Tis the season for making resolutions. It’s likely that some of us have made a New Year’s resolution or two. By now you are 8 days in to that resolution. 8 days may not be enough time to have pulled off your resolution but it’s probably enough time to have figured out whether the resolution you have made is going to happen.
In just under 8 days our nation will watch as a new president is inaugurated. That’s a moment of resolution, don’t you think? They say that presidents have only 100 days to get anything substantial done. And not just any 100 days. It’s the first 100 days. A four-year presidency has 1,460 days in it. To get new legislation passed, however, to set a tone for how you’re going to govern, for whether you’re likely to favor diplomacy or military action, to create new programs for education and start initiatives to combat poverty, you’ve got about 100 days. By then everyone will have got you figured out and they’ll stop expecting you to do anything you haven’t already done. After 100 days you will have lost the element of surprise. Before you get up in the morning on day 101, everyone will already have their guns drawn and ready to fire. Any resolutions you’re going to make then best be made in the first 100 days. After that you’re just a sitting duck, a head on a pole. It’s enough to make you think twice about making any resolutions at all.
Of course, the flip side is also true. If you have only 100 days to make your mark and to make sure it’s going to stick, you might come out of the gate with all your guns blazing. “This is who I am and what I’m going to do. I make no apologies about it.” Before New Year’s Day has even arrived, such people have a long list of resolutions already in hand. There is no talking with them about their resolutions, no convincing them that not every resolution is a good one, that some resolutions may not be worth the collateral damage they’ll leave in their wake. Such people remind me of Shakespeare’s Macbeth who upon killing off every enemy and foe in his way, sits upon his throne, twirling his crown between his fingers and asking himself, “All this for this?” It’s enough to make us think twice not only about making resolutions but about the resolutions we make.
In my 36 years I can’t remember ever making a New Year’s resolution, though I must admit, without even knowing it at times, I’ve made my fair share of both good and bad resolutions.
This past week my wife and I watched our niece for a few days while her mom went into the hospital to give birth to her baby brother. I almost forgot what it’s like to have an almost two-year old around. But on Wednesday morning I drove my niece to daycare to drop her off for the day and I thought I saw 15 ghosts from my past come back to haunt me as I remembered what it was like when I dropped my own children off at daycare for the first time.
Walking in, I quickly sized up and pegged all of her classmates. I know—what a terrible thing to do. They’re not even 3 yet and already I’ve pasted their face to a Most Wanted Ad. My niece wasn’t off the hook, though, either. I sized her up too, looking around the room carefully to figure out which kid she could most easily best in a match for her sippy cup.
It all sounds dramatic, I guess. But who among us doesn’t know what it’s like to be pegged by parents, whether it’s our own or someone else’s?
Among the definitions offered for the word resolution, Merriam-Webster gives two very needed ones. Resolution: the act of analyzing complex notions; and resolution: the changing of a voice from one that is dissonant and harshly out of tune to one that is harmonious and melodic.
Can we all agree that if we make no other resolutions in the coming year, one resolution worth making right now is that for the sake of our children and ourselves, we will make love simpler to figure out?
It won’t just happen though. Resolution never has and never will. By definition resolution means to re-solve, to re-solution, to re-figure what has previously and up until now been figured upon. Resolutions require then that we reject what has been, that we turn away from damaging habits and old ways of thinking to come up with more just, equitable, and peaceable solutions.
Anyone who wants to lose weight knows that you can’t just hit the gym three days a week after work. This is but one piece of necessary change. The other piece may be that you need to go to bed earlier or choose a different entrée at the restaurant. For there to be real and lasting resolution, these things must work together.
Jesus understood this, that resolution is hard, seemingly impossible work, and that anyone who sets out to make and keep a resolution better be prepared to sacrifice more than just dessert. No matter what gospel version you read in the Bible, they all include Jesus going out to meet John the Baptist in the desert by the Jordan River. People have been coming out in waves to see John, to hear him say, “You must change and by the grace of God coming to you soon, you can change!” Then to have John hold them while the waters of the Jordan pour over them like a cool bath washing them clean, and the warm sun hits their face as John announces for all to hear, “This one is blessed! This one is holy! This one is loved of God!” It’s a moment of defining resolution that John turns no one away from because everyone needs this kind of change. Then one day Jesus steps up to take his turn at the baptismal font and it totally throws John off his game, as suddenly all of his understandings of love and power are falling short as the One who is God’s very grace has come to ask for grace.
“I can’t baptize you, Jesus, for what change are you in need of? What sin, what wrong, what hatred, have you possibly committed that you need to come clean of? I think you’ve got this all backwards Jesus. Indeed, you should be baptizing me,” John tells him.
But Jesus is resolved. Not to show off his perfections, not to flaunt his position, not to push John aside as some would and say, “Here, you don’t know what you’re doing. Let me fix these people.” Rather, Jesus is resolved to stand among the people, with humility to confess that maybe there are things that even he needs to change.
Listen, if you want to re-figure, to re-solution the world, the way to do it is not to stand at a distance and yell at the world. Resolutions are never made and kept by those who would only stand behind pulpits and podiums, by those who act and feel entitled by what their Bible says, or because they won an election, or because they are members of a church or citizens of a country.
Listen, if you want to re-figure, to re-solution the world—and the world could use it—then you’re going to have to be as humble as Jesus who was glad to get in line and be counted among the poor and dispossessed of the world. You’ll have to be as gentle as a suffering servant who would dare not break a bruised reed or snuff out an already smoldering light. You’ll have to be persistent in your refusal to give in to cynicism and fear, and insist in what you believe, that God is doing a new thing and now is the time to love mercy and to do justly.
Listen, if you want to re-figure, to re-solution the world, you can. For this is who you are—you are holy. You are blessed. You are loved of God. Now go, become who you are.
Sunday’s Sermon, January 8, 2017
PleaseGrace 