Happy New Year! No, my calendar is not one month off.
Today IS New Year's Day...at least as far as the church is
concerned. Today is the first Sunday in Advent, which is the
beginning of the church year.
Now, I realize that most folks think of the season of Advent
as simply preparation for Christmas - a time to prepare ourselves
for the coming of Jesus, to make room for him in the "Inn of our
hearts" - and, of course, Advent IS that. But it is more as
well. Advent is the time we prepare our hearts for another year
of study and service as a part of Christ's Church. For the
Church then, today really IS New Year's Day.
And, since it is New Year's, what could be more appropriate
than some New Year's RESOLUTIONS? New Year's Resolutions. Do
you bother with them? "I'm going to quit smoking," or "I'm going
to lose some weight," or "I'm going to spend more time with my
family." I sympathize with the fellow who was working on his
resolutions for the New Year. One was to clean up his desk - he
did...and found last year's list of resolutions. Mark Twain
offered one of my favorites - "This year I'm going to live within
my means... even if I have to borrow money to do it."
New Year's Resolutions. I confess I do not fool with them
generally. They prove to be too discouraging when I find out how
little real resolve I often have. Perhaps, if I had the support
of a whole group who were making the same resolutions and could
encourage me when I might be tempted to slip, I might do better.
So, for my own benefit as much as anyone else's, what I would
propose to you this morning will be some resolutions for the
whole group of us...as individuals...as a congregation...and by
extension, the entire body of Christ, wherever it may be found.
Let us look at the passage we read from I Corinthians, the
lectionary epistle lesson for the first Sunday in Advent, and use
them to begin our work. What is the first thing we run into?
Paul's greeting to the church (verse 3): "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." If we take those
words and then consider the verses immediately following, we find
some fruitful direction for resolution building.
Of course, the place to begin is at the beginning. What is
the very first word? GRACE! Good word! It is one around which
we can, not only build a New Year's resolution, but an entire
theology...GRACE! "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound..."
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.
There is something extra special to me in knowing that the
new year BEGINS with grace...God's unmerited favor. Not an easy
concept for us to handle. We have grown up in a society which
tells us that "You get what you pay for...There is no such thing
as a free lunch." But GRACE is never paid for, never earned. It
is just THERE.
A Pennsylvania fellow traveling here in the south stopped by a
mom & pop restaurant for breakfast. He ordered eggs, bacon and
toast only to be surprised by an amorphous white mass on his
plate when the food was served. "What's this?" he asked.
"Grits," replied the waitress.
"I didn't order grits," said the traveler.
"No matter," said the waitress, "they just come."
Grace is like grits. It just comes.
For years and years, I have begun every worship service I have been privileged to lead with, "Grace to you and peace...from God our father
and our Lord Jesus Christ." Do you know why? It is because I
want the first word you hear from me to be GRACE. Now the new
YEAR begins with grace...a gift with which to begin the next
twelve months.
If the church can remember that God's first word to us is
GRACE, then any number of other problems would disappear. We
would never have bloodbaths in the name of Jesus Christ...we
would never have had the Crusades; we would never have had the
Inquisition; we would never have had the Salem Witch Trials; we
would never act in an UNGRACIOUS way toward anyone.
You have heard that "you catch more flies with honey than
with vinegar." Then in terms of our New Year's Resolution the
thinking would be that more people are LOVED into the Kingdom
than are ARGUED or INTIMIDATED into it. Our first resolution
then might be that "We, as a Church, and we as individual
Christians, will BE GRACIOUS - no fault-finding, no back-biting,
no pettiness - WE WILL BE GRACIOUS in the way we treat each other
and the way we treat those outside the faith." Let us resolve to
show God's GRACE!
What do we run into next? "Grace to you and PEACE..." As
we move into this special season when we think of "PEACE on
earth," it would be most blessed if we could enjoy real peace,
certainly in our violent world, but most especially within the
fellowship of the Church. Of ALL places on earth, the one which
claims to serve the Prince of Peace should be expected to be the
most peaceful. But you and I know that, unfortunately, peace in
the church is more of a dream than a reality.
Over the course of ecclesiastical history, there have been
some incredible church fights. Should infants be baptized or
only adults? Should children be allowed to take Communion before
confirmation? Do women have the same standing as men in the
church? How literally are we supposed to understand the Bible?
What do we say about human sexuality, abortion, capital
punishment and so on? The fight goes on. In local
congregations, there have been some terrible battles and even
church splits over crucial questions like whether to get the old
heating system fixed or buy a new one, whether the new sanctuary
carpet should be red or blue, whether the offering should be
taken before the sermon or after. Those are wonderful issues to
go to war about, aren't they? But Christians do. No, there does
not seem to be a great deal of PEACE in the Church. As a matter
of fact, I wonder how much good a New Year's Resolution about
peace would really do - sinners that we are, it may be doomed
before it starts.
Perhaps we would be more realistic in trying to make any
resolution about PEACE by considering what the Apostle Paul does
as he gets beyond this greeting in the letter to the church at
Corinth. Listen again to what he says: "I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind." Paul starts off with something nice.
