Readings: Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Galatians 4:4-7
I.
The Eve of a New Year is a time for iffy resolutions and unfettered optimism.
It is tempting to give up on New Year’s Resolutions, as we grow old and weary. How often do you remember waking up on January the second, realizing you had already broken your resolutions? So it is that New Year’s resolutions fall out of vogue, they become passé, uncool—maybe because we aren’t tough enough to see them through.
Many of us have given up altogether on changes on New Year’s! At the very least some of us limit ourselves to ONE resolution, these days. And yet as as the moment approaches, in the secret spaces, even the most hardened anti-resolution cynic does it again. Secretly or openly, in advance or at the last minute— we make some New Year’s resolution, again.
There is just something about New Year’s Eve. Who knows why, but it takes our imaginations hostage for a moment, and we find ourselves almost like Scrooge in Charles Dickens famous novel, looking back, examining the present and looking forward, to gauge the times and our lives, to see where we have come, and sense where we might be going in the blank slate of a year ahead! It is natural on the last evening and the first morning of a new year to find ourselves yet reflecting, hoping, worrying, regretting, even praying about the days ahead. It is natural, for some reason, to glimpse a little light just before midnight. The future is wide open, as the past comes, so it seems, to a close.
II.
The Eve of a New Year is a time for watching.
I didn’t learn about Watch Night until I was an adult serving a multicultural church, in Rochester New York. One of our newest members came to me and asked what we were going to do for Watch Night. This individual had grown up in churches where every year the community observed a full evening in Church, in a tradition started by Black Christians during the civil war, keeping Watch for Freedom. The custom is said to have begun on New Year’s Eve of 1862, just one hundred and fifty-five years ago tonight, as Black Christians in the North and the South alike gathered to keep vigil and pray for Abraham Lincoln to sign the Emancipation Proclamation the following day. Mr. Lincoln, who had, despite intense personal feelings, waffled on slavery for years, kept his resolve. Those prayers of the faithful that night were answered, not by Lincoln but by God.
In many Black Churches to this day, the tradition of Watch Night is a powerful tradition, remembering how ancestors watched and waited and prayed for freedom. The faithful of every kind of church would do well still to keep watch: keep watch for deliverance, for justice, for freedom. The rest of us would do well to learn from the Black Christians of 1862, and gather to watch, to wait, to name the needs of our world, and pray to God for help.
III.
The Eve of a New Year is a good time for remembering: for some of us, remembering why Jesus came to humankind. And it is a good time for claiming that cause as our own. It is not too hard, it is not far away. We can do this.
When asked the simple question about why did Jesus show up, born in Bethlehem of Judea, many will immediately say “John 3:16”. It’s what they memorized in Sunday School—plus they see it at football games. “For God so loved the world”, goes that passage, “that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” I am not about to argue the importance of that line. But when we carve down to a single verse, we often carve out a large part of the picture. Jesus came for the sake of our eternal lives, he also came to end human slavery and servitude.
Hear again the words of the apostle Paul to the Celtic (Galatian) Church in Asia Minor:
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent God’s Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.
Okay, let’s take a moment to unpack that: here’s what Paul is getting at. In the Roman world, almost everyone belonged to someone else, one way or another. Young children were legally their parents’ belongings. With few exceptions, marriage made women property. And many people of all nations were in situations of bond-servanthood or slavery as workers.
So, here’s what Paul is saying in that Roman world. God sent Jesus, God’s child and heir, born to live under the constraints of every human limitation and legal requirement, to redeem—to set free from slavery—those who were likewise held captive. In the Roman world, childless parents sometimes set free a slave and legally adopted that person as an heir… Paul even picks up that image, and says Christ came so that not only can human beings be set free from slavery, but we learn in our hearts that God has adopted us as God’s children! “So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.” And what’s the price tag? How do we know we are set free? Paul talks about a spirit in the heart, crying out to God with love.
In part, this awareness of freedom, and belonging, and value as the adult children of God is a spiritual and personal awareness. Christ came, if nothing else, so that we might understand that we in our deepest selves don’t belong to any one—don’t belong to our social status, or our legal status or our low-self-worth but to God. Don’t belong to a caste, or a superior.
Through the history of Christianity, the overwhelming trend has been to read these words with deeply spiritual meaning. If you accept Christ,” we have taught, “then you will know inwardly that you are free, and that you have value in God’s sight, and you too are a child of God.”
