Love in Action

 

1 Corinthians13:1-13         

Luke 4:21-30     

If you are like me, these words from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians make you feel warm and cozy and sweet; Valentine hearts and weddings and celebrations of love. But I don’t think either Paul or the Corinthians felt that way.

Let me tell you a little bit about the Corinthians. Paul made his way to Corinth during his traveling evangelist years, by way of Athens, which was apparently the original ivory tower city.

In Athens, Paul discovered how much the people there enjoyed an intellectual discussion of ideas. He offered them a very creative and compelling case for Christ, they sparred back and forth with him for a while. And at the end of the day, they said, “Good argument, Paul. Enjoyed it thoroughly. Maybe we’ll come back and do it again tomorrow.” An outcome that might very well have left Paul feeling a little burned.

He went on to Corinth determined to not have a repeat of that experience. He was determined, he says in this letter to the Corinthians, to come to them knowing nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified. The experience couldn’t have been the same, though, because Corinth and Athens were night and day.

While Athens was a city of ideas, Corinth was a city of action. It was a vibrant seaport city, bustling with commerce, full of diversity. It was the kind of place that no one was actually from; everyone had arrived from somewhere else, from various places throughout the empire. Many of these people were former slaves. Some of them were important government officials or business leaders. It was racially, economically, and culturally diverse. And all this diversity became a part of the church in Corinth.

It presented a real challenge: they all came together by the power of the gospel, but they each brought a motley assortment of baggage with them. Some were very poor, others were wealthy. Some were accustomed to being powerless, and others were accustomed to ordering slaves around to meet their every need. Some were Jews – in fact, some had even been synagogue leaders. Others were converted Gentiles, knowing nothing of the Jewish traditions or culture.

In no other situation would these people have chosen to join together. They were too different. And it appears they weren’t overjoyed about being thrust together in community. We can hardly blame them, though, for we are the same way.

In our friends, in our spouse, in our church, we look for compatibility, shared values and interests. We get along well with people who have the same background as us, because we grew up learning the same values and having the same experiences. We like to be with people who are like us. It’s just easier.

There are many reasons why it is hard to live in diverse community. Language is one, cultural norms another. When I am with people like me, I don’t have to explain myself, and they don’t have to explain themselves – we get each other. The way we socialize, the way we spend money, the way we raise our children and treat our elders – all these things are challenged in diverse community.

The way we vote, the news we consume, the causes we donate to – all these things are challenged in diverse community.

Diversity is hard now and it was hard then. In the Corinthian church, they tended to group together with the ones whose lives were most similar to theirs, the working stiffs versus the leisure class.

And when discord arose, they took sides. Their attitudes hardened. They huddled with like-minded people and encouraged each other’s biases and contempt for the others who were different from them.

They began to say things like, “I cannot believe the hypocrisy of those people,” and “those people are just evil,” and “you can’t expect anything good from those people. They don’t care about the church, our country, our city, the same way we do.”

That is to say, they probably sounded a lot like us.

And so they wrote a letter to Paul telling him he must intervene. He would have to either straighten out this other group of people or else he would have to help them find a different church home, because they simply could not work together.

Paul refused to care that they were incompatible. He said, I will show you a more excellent way, and he wrote them a letter about love.

I can guarantee you that the Corinthians did not feel all warm and cozy when they heard it. Paul’s words to them about the character of love are not gentle strokes against their psyches; he is not affirming what they already know. Paul is telling them things that they do not believe.

Just think about someone you do not like, and hear what these words say to you:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

How does that sound now?

It is truly our misfortune that we have heard these words so many times because we think we know them too well. Somehow, we need to know that these words are not just sweet; they are deeply and startlingly uncomfortable. Paul is not telling us to love the ones we already love. Paul is challenging us to love the ones we hate, the ones we hold in contempt. Because this is who the church is.

