A New Year
01/01/12 04:28
It seems like I should write something significant to begin a new year. 2011 was quite a year for our family. Susan and I each lost a parent. We both became grandparents. Our daughter got married. We had a sort-of-sabbatical. It was a year without equal in our lives – and a year that will never be repeated. Whatever else I can say about 2012 – it won’t be a repeat of 2011. I am grateful for that. Not that I would want to not have lived through the year that just passed. There was simply too much that was too good that occurred. But life is never simply all good with no bad, all joy with no pain, all success with no struggle. It just doesn’t work like that.
New Years Fireworks Display in Sydney, Australia. Photo from www.bbc.co.uk.
After all – there is a 5,125-year-old Mesoamerican calendar that runs out on December 21, 2012. It depends on whom you talk to for opinions on what that means. Some new age interpreters say that the date marks the time when the Earth and its inhabitants will undergo a positive physical and spiritual transformation and that 2012 will mark the beginning of a new era. Others predict the end of the world.
I’m comfortable waiting to see what happens.
I do know that I have a calendar that ran out of days yesterday and the end of the world didn’t come. I just put up a new calendar. I do know that we’ve lived through several predictions of apocalyptic doom. The world didn’t’ end on January 31, 1999. I checked Sydney, Australia, Hong Kong, and even London and New York City before going to bed on that night and sleeping right through midnight in Mountain Standard Time. I was in Oregon on May 21, 2011, the first day that Harold Camping predicted that the Rapture would occur. When nothing happened that day, he revised his prediction to October 21. I was in Missouri when that day came around. He had previously predicted the rapture would occur in 1994. Jesus said, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew 24:36) Maybe Harold Camping hadn’t read that verse of the Bible.
Like I said, I have no problem with living my life and seeing events as they come. I don’t need special powers of prediction.
Of course there could be catastrophe around the corner. Bad things do happen to good people – and often they don’t see what is coming. But it is equally true that good things might be coming as well.
I suppose that I should make some sort of a prediction about the year to come, but I really do not have any special insight on the future. My faith is not based on some kind of ability to see the future. I read the prophets not as predictors, but as voices calling us to faithfulness in our relationship with God.
I do, however, have a gut feeling that in 2012, life is not going to get any easier. There won’t be any magic solutions that mean that dreams come true without hard work. I won’t be winning the lottery. You have to buy a ticket to win. I don’t believe in something for nothing. My job won’t suddenly become easy. I won’t have days of leisure in which I don’t go to bed tired. And that is a good thing, because I don’t want life to be that way.
There is something about hard times – something about grief – something about losing loved ones – something about looking death in the face. That something is that death loses its power. I’m not afraid of dying. I’m not afraid of wrinkles. I’m not afraid of white hair. I’m not afraid of getting old. You don’t get that way until you have had enough living to know that you can face hard times without being crushed by them. It takes being a survivor in some sense to look life squarely in the face and understand that we are all a part of something much bigger than ourselves.
I’m pleased that we are starting 2012 on a Sunday. That means that in a few hours we will gather for worship. We are having a covenant renewal service at our church. There will be baptismal remembrance and the sprinkling of water. There will be covenant renewal and speaking out loud once again the promises we made when we joined the church. There will be the celebration of communion. Our holy meal is just a taste – not sufficient to satisfy, but sufficient to meet the need and leave the hunger for more: more communion, more community, more connection.
That’s not a bad way to start a new year.
We live in times of significant change. There are several church historians who say that the church is going through a once-every-500-year transformation. Phyllis Tickle, in her book, The Great Emergence, says that every 500 years the church cleans out its attic and has a rummage sale. Every five centuries or so, the Church rethinks how it is organized, tosses out a bunch of idols, refocuses its energies and emerges transformed. I’m not sure that I buy all of her sweeping statements, but I do have a sense that we are living through an important epoch in history – perhaps as significant as the reformation. In those days, the church didn’t operate in isolation. The printing press was a sweeping technological innovation that gave rise to new methods of communication – literacy began to sweep the masses and modern democracies began to emerge. Our technologies are different, but no less startling. As we watch newspapers go out of business and struggle with the invasiveness of cell phones, we know that the world is changing.
And change is never easy.
2012 is not going to be an easy year. There will be struggles in the church as we seek to be faithful in a changing year. There will be struggles in our family as we discover the newness that is emerging in the change of generations. There will be struggles in our country as we once see our electoral system stretched and pulled by powerful and well-financed forces.
