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Devotion

NEW YEARS’ RESOLUTIONS: Do they actually work?

Sometimes we preachers are asked ‘How long do you take to prepare a sermon?’

There are two answers to that:

(1) ‘The whole of my life’

(2) ‘About a week, mostly’…

This past week I must have read half a dozen articles in the press about the pros and cons of making New Years’ Resolutions…

But before we get to that, let me offer you two texts, one from the OT and another from the NT:

‘You have not passed this way before’ (Joshua 3:4)

‘I am with you always’ (said Jesus), to the close of the age’ (Matthew 28:20). 

Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken describes his journey to a fork in the road, and he decided to take ‘the road less traveled’. Joshua encouraged his people similarly: ‘you have not passed this way before…’

And so did Jesus: ‘[Whichever road you travel] I am with you, to the close of the age.’

As we look back on the year past, we’ve experienced a sadly mixed history. We were appalled when a deranged man locked up those innocent people in the cafe in Martin Place, and (apparently) shot two of them dead before he was killed himself. Three Asian passenger planes crashed: one from a missile, two others from unknown causes. Hundreds of thousands of innocents were killed in 2014 – in Syria and Iraq, in several central and eastern African states, and elsewhere. People we knew died – some quite tragically – and people we might not have known: like Luke Batty, the cricketer Phillip Hughes, and the man who I admired as having the best gift with impromptu words of anyone I’ve ever listened to – Robin Williams. 

In the Christmas-New Year period I try most years to get some time alone, to reflect on my life. This year we had a ‘farm holiday’ – befriending alpacas and ‘chooks’ / ‘chickens’ (and defriending foxes who came too close most nights). I found myself ‘doing nothing but thinking/praying’ while watering young shrubs…

(And also figuring out some imponderables: like why in the last year have I forgotten where I left things more often than in any previous year? In 2015 I’ll turn 78, and I thought forgetting things was for doddery senior folks. And there were some strange dreams – like sitting for a written exam: something I haven’t done for 40 years.)

Anyway… what’s the received wisdom about New Year’s Resolutions? 

A psychologist (Dr John Norcross, Scranton University), studied 159 New Year resolvers and 123 people who tried to kick similar problems starting on non-special days. After six months half of the resolvers – 40-46% – were still hanging in there, compared with just 4% of the other group. That’s the good news: actually 23% of the resolvers had given up the quest by the end of the first week; but by Christmas, their success-rate was 19%.

Of course it helps if you tell friends (or even the world on social media, like Facebook). President Kennedy did it famously in 1962 with his commitment to send a man to the moon ‘before this decade is out’…

I like the cheeky Age newspaper columnist Wendy Squires: last Monday she wrote a list of  ‘wishes for the New Year’ including: 

* ‘I will vacuum even when guests aren’t arriving’

* ‘I’ll write, not just for work, but for the love of it’

* ‘I will continue to defend Islam to the ignorant and bigoted, despite being an atheist. Some of the most generous, kind people I know worship Allah. No religion is without its fanatics and zealots.’ (Now there’s one we could debate)

* ‘I will not be sucked in by fashionistas’ declarations that something is “an essential” or a “must have”. It’s clothing, people – not oxygen. Get a grip!’

* (More seriously): ‘Having lost two friends  to suicide this past year, I will scream from the rooftops – “THERE IS HELP IF YOU REACH FOR IT”. You do not have to live with that pain, I promise!’

* ‘I will remember Stella Young (Google her) every day with love, respect and gratitude for all she stood for.’

****

I come to 2015 with several ‘Resolutions’: among them, to be more disciplined about matters relating to Simplicity/Stillness/Silence/Sabbath – the four ‘s’s’ relating to a healthier spiritual life. More on that another time.

This morning I have just two other suggestions for you (and if I wave my hand around and point anywhere, I’ll note that three fingers are pointing back to me). 

1. IN 2015 DON’T BE AFRAID OF A NEW IDEA. 

Yes, yes, yes, new ideas have to be tested. But the fear of ‘cognitive dissonance’ causes many – no, most, no, all – of us to jettison some good ideas with all the other garbage…

Did you hear of the ancient maxim: ‘NOTHING SHOULD EVER HAPPEN FOR THE FIRST TIME!!!’ ? I like the story of the stubborn old codger who when he turned 99 responded to the inevitable comment ‘You’ve seen a lot of changes in your life’ with: ‘Yes, I have, and I’ve opposed every one of them!’ Wasn’t it the economist John Maynard Keynes who said, sagely, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. And you sir?’ To suffer from chronic ‘neophobia’ – fear of anything new – is a sad, strange disease for otherwise intelligent people.