The church is not a gathering of like-minded individuals. The church is not a self-improvement program or a social club. Christ did not die so I can sip coffee with people who like the same books and movies I like. Christ died because the world so desperately needs the kind of love he brought to it – love that turns our hearts outward and enlarges them. Love that will tear down the walls we build to protect our way of life. Love that will lay down its weapons.

This kind of love will not be domesticated. It is bigger than we are, and, in some ways, it is terrifying.

In the words of the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “I am sorry I can say nothing more to console you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.” The love of our dreams is selfish, but love in action is not selfish. In the love of our dreams, we are adored and admired, but love in action is not boastful or arrogant. In the love of our dreams, we get what we want, but love in action does not insist on its own way.

Love in action erases the lines that separate us into tribes or nations or political parties. Love in action insists that my personal interests are not any more precious than the personal interests of others.

And so we feel threatened by this kind of love. And the one who comes into town preaching this kind of love, as Jesus did, risks being tossed off the edge of a cliff, as Jesus did.

And yet, as Paul writes to the Corinthians, love in action is the work of the church, and it begins with our baptism.

The people of Corinth were so different in so many ways, but they shared one thing in common. Each of them was baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection. Each of them was given new life, and now was called and equipped to live for something greater than they had before.

In baptism, God brings us together as one body, and so our lives are now larger than they were before. We know that we are all in this together with Jesus.

Rowan, who is baptized this day, doesn’t know that yet. For all he knows, the entire world is his oyster, and his desires are everything that matter. But, with the help of his parents and the members of the church, he will be raised to understand the life that he has been given, and the love to which he is called.

Beloved, remember you are baptized and that makes you a part of the body of Christ.

By your baptism, you are equipped for the work to which we are all called.

Let us, together, seek to live this more excellent way.

Photo: Churchart.com

Seasons of Grief and Joy

Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10

Luke 4:14-21

When we first went into COVID quarantine, back in March of 2020 we thought it would be for a couple of weeks. That was only the beginning of our COVID delusions.

The season of Lent passed. Then Easter passed. I remember telling people we were going to come back by Pentecost with a blow-out celebration, for the sake of all the things we had missed. We would wave palm branches, set out Easter lilies, and have red balloons to represent the flames of Pentecost. We would hug each other and sing all the hymns we had missed, with gusto.

But then Pentecost came and went…and we were still waiting.

A whole year passed before we came back together in the sanctuary for worship. And it wasn’t the massive, multipurpose celebration I had envisioned.

We were few in number. We were carefully spaced. We were masked and sanitized, and we did not sing. Even now, almost another year on, we are masked. Our attendance numbers wax and wane with the COVID numbers. It’s touch and go, you might say.

COVID has made a lasting imprint. We have been through seasons of grief, seasons of joy, and sometimes layers of both at the same time.

Yes, it is possible to feel both grief and joy at the same time.

The Old Testament books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell the story of Israel’s return home from exile. Ezra, the priest, and Nehemiah, the governor, provided the leadership for the restoration of Israel.

If you read through these two books you will see that there was so much that needed to be done, and their leadership was essential. The temple had to be rebuilt from the ground up.

When the people of Israel began to return from their exile, there was no temple. It had been utterly destroyed years earlier by their enemies. So the people gathered together at the ruins of the temple, built an altar on top of the foundation of the old one, and made their offerings to God. It was a start.

And later they began to rebuild the temple. They gathered together at their place of worship to lay a new foundation. They made a ceremony of it. The priests were there, wearing their vestments. There were trumpets and cymbals and praises sung to God. The people rejoiced loudly. Some of them, the older ones who remembered how things used to be, they wept.

And the rejoicing was so loud, and the weeping was so loud that together they just made a loud noise. No one could distinguish the grief from the joy. This was a season for both.

Still many more years passed before the temple-building began in earnest. But they finally did get it done and they celebrated the dedication of the temple with lavish offerings. 

However, they still did not use the Torah in their worship. The Torah includes what we know as the first five books of scripture: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. These books contain the law of God for the people of God; it was most likely assembled from oral traditions during the time of exile.

