Pastor's Notes

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see everything has become new!” This can be found in 2 Corinthians 17, written by St. Paul. 

Paul was not talking about a New Year, but a new person. 

As we look forward to 2021….and I think more than most new years, we really are embracing and looking forward to this New Year…….we may make resolutions, or collect our hopes for the upcoming year, or look forward to some anticipated events in our life planned for some time in the year ahead.  

A New Year, really isn’t all that new, is it? It is just another date on the calendar, another year in our lives, another round of holidays, work, birthdays, and a few anticipated and unanticipated adventures.  That may not have been quite true for 2020, but it is for most years. 

What if instead of looking forward to a new year, we look forward to becoming a new person? No, I’m not talking about Botox or plastic surgery or even weight loss and getting in shape. I mean a new person. What might a new person look like for you? For me?  What shackles can be tossed aside that now hold us back or hold us down? What new challenges might we embrace that might take us to places both figuratively and literally that we have never been and therefore have the possibility of changing us into someone new?

We all have characteristics about ourselves that most likely will never change. However we also all have possibility to change some parts of ourselves and become a new person. I feel sorry for people who seem to refuse to change. Over time they must become quite lonely and alienated as the world seems to march on and become new, thusly passing them by resulting in feelings of being alone and embittered.

I would not necessarily say God becomes new, but I can argue from scripture and from life that God is not afraid to express God’s self in new ways. There was the Creator way of “Young God”, there was the covenant way of a “Maturing God”, and ultimately there was and is the “Jesus Way” of “Mature God” in the birth, life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God is not one to say, “Let’s keep things the same.” God sees clearly that overall this does not work. Look at our world today: would it be wise to keep it this way? Take your historical pick back in time…..do you really wish life was just like that now? If we think some time in history was ideal, we probably weren’t paying attention. 

Being made new is much more than a decision on our part. It is the work of God who keeps coming after us year after year making at least some part of us new despite our best efforts at resistance. Think of that when you raise a toast this New Year’s Eve. Yes, it is a new year, but the year is not all that will be new in 2021. You will also be new; at least some part of you will be. Will the newness result in bitterness or will you look to faith to struggle to find some better way to become new?

God is not going to forget to come after you in 2021. God does not tire of making us new. God has not run out of creativity. So, it will be a happy New Year in 2021 after all. 

A central ingredient to a good movie is the characters. Story line and plot are extremely important, but if the characters don’t fill out the roles, the movie doesn’t make it. This time of year the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life” is viewed by millions. I am betting you can picture this litany of characters in your mind: George, Mary, Pa and Ma Bailey; Mr.   Potter, Uncle Billy, Mr. Martini, Bert the police officer and Ernie the cab driver, Sam Wainright, Violet, Mr. Gower, and Zuzu.  If you cannot picture them all, I suspect still recognize their role in the movie.

No doubt your life, like mine, has also involved quite a cast of characters over the years. Some are characters because of various eccentricities. Some may be characters because their primary eccentricity was having nothing eccentric about them. They were as straight as people come, always living life “by the book” as we sometimes say. 

This time of year always reminds me of one such character in my past. His name was Steve. Steve ran the local soup kitchen in downtown Colorado Springs. He was a former Roman Catholic priest and lived in a type of eco-friendly commune with a few other similarly minded folk. They recycled everything. Yes, everything! None of them owned a car. When asked why he did not own a car, Steve would answer, “Because I do own two good feet!”

Our congregation took turns preparing, serving, and cleaning up at the soup kitchen. Every Friday was our turn. We averaged about 450 hungry souls each week. 

On a Friday just before Christmas I took my confirmation class to slice, dice, peel, stir, dish up, and clean up. It seemed every five minutes or so someone would enter the soup kitchen doors with a box or boxes. The announcement seemed always about the same, “We are from St. John’s by the Gas Station Church and we made (or we have) a. socks, b. mittens, c. ski caps, d. candy canes, e. other,

Each time I would select a couple confirmands to distribute the donated items to those around the tables. Steve would always help out as did I. During the distribution of one donated item….I think it was candy canes….Steve stopped, looked at me, and said, “Sometimes our mission is to feed the hungry; sometimes it is to give stuff away.”