Throughout history we’ve had to battle with scientific, philosophical, and religious ‘paradigm shifts’. I remember during my childhood the issue that got us ‘going bananas’ in our little fundamentalist church was divorce. God hates divorce; Jesus said (Mark 10:10-12) that divorce is about adultery… But now Christians in the West have roughly the same divorce-rate as everyone else: and (‘tell it not in Gath’) some of our pastors are divorced, and we don’t lose much sleep over that these days…

And it was only a generation ago that we rejected the idea – especially in the US South, the South African apartheid regime, and in Nazi Germany – that interracial marriage was evil/bad/’not God’s will’… 

We’ve battled for 2000 years searching for ‘scapegoats’. Jews, folks from other racial or religious groups, gays… you name them. Robert Girard has helped us understand this phenomenon: we sort out the issues with one group, but then manically search for another to persecute… in spite of Jesus’ warnings about the Great Judgment (Matthew 25) which is all about rejecting Him while rejecting ‘alien others’…      

In politics it happens all the time. That other mob believes in ‘climate change’: our neo-liberal orthodoxy is against anything which stymies jobs and ‘economic growth’. Last year Australian Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce tabled an 111-page report about the farming sector and didn’t mention ‘climate change’: the closest he got was a reference – just once – about adapting to ‘climate variability’. I’d have thought farmers were in the front-line colliding with changes in climate, as affirmed by 97% of the peer-reviewed scientists who are experts in all this. In the next few weeks 2014 will almost certainly be declared the hottest year on record globally.

Another important ideological trend has to do with capitalism’s penchant for redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. In 2014 Thomas Piketty’s brilliant book Capitalism in the Twentieth Century made headlines everywhere. His thesis: while capitalism is the most efficient method of producing and distributing goods and services, it’s also created a growing gap between the very rich and the poor. Think about it. 

And think about the ‘arrogance of power’ as Fullbright termed it in his brilliant little book on this subject. Pope Francis (bless him) broke new ground when he accused his cardinals of suffering from the ‘ailment’ of feeling immortal, immune, or indispensable. See my little essay on Ministry as Empowerment. We leaders love the IDEA of giving away power to others, but when the rubber hits the road, we enjoy the ‘perks of power’ too much…

In 2015 let’s not be so afraid of a new idea… 

~~

2. IN 2015 LET’S WORK HARDER AT LOVING OTHER HUMAN BEINGS, EVEN ‘SCARY STRANGERS’. 

Human rights lawyer Julian Burnside last week (The Age, 23/12/2014) wrote a scathing indictment of ‘The Morrison Legacy’ subtitled ‘A Calculated Cruelty’.

Excerpt: 

‘[Scott] Morrison’s conduct as immigration minister is impossible to reconcile with his stated Christian beliefs. He visited the detention centre at Manus Island… and delivered a clear message that the transferees would remain at the centre until they went home or resettled in a country other than Australia. This stands awkwardly alongside Matthew 25:35: ‘For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me’, a message at the heart of the Christian teaching he claims to embrace. 

‘The immigration portfolio will improve by losing Morrison, who has shown himself to be a hypocrite, willing to harm innocent people for political purposes.

‘It will be interesting to see how much damage he can do to pensioners.’

Headlines:

* Let us work hard to eschew any political theory which elevates ‘consumerism’ over ‘community’, which seeks to move wealth from the poor to the rich and especially the very rich…

* Let’s LISTEN more lovingly and creatively. See the article I’m about to upload on to the jmm.org.au website ‘On Listening’. Excerpt: ‘When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving advice, you have not done what I asked’. 

* Back to the terrible threat of destructive climate-change: our loving-the-other includes those not yet born…

* If we’re afraid of hordes of newcomers messing up our society, let’s figure out how to give them a more genuine welcome here. Item: It’s not difficult to join an asylum-seeker ‘ministry’ which teaches English as a Second Language. Some in our churches are doing this with wonderful results. Did you know that ‘accepting friendship’ is the best antidote to anger-which-leads-to-terrorism? Hard, unselfish work, but I believe Jesus is calling us to such ministry in these fraught years… 

Let’s ponder all this, in a moment’s silence

Now let us pray…

‘Lord, even though we’ve not passed this way before, you have promised to be with us. Thank you Jesus! Amen’

***

Preached at St Martins’ Collingwood, Melbourne, Sunday January 4, 2015.   

Shalom/Salaam/Pax/eirene !
Rowland Croucher

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