Ezra was a scribe, skilled in the law, and he had a burning desire to teach the law to the people of Israel. And when he returned to Jerusalem from exile, he had a mission: to teach the people of Israel their law, restoring greater order, purpose, and meaning to Israel.

Sometime later, Nehemiah also returned to Jerusalem from exile. He led the efforts to rebuild the city around the temple, including rebuilding the walls that would protect them from outside attacks. They pursued this work through many difficulties: violent attacks, famine, and internal disputes that had to be resolved. And finally, when they completed the wall, the people gathered together again in celebration – tens of thousands of people. Ezra stood before them, unrolled the scroll, and began to read the books of the law to them.

Ezra read and the people listened. There were others who provided interpretation, to give the sense of it, as the text says, and the people listened. And the people wept.

Were these tears of joy? Were they weeping because, hearing the law, they became painfully aware of their sin? Was this simply a cathartic moment, a release of pent up emotion from so many years of suffering?

Maybe all of it. Perhaps the people wept for all these reasons, and for the same reasons the elders wept at the dedication of the temple foundation. They grieved because there was no returning to the past.

There was no going back to what had felt normal and right and good. And that can be a very hard thing to accept – for anyone.

Ezra and Nehemiah said to the people, “This day is holy to the Lord. Do not mourn or weep. The joy of the Lord is your strength.” Eventually, they did quiet themselves, and they went on to celebrate the appointed festival. They rejoiced, they cared for one another, especially those most vulnerable members. But was there still a lingering sense of grief, even in their joy? Almost certainly.

I spend some time with this story today because I believe it resonates with our own circumstances. There are points of intersection between the post-exilic time for Israel and the post-quarantine time in which we are living now. And, pray to God, a post-COVID-19 time that is yet to come.

The restoration of Israel did not come all at once. It took years. Leadership came and went. Work started and stopped. Disputes broke out and had to be resolved.

The people did not always keep their eye on the ball, as people do tend to get distracted from their goals and purpose. But eventually they made it, all the way. And still, it was a bittersweet moment. Because it was not the same.

It never is.

There are lessons for us in this story from ancient Israel. Our COVID ordeal has been easy compared to what Israel suffered, and so we might take some comfort in knowing that people of God have endured great difficulties and did not lose faith; they did not lose their way.

After Ezra and Nehemiah urge the people to dry their tears, they say, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

 And then the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions to those for whom nothing was prepared – that is, the neediest among them. Food and drink and hope for those who had none. And they made great rejoicing because they had understood the words of scripture that had been declared to them.

If these are the essential things, and I believe they are, then I want to assure you we, too, can manage just fine. Offer praises to God, in the congregation and in our homes. Hear and attend to the word read, and interpreted to give the sense of it, as Nehemiah says. Care for one another, and most particularly for the neediest among us.

Several hundred years after Nehemiah, when the community of faith were gathered again, at the synagogue, Jesus was invited to read scripture. He read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah these words:

“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.” As was also the custom, he interpreted, or gave the sense of the text, as Nehemiah says. And for Jesus, the sense of it was to say: this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Or, in other words, this is what I am here for –

to bring good news to the poor. This scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, and continues to be fulfilled, by the power of the Spirit, through Christ’s church.

Whenever, wherever, and however the community of the faithful gather together around God’s word;

Whenever, wherever, and however the community is feeding and caring for the least of God’s children;

The word is being fulfilled.

Thanks be to God. We all need the good news. May we also be the good news. 

Photo by Mario Dobelmann on Unsplash

When the Hour Arrives

 

John 2:1-11        

When Kim turned 50 years old, I threw him a surprise birthday party. I invited all our friends and family; it was a great celebration. And we ran out of beer.

I didn’t panic, though. Because in Pennsylvania you just call up your local beer distributor and they will deliver a case right to your door. So I did. And my brother-in-law happened to answer the door when it arrived, and he paid for it. Which was a nice bonus. So everything turned out well.