Now, that might not be particularly surprising under normal
circumstances in a letter from friend to friend, but, as you
Bible scholars know, in the next fourteen chapters of this letter
to the Corinthians, Paul rips into them. He decries the factions
that had developed in the congregation; he berates them for
tolerating gross immorality in the life of one of the prominent
members; he clobbers them about fighting among themselves and
taking one another to court; he jumps them about their disorderly
worship. Suffice it to say, there is nothing gentle about this
letter.
BUT, think again how Paul starts out - he begins on a
POSITIVE NOTE. If we really want PEACE...if we want to
effectively manage the conflicts that always seem to arise within
the church...let us resolve to be as POSITIVE with one another as
we can, to accept one another as individuals for whom Jesus shed
his blood and loves so very much. When we begin to think like
that, many of our inter-church as well as inter-personal problems
would evaporate. "We resolve to be positive with one another."
To me, THAT kind of resolution has at least some chance for
success, and if it does, then one day, we may indeed be able to
look at the Church and see something that DOES begin to approach
real PEACE.
What do we find next? "Grace and peace to you from GOD OUR
FATHER..." How do we make a resolution about God? What do we
know about God that would lend itself to preparing for a new
year? Well, we have learned since childhood that God is love;
that God is all-powerful and all-knowing; that God is the source
of everything. The list could go on and on. But if we are
giving ourselves some good direction for the coming year, perhaps
it would again be helpful to note what Paul talks about as he
continues his letter. The Apostle says, "you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Well, if we have been given spiritual gifts, we
know where they came from...from GOD! Okay, how does that become
a New Year's resolution?
Well, first of all, there is something in Paul's statement
that is really a little surprising. He says the church is not
lacking in ANY spiritual gift. Paul explains a bit later on in
the letter: "God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues."(1) And then Paul goes on at length
about the most important gift of all...the gift of love. That is
quite a list, but what is most surprising is that Paul says that
even as messed-up a church as the one at Corinth had them ALL.
And the implication is that the church in our own day CONTINUES
to have them all.
Now, we begin to get into something about which we can make
a New Year's resolution. If we indeed DO have all the spiritual
gifts...if there really is NOTHING we are not capable of doing
spiritually...then the resolution is to take those gifts and put
them to work. Of course, one of the things that Paul took pains
to point out to the people in Corinth was that every individual
did NOT have every gift. We only have them ALL as we come
together in the worshiping community. For the church, the task
is to seek out the spiritual gifts among the individual members;
for you and me, the task is to make ourselves available so that
the church can put those gifts that God has given to USE in the
name of Jesus Christ.
And speaking of Jesus, that leads us to the final note of
Paul's greeting to the church: "Grace and peace to you from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." We have come up with
resolutions concerning grace and peace and God. What do we
resolve about the Lord Jesus?
Perhaps we get a clue from how often Paul refers to Jesus in
these few verses at the beginning of his letter. I doubt that
you were counting as we read the passage, but in just these
verses we read, the name of Christ is mentioned six times. In
the opening ten verses, the name appears TEN times. That's a
lot. Do you wonder why? I don't. I am convinced that if the
apostle Paul would come to us this morning and have anything to
say about New Year's resolutions for the Church, he would say,
"Please, please, please, resolve to be a Christ-centered Church."
It might seem that a church which calls itself "Christian"
would automatically be Christ-centered, but we know that such is
not always the case. With more frequency than we might care to
admit, the church has gotten off on its own agenda or own tangent
and seemed to forget about Jesus. The result has been that
people's pain has been ignored, people's hunger has been ignored,
people's basic human rights have been ignored, and even people's
relationship with God has been ignored. That is sad.
Over a hundred years ago, a book was published that, in its day,
became the second most widely purchased religious book in
history. Only the Bible sold more copies. The book is
called In His Steps.(2) Perhaps you have read it.
In His Steps is set in the fictional town of Raymond, Kansas
and deals with what happened to that town and the people in it
when the folks in First Church there resolved to make their lives
genuinely Christ-centered by trying to base all their activities
on their answers to one question: "What would Jesus do?" The
pastor of the church, the Rev. Henry Maxwell started preaching to
the needs of people rather than simply to their intellects; the
local newspaper editor, Edward Norman, began being careful about
what kind of advertising he accepted; Alexander Powers who ran
the local railroad yard began to treat his employees better;
wealthy young socialite Rachel Winslow began a ministry to
derelicts and their families who lived "on the other side of the
tracks"; Donald Marsh, the president of the local college, got
into politics to be a voice against the corruption that was so
pervasive. One after another, people found their lives changed
when Jesus Christ was put at the center.
Oh, they had all thought of themselves as Christians before
this experiment of theirs, this asking "What would Jesus do?" to
help them decide on their courses of action. But when Jesus
Christ was finally a RESIDENT in the home of their hearts instead
of just an honored guest, things became different.
Things change when Jesus is really Lord. If we want to put
it in the form of a New Year's resolution, perhaps it would be as
simple as, "We resolve to be genuinely Christ-centered as we move
through the coming year."
New Year's Resolutions: To show GRACE to each other and the
world at large; to seek PEACE by being as positive with one
another as we can; to honor GOD by putting our spiritual gifts to
use in God's service; and to be genuinely CHRIST-centered people,
both as individuals and a church. God grant us the strength...
the resolve...to follow through. And, oh yes, Happy New Year.
Amen!
1. 1 Corinthians 12:28
2. Charles M. Sheldon, (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1935)
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