January 3, 2010
Will 2010 Be Different? - Luke 2:41-52
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadI will never forget the very first time that I ever heard of a new year’s resolution. I must have been about seven or eight years old when I came down one morning for the children’s sermon at Campobello First Baptist Church. Polly Powell gave the children’s sermon that day and she told us that we should make a new year’s resolution. That’s what people did for the New Year, she said, very much like I told our own children at our own children’s sermon this morning. Ever since then, I have made New Year’s resolutions. The only problem is, I cannot think of one New Year’s resolution that ever actually stuck, ever. With all due respect to Polly Powell — she’s a wonderful lady and gave great children’s messages — and with all due respect to me for that matter, I cannot think of a more futile and useless exercise than New Year’s resolutions. I never cease to be amazed at how packed gyms are during January. Everybody has made some sort of resolution to eat less and exercise more. You may be one of them, and I hope that it works for you. Chances are, though, that it won’t work. Go back to the gym in February and it will be normal again.
So with that positiveness in mind, how will 2010 be different? And not only that, but given the Christmas season that we spent an entire month celebrating and for which we spent at least six entire months preparing, given that we welcomed the everlasting light into the world, the hopes and fears of all the years, given that, how will 2010 be different? Even more specifically than that, what will you do to make it different? There is so much that can happen to you in 2010 that’s out of your control. You may win the lottery, for example. If you do, remember me. Or, you may come down with cancer. If you do, I’ll remember you. You can’t control any of that. But given what you can control and the decisions that you can make, and given our abysmal record on New Year’s resolutions, and given all that we celebrated and experienced at Christmas, what will you do to make 2010 different?
Jesus was twelve years old in this passage, when he and his family made the annual pilgrimage to the Temple to celebrate the Passover. The Passover was to them as Christmas is to us. The Passover was the highest religious celebration of the entire year. By every measure in every way (culturally, socially, religiously), it was the biggest event of the year. Like us, they did it every year, except this year would have been even bigger because Jesus had just turned 12 and might even have been essentially confirmed then. I am sure then that, like us, they must have tried to apply all of that to their lives. They, too, must have made a few New Year’s resolutions. And I’m sure that like us, their record was abysmal, too. But this time, something would change drastically, especially for Jesus’ parents, Mary & Joseph.
After a day’s trip returning from the Passover, Mary and Joseph looked around and discovered that their twelve-year-old was gone. Naturally, they panicked and made a bee-line back for the Temple. After three days of looking for him, they finally found Jesus. Oddly enough, Jesus was at Church. “Where else do you expect me to be,” Jesus asked his worried mother. Neither Mary nor Joseph understood what happened back there at the Temple, or why it was okay for their twelve year old son to hang out there for three days by himself, or what he was doing there. But whatever happened, it changed them. Rest assured that they would not chalk all that up to another futile New Year’s resolution.
Terry Brandon from Pleasant Hill came by the Church this past Tuesday morning to ask some questions about Room in the Inn. Unfortunately for him, and mostly for me, he somehow had the great misfortune of venturing in my office. Even when it’s clean, my office has this annoying tendency to look like a disaster. It looked especially messy on Tuesday morning. Papers were scattered everywhere, junk was scattered out on the tables. I was thoroughly embarrassed.
I can gauge how busy I am by how messy my office is, and it has been messy for a long time. I had intended for this past week to be a slow week, and it was slower, and I was even able to clean my office out. When I started digging, though, it got faster. It’s funny how that happens. We have a called session meeting on Saturday, the 9th. We’re a little shorter on our budget than we first thought, so Session is going to have to reconsider a few things. We also have a new slate of officers coming on board next month, and so we’ve got to do a number of things to get them rolling. Confirmation is winding down and will end next week. We are also considering becoming a part of a group of congregations in the Charlotte Presbytery to start this new program of church growth and development. It’s a very exciting program, but also a risky program. All of that happens in the next three weeks.
And, of course, like my office, 556 Medearis Drive is a zoo right now. It looks like one, it always sounds like one, and it even smells like one sometimes. I love my life right now. I love my home, I love my family, I love my work, and I love my church. But life is busy. It’s busy for you, too. I used to think that I was the only one who was this busy. But that’s not true. I also used to live with the illusion that life’s pace would eventually slow down. That’s not going to happen, either, anytime soon. All of which is why these New Year’s resolutions are such a joke. Who has the time, or the effort, or the energy, or the desire for life-changing resolutions? It seems to me that if 2010 is going to be any different than 2009, then the change will happen to us as opposed to from us.
Mary and Joseph did not plan to go back to the Temple. They had planned to go back home and get on with what I am sure was their own busy lives. Yet they had this interruption. So they had to go back to the Temple. After looking frantically for three days, they found Jesus, and when they found him, it had to have changed them. Jesus alone changed them. At least from what we read, it wasn’t even a drastic change. But I can’t help but think that over a life time, Jesus changed them.
This past week has been a very interesting week for the world. Not only have we entered a new year, but we have also entered a new decade. We’ve heard very much this week about the biggest stories of the past decade. And of course, we’re heard about what we think might be the biggest stories of the next decade. The big underlying question in all of that is, does anything ever really change? That was the biggest surprise this past decade. In 2000, the stock market was going up, and we assumed that it would keep going up forever, even though experience said that it would come back down. We were also at peace, and we assumed that we would have peace forever, which of course we have not. On some level, things do not change. History certainly has a tendency of repeating itself. For example, on the micro level, we are having our third baby in April. I would like to think that because we’ve already done this twice, we should be old pros on babyhood, and therefore we won’t make the same mistakes that we did the first two times. But to be honest, we probably will. I would also like to think that we as a people have learned from our mistake and won’t make them again. But we probably will. This new decade will look very much like the last one.
If it’s going to be different at all, on any level, it will be God who will make it different. The best that we can do, I think, is to show up. Mary and Joseph showed up at the Temple and, lo and behold, Jesus was there. They had to stay a while, and have some patience. But Jesus was there. Maybe that’s what we have to do. When we show up here, at Central Steele Creek, God is also here. Why else should we come? We can show up here and know that something profound will happen because we know that God has also shown up. We also know that God can change us, and that’s especially true if we show up.
So maybe showing up should be highest on our list of things to do in 2010. We need to show up to church. It’s amazing what happens when we all show up. And, we need to show up out there, out in the mission field. It used to be that the mission field was Africa or some far-away place like that. Then we decided that we could also do good mission work here in the US, in West Virginia for example. Now, we have more mission work to do within a five-mile radius of our church than we can imagine. So we have to show up here, and out there.
The only reason at all that we know that that will make any difference is because we know that God has also shown up, too. Mary and Joseph had to go back to the Temple, and there was Jesus. Maybe fundamentally, in 2010 and beyond, we have to go to Church, over and over again, when we’re on top of the world, and even when we don’t feel like it, even when it may be just going through the motions. We have to show up to Church, and the Church has to show up out there, not because we are going to save the world, but because God in Christ already has.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