I know how important these things are. I learned at my mother’s side that the very worst thing that can happen to a host is to run out of something a guest might want. It is the stuff nightmares are made of.

Still, I know that there are plenty worse things that can happen in life. Running out of your beverage of choice? That is an inconvenience. An embarrassment. It might mean your guests leave early. But it’s not life or death, is it?

This is a funny little miracle story that John offers us – or, if we use John’s word, we would call this a sign rather than a miracle. John wants us to see these events as moments which point us toward Jesus’ identity; they are signs of who he is. But this is a funny one, and perhaps the other evangelists also thought so, because not Matthew, Mark, nor Luke makes any mention of it.

I say it is funny because it just doesn’t seem to fit in. It’s like that game on Sesame Street, “One of these things is not like the others.” Which one? It’s this one – the time Jesus turned water into wine.

Somehow, it just doesn’t feel necessary in the same way healing leprosy or casting out demons feels necessary.

This is a wedding. Jesus is here with his mother and his disciples. They were all there joining in the celebration with who knows how many other people, feasting and drinking and dancing – doing the things we do at weddings.

And Jesus was not expecting this to be a working day for him.

But Mary, who probably had plenty of experience hosting guests in her home, was quick to spy that the wine was running out. She didn’t make a big deal about it, but she didn’t ignore it either. She went straight to her son and said, “They have no wine.”

That is all she said. It makes me wonder what their relationship was like. Jesus was a grown man, but of course, no matter how old you get, your mother is still your mother, right? I don’t question her authority, but I just wonder what she thought he would do.

I don’t think she was expecting him to run out to the liquor store and get more wine. I imagine Mary was expecting Jesus to do something that no one else could do. Did Mary somehow know this would be his moment?

Perhaps she did know, but it doesn’t appear that Jesus did. His response to Mary was to say, “My hour has not yet come.” He did not think this was the time and place for his first sign. This was not the hour for him to come out as the Messiah. Yet Mary simply says to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” And, maybe, she gave Jesus a look. I don’t know; it’s not in the text. In any case, as far as she is concerned, it’s a done deal.

And apparently, as far as Jesus is concerned, that’s enough for him. So, he gets out there and he performs his very first sign, turning water into wine.

Maybe it felt a little funny to him, too, that his very first sign should be something like this. Maybe, as a young man dreaming about how he would make his debut to the world, he imagined something more dramatic than this. But here he was. At a small-town wedding. Replenishing the wine.

And nobody even knew it was him.

His hour had not yet come, he thought. But then, it turned out, his hour had come, and this was it.

It seems one of those moments when it’s worth remembering Jesus’ humanity. The fact that he had gauged this imperfectly. That he had to be corrected by his mother. Somehow, we are always surprised by the possibility that Jesus might have made a mistake, misjudged something. But we must remember that he was fully human, as we are.

None of us would say that we never make a mistake. We don’t get all the calls right. In fact, we know we miss a lot of them. It’s okay, we don’t expect perfection of ourselves.

And it turns out Jesus was susceptible to making errors too.

Yet there is a more important thing we might learn from this little story about Jesus: that is how he dealt with it. He adjusted his expectations. He changed his plans. This may not have been at all what Jesus was expecting his first sign to be, but he realized that this was, indeed, the time and the place.

And what’s more, I want to say that he might not have even understood it yet. He just knew that this is what he was being called to do. Maybe there is a lesson in this for all of us.

I once read a story about Martin Luther King, Jr. as a young man beginning his ministry.  Fresh out of seminary, he was a candidate for a position at a very prestigious church.  It was to be a fine feather in his newly ordained cap.  But when the day arrived, the congregation voted no.  They simply said this was not the pastor they wanted. 

So he ended up accepting a call at the Dexter Avenue church in Montgomery, Alabama.  The next year, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery city bus and a whole movement was set in motion.  King was right there. 