Only a day later Steve wrote an article for the local newspaper. The article described how people’s generosity went up a few notches every December as Christmas approached. I expected a note of cynicism in his writing. Not so. Steve did say it would be great if people exhibited the same generosity all year long. Many societal issues could be eliminated or at least greatly alleviated were this so. Yet each December Steve professed a certain hope. Steve’s hope was that maybe every once in a while someone whose giving was stimulated by the Christmas season may be moved to continue this generous spirit for the rest of the year and possibly for the rest of the person’s life.

When is the last time you took a look at the depth of your spirit of generosity? I know ours is a very generous community. Statistically we are better than average. We have to be as very few communities our size could ever pull off what we do each year without a greater than average depth of generosity. Christmas had its start in pondering. Mary pondered what the angel Gabriel said to her. Christmas can be a good time for you and I to ponder our commitment to sharing and giving. As we wait to receive, might we also ponder in our waiting how we might better give?  When is the last time this thought occupied your mind?

The God who takes on human flesh at Christmas in the baby Jesus comes to us to live in us and give to us. This God does so for us to be able to give to others. Who and what is out there that could use something, some gift that we have?  We can make this Christmas a time of waiting for opportunities to become more deeply committed to giving and sharing our gifts where they would be of use. Ponder this. Sharpen your spirit of generosity and you just might become a leading character among those other characters in someone else’s life. What if giving of yourself becomes the eccentricity for which you will be known?  God places many characters in our life. Share with them, learn from them and grow from doing so. Be one of God’s eccentric givers.

It is often said, “Elections have consequences.” Indeed, and those consequences cut both ways in our two party nation.  

Elections, however, are not alone in having consequences.  We might say “History has consequences.” That would be one of the reasons we study history. What is it about you and your life that derive from some personal and/or family history? What in your family and personal history has molded you into who you are and whom you are becoming?  What is it in the life of Arizona, Tempe, or our nation that has been shaped by history?

Today, Serbs speak bitterly about a defeat by Muslim armies in Kosovo as though the battle took place in their lifetime. The battle was in 1389!  Protestants in Belfast, Ireland today refer to “King Billy” as if he were a family friend, rather than the monarch that led the Orangemen to victory in 1690.  How much of our US politics today are shaped by the Civil War, a traumatic national experience that ended over 155 years ago? 

There are other examples much closer to us. In this pandemic the Native American rate of the COVID 19 virus is three times the amount that exists among whites. African Americans and Latinos also experience significantly higher rates. A long history has set in motion the causes for such rates. Little available water, few and insufficient medical facilities, lack of electricity and wifi availability on reservations are part of the problematic mix for Native Americans. Jobs that cannot be done remotely are just one of the reasons for African American and Latino rates. All are due in major part to a long history of discrimination.

We study history, we say, to learn from it. We study history to learn from past mistakes in hopes of not repeating them. We study history to discover what works. We study history to explore how similar we and our times are to all that have gone before us, yet also how different we and our times are as well. In short, we study history so we might create and shape a better history. Yet, perhaps, the greatest lesson of history is how often we fail to learn from our past and continue to go on not so much as prisoners of history, but more as trustees; those in prison allowed special freedoms and benefits.

Frequently in the gospels Jesus steps out of the history of his time and people to create a new history. Healing and praising Samaritans loathed by his people in his time, engaging a woman in conversation around a well, cleansing the temple, and praising a shrewd businessman along with so many other words and actions, Jesus did not fall into the trap of history; not even the history of his people and faith.

Can you and I be so bold? Can we look back as we look around and be grateful for the good things before us that have helped beyond our own efforts to make us who we are? Are we secure enough in our faith to look into a moral and spiritual mirror to recognize that not all our history has produced a good work? Are we courageous enough in our faith to attempt to crawl out from history’s clutches to work to create a new and better history that is better not just for us?

One of my theology professors defined death as that time when we cease to create a past. To this I would add that we do not cease in death to continue to create a future in that what we have done and what we leave behind continues to have some force on those with whom we made some impact. It was American author William Faulkner who said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” History has consequences. 

History indeed may have consequences. We who follow Jesus trust that faith in the one whom we follow produces consequences even more powerful; powerful enough to rescue us from some of our history.  History is a classroom; students, take note!  Faith in Jesus also has a few things to teach the world and bend the arc of history!