It isn’t going to be boring.
But I am not afraid. Quite the contrary – I’m excited. Lets work together and see what we can create – a new year is upon us, fresh with new possibility and promise.
Happy New Year!
New Years Fireworks Display in Sydney, Australia. Photo from www.bbc.co.uk.
After all – there is a 5,125-year-old Mesoamerican calendar that runs out on December 21, 2012. It depends on whom you talk to for opinions on what that means. Some new age interpreters say that the date marks the time when the Earth and its inhabitants will undergo a positive physical and spiritual transformation and that 2012 will mark the beginning of a new era. Others predict the end of the world.
I’m comfortable waiting to see what happens.
I do know that I have a calendar that ran out of days yesterday and the end of the world didn’t come. I just put up a new calendar. I do know that we’ve lived through several predictions of apocalyptic doom. The world didn’t’ end on January 31, 1999. I checked Sydney, Australia, Hong Kong, and even London and New York City before going to bed on that night and sleeping right through midnight in Mountain Standard Time. I was in Oregon on May 21, 2011, the first day that Harold Camping predicted that the Rapture would occur. When nothing happened that day, he revised his prediction to October 21. I was in Missouri when that day came around. He had previously predicted the rapture would occur in 1994. Jesus said, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew 24:36) Maybe Harold Camping hadn’t read that verse of the Bible.
Like I said, I have no problem with living my life and seeing events as they come. I don’t need special powers of prediction.
Of course there could be catastrophe around the corner. Bad things do happen to good people – and often they don’t see what is coming. But it is equally true that good things might be coming as well.
I suppose that I should make some sort of a prediction about the year to come, but I really do not have any special insight on the future. My faith is not based on some kind of ability to see the future. I read the prophets not as predictors, but as voices calling us to faithfulness in our relationship with God.
I do, however, have a gut feeling that in 2012, life is not going to get any easier. There won’t be any magic solutions that mean that dreams come true without hard work. I won’t be winning the lottery. You have to buy a ticket to win. I don’t believe in something for nothing. My job won’t suddenly become easy. I won’t have days of leisure in which I don’t go to bed tired. And that is a good thing, because I don’t want life to be that way.
There is something about hard times – something about grief – something about losing loved ones – something about looking death in the face. That something is that death loses its power. I’m not afraid of dying. I’m not afraid of wrinkles. I’m not afraid of white hair. I’m not afraid of getting old. You don’t get that way until you have had enough living to know that you can face hard times without being crushed by them. It takes being a survivor in some sense to look life squarely in the face and understand that we are all a part of something much bigger than ourselves.
I’m pleased that we are starting 2012 on a Sunday. That means that in a few hours we will gather for worship. We are having a covenant renewal service at our church. There will be baptismal remembrance and the sprinkling of water. There will be covenant renewal and speaking out loud once again the promises we made when we joined the church. There will be the celebration of communion. Our holy meal is just a taste – not sufficient to satisfy, but sufficient to meet the need and leave the hunger for more: more communion, more community, more connection.
That’s not a bad way to start a new year.
We live in times of significant change. There are several church historians who say that the church is going through a once-every-500-year transformation. Phyllis Tickle, in her book, The Great Emergence, says that every 500 years the church cleans out its attic and has a rummage sale. Every five centuries or so, the Church rethinks how it is organized, tosses out a bunch of idols, refocuses its energies and emerges transformed. I’m not sure that I buy all of her sweeping statements, but I do have a sense that we are living through an important epoch in history – perhaps as significant as the reformation. In those days, the church didn’t operate in isolation. The printing press was a sweeping technological innovation that gave rise to new methods of communication – literacy began to sweep the masses and modern democracies began to emerge. Our technologies are different, but no less startling. As we watch newspapers go out of business and struggle with the invasiveness of cell phones, we know that the world is changing.
And change is never easy.
2012 is not going to be an easy year. There will be struggles in the church as we seek to be faithful in a changing year. There will be struggles in our family as we discover the newness that is emerging in the change of generations. There will be struggles in our country as we once see our electoral system stretched and pulled by powerful and well-financed forces.
It isn’t going to be boring.
But I am not afraid. Quite the contrary – I’m excited. Lets work together and see what we can create – a new year is upon us, fresh with new possibility and promise.
Happy New Year!