If he had been offered that prestigious pulpit, he would have been somewhere else.  Who knows what would have happened with the bus boycott or the whole Civil Rights Movement?  But he was there, where he needed to be for the work God had prepared him to do. 

It wasn’t just an accident.  It wasn’t bad luck followed by good luck. It wasn’t a fantastic coincidence.  It happened because he was willing and able to hear the call and respond.

King may have been disappointed about the rejection, but he moved forward in faith, trusting that God had something for him.  He put down his roots in Montgomery, at the Dexter Avenue Church, and he began the work of day-to-day ministry.  And when something happened on the bus, he was paying attention. 

Sometimes things don’t turn out the way you expect them to. Sometimes the best plans fall apart and we have to adjust. The best we can do, when these things happen is to be listening, to be ready to change. Just like Reverend King did. Just like Jesus did.

And if we listen, we see that God will often work with something that seems insignificant and make it significant. God may take a little thing and use it for a lot of good.

May you always be looking for the moment of God’s call. May you be ready to adjust when that moment arrives. And may you step out in faith.

Photo by LanaFoleyPhotography.com

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Isaiah 43:1-7      

Luke 3:15-17,21-22    

There is a pretty good chance you know the origin of the sermon title: “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.” It’s the theme song from the old TV show Cheers.

Set in a Boston bar called Cheers. There was a crew of regulars who appeared in every episode. One of them, Norm Peterson, would always walk through the door and be greeted with a chorus saying, “Norm!” Then Norm would go sit down on his regular seat at the end of the bar. The place where everybody knows his name.

It’s great to have a place like that. On some level, we all long for a place where everybody knows our name.

Someplace where you feel comfortable, where you have friends. It might be a coffee shop, a bar, a barbershop, the YMCA. It is a place where you can come and go freely, where there are always familiar faces, the folks who sort of give the place its character.

You can always find conversation there. You always feel welcome there. No matter where you come from, you are okay; it is a place where you feel at home, where people know your name.

Church can be that place. Where you can walk in and look around to see who else is here, too. Catch up with the ones you haven’t seen for a while. Like Norm, you just might have a regular seat, too.

I think church used to be that place for more people – a place that was at or near the center of their lives. But less now than it used to be. Maybe they drifted away. Or maybe, for some, it never was that place.

Maybe the church wasn’t very friendly and welcoming so they never really got that feeling of being known and accepted. Maybe, at some point, the church felt too judgy. The message that came through loud and clear was a message of judgment without a message of grace, and it started to feel like they weren’t really welcome. Maybe they started to see some ugly interpersonal dynamics, or people started asking them to choose a side in their big argument, and then it just felt like it was time to go.

But the thing is, everyone needs a place where they feel known, like they are a part of a community, where they are welcome. And if it’s not church, it has to be someplace else. This is why we have so many coffee shops, right?

There is a basic human need for connection. You can see it in the way we gather. You can hear it in the way we talk to each other, filling our conversations with phrases like, “exactly,” or “I hear you.” Because without that sense of being known, being seen, being heard by another, we might feel like we don’t really exist.

I regret that church has stopped feeling like the place where you belong for too many people. I am sad that, for so many, church is the last place they would think of when they think about where they are really known and cared for and loved. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be.

When you strip it down to the basics, church is intended to be the place where they know your name, where you are welcome, where you find real community – and you belong.

That is what baptism is.

When we baptize an infant, a child, or an adult, we say that person’s name. And we tell that person, “We know who you are, God knows who you are, and you belong here.” We know your name. And now, we say, you have a new name – Beloved.

It’s pretty simple, but sometimes we make it too complicated. There are many things we think about baptism – some of them are right. But some things are misunderstood:

For example, baptism is not an inoculation against sin or harm, like a protective shield for the body and soul. And when I hear parents refer to a child’s baptism as getting him done, as if they are taking him in for his shots, then I think they are expecting too much and expecting too little of baptism.

