and praise of his adult self.

But – people can change – and we do -- but it's not always easy.

Perhaps we insist on New Year’s celebrations because we recognize our deep need to somewhere, somehow, start again without all that ugly baggage—to leave our errors and misinformation in the past.

Maybe there is a scripture for the New Year—maybe this is it;
“No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece from the new will not match the old.  And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed.  But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.  And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, ‘The old is good.’”

This is of course, one of Jesus’ parables. This particular version is from Luke’s gospel, but it can be found in all three of the synoptics, and as I’ve mentioned in the past, when something shows up in three of the four gospels that generally means it was seen as an important teaching by the early church, and we are to pay attention to it.

Maybe this is what New Year celebrations are about—creating new wineskins to hold the new wine of new insights, new understandings, new aspirations.

Did you notice that word aspiration in the last sentence? I used it deliberately. To aspire is to dream, to work toward something seemingly out of reach. But did you think about how that word comes from the same root as spirit? To aspire to something better is to have the Spirit breathe on us and create a longing for it in order to move us toward that something.

When we are given a new dream, it doesn’t work to try to tack it onto an old us. Like Jesus’ new patch on an old wineskin it will just tear it apart. The thing about old wineskins is they have lost their elasticity. They’re too fragile to contain new wine and the expansion that comes from fermentation. Yeast is a living thing and old wineskins can't contain that new life. A new vision needs a new person, a new vehicle – one that is capable of expanding to hold a growing new life within it.

We cannot create a brand new us just by willing it. But we can if we invite God into the process. We can especially do this if it is God calling us in the first place to become that new person. We can open up the old and be prepared to welcome in the new.

If we are stuck with a lifetime assortment of “I can’ts” it doesn't work to just work around them, we have to leave them behind. I can’t -- I’m not good enough -- we’ve always done it this way -- everyone says...; all of these are aspiration killers.

But if we aspire to become the new creatures in Christ that Paul talks about in the quote from 2nd Corinthians with which I started this message, then we have to stop hauling all that old baggage around—leave it in the past so our hands are open to embrace what God puts before us.

Even if we think we are pretty good as we are (and maybe we are) then we can still embrace God’s new gifts if we open ourselves and our hearts. There are always new ideas, new dreams to embrace.

Here’s one more scripture we can add to our collection of New Year verses. It’s from Isaiah, this time, chapter 43, vv. 18-19:
Do not remember the former things,
    or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

Open your heart and your mind and allow yourself to become that new thing that God is calling you to become. Open your arms to embrace all the challenges and blessings that are waiting out there all around you – for behold, new things have come.

Happy New Year, and may it be a year full of blessings.

Amen.

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Rev. Cherie Marckx

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