New Year thoughts part 1

'We have a choice...

either we change and go on

or we die as we are...'

I had a wacky idea in the week in between sleeping and eating as you do… can I get a three point New Year’s Eve sermon using three quotes from the Christmas Day Doctor Who episode? It was all about regeneration, and a reluctance to move on. Life is all about moving on, to stand still is to become stale and uninteresting.

Later on in the service which I hope you are finding helpful as I offer you some reflections and prayers to end this year, we’ll reflect in quietness what sort of 2017 we have had. If you receive those Christmas letters from friends telling you news of holidays and children’s successes, the review of the year is mostly about high points we shall never forget.

The incarnation, the coming of God is all about change. Remember God’s people thought they knew how God would come on earth to sort it all out. Most of them got it wrong. A few shepherds had it right. Sometime beyond the birth, we are today join Mary and Joseph in Jerusalem at the Temple. Mary and Joseph are there to fulfil the rituals, set out in the Old Testament, for the redemption of the firstborn and the purification of the mother following the rigours of childbirth.

There meeting them is Simeon, a devout man sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s guiding. At some point in the past the Holy Spirit had revealed that he would see the Lord’s Messiah before he died, and on this day he was somehow aware of the Holy Spirit’s nudging to go to the temple and, once there, somehow aware when he sees Mary and Joseph that this is the moment he had been waiting for years. Perhaps we’ve had those moments this year?  We need those moments spiritually. If Emmanuel is here not just for the odd carol or fun service on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning once a year, but comes with us, at times we will be reminded he is here. And calls us on. We have a choice, either we change and go on, or we die as we are…       

In that moment, on that day, Simeon took the baby in his arms and recognised him as ‘a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of God’s people, Israel’.  A moment which revealed the depth and significance of everything –not just for Simeon but for the world.

Simeon, and Anna, had been watching, praying and waiting, hidden from our sight … but on that day, they stepped out from the hiding darkness into the spotlight, with a message of astounding hope…that in this baby the fullness of eternity focused into one location in time and space…God at last appears in his temple…not as overlord, destroyer or dictator but carried in the arms of humanity, a vulnerable pilgrim, like every other pilgrim there that day, like anyone of us.

Perhaps in 2018 we need to change and go on in recognising the presence of the holy with us, or we die as we are, alone, or trying to be church in our own strength.

On this New Year’s Eve, let’s change.

Then this, later in the Doctor Who the Doctor talks to the next Doctor to come before he regenerates into she… some advice for walking in the new.    

I've got a few things to say to you - basic stuff first...

never be cruel, never be cowardly

(and never, ever eat pears)

Remember hate is always foolish. Love is always wise, always try to be nice but never fail to be kind (and you mustn't tell anyone your name)

LAUGH HARD

RUN FAST 

BE KIND'

Simeon recognised the significance of the child he held in his arms. He’d prayed for God to come, he’d given his life to prepare for it, he’d expected it, people coming to the Temple would have seen him there day after day, and believing life would one day be transformed.       

Simeon sees the light of the world with him. He and people since him are a blessing to us. You know them, you’re here because of him. It is they, who recognise how much the world needs this light and it is they who, even in the darkness, raise up voices of hope because they see the impact this child will have on the darkness.

We’ve no idea what 2018 will bring. We wouldn’t go into it if we knew maybe. Every year brings good and bad, high and low points, laughter and sadness. I experienced the two things that change life the most for us I guess.

There in the temple, all those years before the deep darkness would fall around this child, as he hung on a Roman Cross, Simeon warns Mary of the pain that was to come; of the darkness which would fall as a sword which would pierce her soul and a spear that would pierce her son’s side.  

The darkness is not easily beaten back...and over the next thirty or so years what was to play out in the life and ministry of Christ was this drama of light and darkness.  For us light and darkness mingle too…even in the Church. And here with the gladness of Christmas still fresh in our souls, we very soon turn from contemplating the crib to considering the cross. My colleague Tricia wanted to know what we are doing for Lent on Friday. I told her to let the New Year come first and let me have some time off over the next few days and I’ll think about it next week! 

This year in our lives, in our world, light and dark mingle still.

And still Christ offers himself to be consumed as the darkness is held at bay.  Light is in any case always seen more clearly against the darkness. Just as love is seen even more clearly against hate.  ‘The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it’. Perhaps the Doctor has it right. Never be cruel, never be cowardly, and never, ever eat pears, remember hate is always foolish, love is always wise. Laugh hard, run fast, be kind. Christ has come!

Finally, let’s remember this is for always. 

When the Doctor regenerated from Peter Capaldi to Jodie Whittaker, the first woman doctor, she looked at the controls on the Tardis, and laughed and just said one word, “BRILLIANT!” Before being tossed round the thing and out into space for adventures to come. Positivity. Perhaps that’s how we begin the New Year.

Because it’s good news for ever. God has reconciled the world to himself by becoming one of us. The divine has become human. God has entered history. Eternity has become part of time. God has said I am here by actually living here himself.

It is always a fun thing to reflect where I get inspiration for what to write in sermons. So I was in the Kings Road Fish Bar (naughty!!) in St Leonards and a man came in bemoaning people who sit up to see the New Year in as “it will be the same old world tomorrow.” I understand his point, the world cannot really be different with the change of year, just like that, but I guess it is a good exercise to resolve that WE might be different and make some resolutions to be nicer, or more effective, more Christian even as a new beginning happens.

We are going to a party tonight. I wonder what the conversation will be about as the New Year dawns?  That perhaps politics might be less about Brexit and more about solving the great injustices in our country? That perhaps this year the problems some of us have faced for a long time might finally be resolved? That Meghan Markle will cheer us all up as we have a Royal Wedding to look forward and another baby coming for William and Kate? That our deepest hopes and longing might actually happen?

We need to keep reminding ourselves that we do not travel alone.

“The same old world tomorrow” can be made different by the light of Christ we have just welcomed remaining alight through us as we live each day.

One of my favourite writers, the late Howard Thurman, composed a poem many years ago about Christmas and about New Year hope, and he says it probably better than I:

When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and the princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flocks, Then the work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace to others, to make music in the heart.

Dear Friends here at the Emmanuel Centre, thank you for your faithfulness this year in being a very bright spot in our Circuit life. I wish I find more Sundays to come here more often. Look with confidence to what 2018, with Emmanuel with you might do.  Change and go on; always try to be nice but never fail to be kind; shout Brilliant a lot, and keep faithful to the God who loves you and is with you, as the year turns and for always.