Neither is baptism a personal mountaintop experience When people talk about a desire to be baptized again, maybe go and do it in the Jordan River just like Jesus did. Because they feel like they should have the experience. Because it’s an item on their bucket list, right between bungee-jumping and spelunking. Then I think they may be putting too much stock in the feeling.

One more thing: baptism does not expect you to be perfect – and that’s okay. Because if we are assuming that we have to make ourselves good enough to be loved and accepted, we are losing the most essential thing of all – grace.

The gospels tell the story about Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River, and it is a simple story. It was John who baptized him, as he baptized so many others. Jesus approached John in the water, asked to be baptized, and so he was. And when he emerged out of the water a voice from heaven said, “You are my Son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.

And that’s all it is. This is baptism. It is walking into a river of life, getting dunked in the water of community and love and forgiveness, and being given a new name: Beloved.

It is not the finale, but only the beginning of a life full of meaning and purpose.

It is not an accomplishment, but only a full surrender to the amazing love of God as we find it in the church.

It is not something private, between you and God. When we walk into baptism we are walking into the arms of community, a place where everybody knows your name.

And that is the place to be.

Photo by Tim Mossholder from Pexels

Forgetting

Philippians 3:12-13    

Graham Greene was a great English novelist, and among the many wonderful books he wrote was a slim volume called Monsignor Quixote.  It’s about a priest who is traveling with a companion, someone with whom he does not always agree.  They have very different beliefs and somewhat different values and a lot of “discussion” about these differences. One morning, after a night of heated disagreement, his companion comes to the priest to apologize about last night.  Father Quixote says he has no idea what he is concerned about, for he hasn’t any recollection of whatever they discussed the night before.  “I am trained to forget what I am told,” he says.  Even when it’s not in the confessional?  “It’s much easier for a priest to treat everything as a confession.  I make a habit of never repeating anything to anyone – even to myself, if possible.”

Most people, including his bishop, seem to find Father Quixote to be rather simpleminded. Others might recognize in him a childlike wisdom. He is certainly unusual.

I don’t believe I know anyone who makes a practice of forgetting.  Most of us are a little obsessed with remembering, especially as it gets harder and harder as the years go on.  Our ability to retain things is increasingly challenged, as our mental filing cabinets get overly full and disorganized. So we try vitamin supplements, crossword puzzles, brain-boosting foods, and other tricks.

Remembering is a worthy goal, I’m sure you agree.  It is good to remember all the happy times in our lives; it’s good to remember the successes, and even remember the failures for the sake of knowing what we did wrong and trying to avoid doing it in the future.  Remembering where we have been, with hearts of gratitude, will surely help us determine where we are going. 

But you know all that, don’t you? We talk enough about how great remembering is. How about forgetting? Is there a case to be made for forgetting?

The Apostle Paul seems to think so.  In his letter to the Philippian church, he speaks of forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. For him this meant forgetting the old things he used to believe were important and putting all his efforts into knowing and growing in Christ.

One thing we should know about this:  it was probably one of the last letters Paul wrote.  This was a letter written late in his life.  There was a great deal behind him, which he was choosing to forget for the sake of what lies ahead of him. Probably not something you would expect from a man in the twilight of his life, sitting alone in a jail cell. What is there to do but to reminisce about the good old days? Yet, even at this stage in Paul’s illustrious career, he makes a strong case for forgetting.

For everything we remember there is also a way in which we would be better off to forget it.  Allow me to suggest three things.

Forgetting the ways in which we were wronged.  It is a temptation to remember every slight, every offense, every abuse we have suffered.  Some of us are very good at holding grudges.  We seem to think remembering these things will somehow bring balance to the universe – or at least, maybe, protect us from ever suffering such an insult again.  There’s that old saying: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. 

And it is not altogether wrong that we should remember the offenses, for the sake of being aware of how we can be hurt.  Jesus advised his disciples to be wise as serpents – be wise to the sinfulness and the dangers of the world in which we live. 

But at the same time, he says, be innocent as doves – to remember what is good and pure and worthy of our time and effort.  It is too easy for memories of past wrongs to poison our minds and hearts.  So, to the extent that you are able, forget the wrongs of the past.  It will free you to live in the present and move unencumbered into the future.

I always remembered those words of Monsignor Quixote more than anything else in the story, because it explains so much about the Father – why he walks around so sublimely happy so much of the time!  Happy are those who don’t remember the ways they have been slighted, cheated, or offended by others, for they shall be content.  They shall have the gift of living in the moment.

Forget the ways in which you have been wronged and be at peace.

Forget, also, the way things are supposed to be.  We all know how things are supposed to be, and this will cause us more grief than we care to deal with.  More arguments are caused by people who know how things are supposed to be than anyone or anything else.  I haven’t actually researched this, but I’m saying it anyway because it feels true.

I don’t think I need to remind you of the seven most exalted words in the life of the church:  We’ve never done it that way before.  Or its close cousin:  This is how we’ve always done it.  I would bet that every one of us has said these words at least once.  And while it can sometimes be helpful to know how we have always done it before, it’s also a way of closing off possibility, imagination, even just conversation.  The problem with doing things the way they are supposed to be done is that things actually change: the world changes – everything in it changes.  And the truth is we don’t know how the Spirit will be at work in our lives; we don’t know what God has in store for us.  When you think you know how things are supposed to happen, you close your mind to the possibility of how things might unfold.

Forget how things are supposed to be and look for the way things are.

Finally, let’s forget our successes.  Now you’re thinking, “what?”  Why in the name of all that is good would we want to do that?  This can be a harder sell.

Sometimes when we are going through a difficult patch, it is helpful to remember other trials in the past. To remember other times when we faced challenges that seemed insurmountable, yet found the resources to get through it and thrive. To recall how we found strengths we didn’t know we had, and maybe even were better for it. Remembering these things can give us courage for the problems we face now.

But remembering can also get in the way.  Sometimes remembering our successes can keep us from finding the path God is leading us toward this time. I once worked at a church that was having a hard time getting youth involved. There was growing anxiety about the situation.  And I began to notice something happening.  I was hearing the same sentiment expressed by many people:  If we could just have SALT again! 

SALT was the name of a youth choir that had been active in this church about 20 years earlier.  SALT was a great program, everyone said.  The choir had attracted youth from all over the community. They traveled all over the region, bringing the good news in song and bringing fame to themselves and the church.  SALT had been a phenomenal success – at least as it lived in people’s memories.  And the darker our current situation looked, the brighter SALT shone in people’s memories.  “If we could just have SALT again” became a mantra.

But we would never have it again.  It was a different time in the church and our culture.  We could have hired a director and designated some funds and resurrected the name, but we still would not have SALT again.

Sometimes we need to forget the things of the past for the sake of living now.

What will this year bring for us? What gifts, what challenges, what surprises will we see? What will end in 2022, and what will begin? What will we gain and what will we let go?

We spend much of our time and energy in the past, holding on to good memories we wish to return to, or bad memories we wish to protect ourselves from or even avenge ourselves for.  We spend much effort trying to maintain control of things, keeping them the way we like, the way they have always been, the way we feel comfortable with.

Imagine all these things as stones you are holding in your hands.  They’re attractive stones, sure, and they seem worthy of your efforts to hold on to them.  But one day you might get a glimpse of a stone of such beauty as you haven’t seen before – just a brief glimpse, really, because you are mostly preoccupied with keeping your grip on the stones in your hands.  But when you happen to glance up and see this new stone, you immediately know that it is worthy of taking hold of, worthy of making a part of your life.  But, you can’t.  Your hands are too full already.

Sometimes you need to let go for the sake of something better.  As we begin a new year, let us consider forgetting those things that lie behind and strain forward to see what Christ is opening before us now. 

Photo: Churchart.com