That’s a profoundly good spirituality, as far as it goes! On the positive side, in times of terrible oppression and slavery, those under the master’s rod have sung in the night “Before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave”--there is a deeper better reality than what I am going through, and I have a freedom no one can take away. [paraphrasing Rev. Leon Watts lecturing and preaching at Yale Divinity School in 1984].
However, and this is a big however, it has been the deep hypocrisy of too much of Christianity to stop with a spiritual reading of Christ’s role as the emancipator. It has permitted preachers to promulgate a pie in the sky spirituality: “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through.” In the sweet by and by we’ll have it all, so just be a good servant here! Even Paul the apostle may have fallen into that trap.
IV.
Recognize this: for the apostle Paul-- despite all his own personal failings—for Paul to preach, in the Roman world, that women and children, prisoners of war and slaves were fully human, and in fact co-heirs of God with Jesus, inheritors of God just like the emperor claimed to be, was a deeply political assertion, with huge social consequences. For us too! If what he was saying is as central as I believe it is to the message of Jesus—then Jesus came not just for our eternal souls, and not just to give us that warm sense of blessed assurance, but also to set us free from the social bonds of servitude and mastery just as much as the inner bonds of fear and sin.
Do you follow me? Let me give you a second example from US history. For abolitionist Christians in the south to baptize and ordain black folk in the 1700’s and 1800’s and to ordain them to become preachers of the Word, in a world built on chattel slavery, was to recognize not only that they were human but in fact that these were sisters and brothers, and in fact co-inheritors with Christ of the reign of God. Some of the white folk doing the baptizing might not have understood their own actions. Some might even have thought they could use religion to pacify the new believers. But the people being baptized and later ordained did understand.
Black folk got the message despite all the arrogance and flaws of the messengers. They understood that Christ came for their liberation. And that’s why on New Year’s Eve of 1862, across this land they gathered in churches and in homes, in the fields and in the woods, openly and in secret. To keep watch. They understood that you cannot separate souls from bodies. You cannot separate the health of individual spirits from the well-being of communities. You cannot separate peace of mind from peace between peoples. And you cannot separate God’s salvation from God’s justice. Soul Freedom leads inexorably to full human freedom. And God sent Jesus, God’s heir, and our brother, to implement that reality.
V.
You and I gather here on New Year’s Eve, a small crew on a cold morning, for a purpose. For we too are watchers, we are witnesses testifying to a world longing for the freedom and dignity, the emancipation, the full equality, for which Jesus came.
May our resolution this year not be so much a single deed or a single habit, but the resolve to be part of that movement, in whatever ways we can, be they little or great. May we live and breathe and act out of the awareness that we have already been set free, already been made heirs with Christ, not only in the next world, but in this one. And be it resolved that we will work to make the spiritual reality a bodily and practical one as well.
Christ Has No Body
(Widely attributed to the Spanish saint Teresa of Avila, but not found published in her known writings.)
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
"Peace on Earth" Banner by Deb Gehman; "Emmanuel Friedens" banner by church members at the time of the Federation of Emmanuel Baptist and Friedens United Church of Christ, 1997 .
Galatians 4:4-7
I.
The Eve of a New Year is a time for iffy resolutions and unfettered optimism.
It is tempting to give up on New Year’s Resolutions, as we grow old and weary. How often do you remember waking up on January the second, realizing you had already broken your resolutions? So it is that New Year’s resolutions fall out of vogue, they become passé, uncool—maybe because we aren’t tough enough to see them through.
Many of us have given up altogether on changes on New Year’s! At the very least some of us limit ourselves to ONE resolution, these days. And yet as as the moment approaches, in the secret spaces, even the most hardened anti-resolution cynic does it again. Secretly or openly, in advance or at the last minute— we make some New Year’s resolution, again.
There is just something about New Year’s Eve. Who knows why, but it takes our imaginations hostage for a moment, and we find ourselves almost like Scrooge in Charles Dickens famous novel, looking back, examining the present and looking forward, to gauge the times and our lives, to see where we have come, and sense where we might be going in the blank slate of a year ahead! It is natural on the last evening and the first morning of a new year to find ourselves yet reflecting, hoping, worrying, regretting, even praying about the days ahead. It is natural, for some reason, to glimpse a little light just before midnight. The future is wide open, as the past comes, so it seems, to a close.
II.
The Eve of a New Year is a time for watching.
I didn’t learn about Watch Night until I was an adult serving a multicultural church, in Rochester New York. One of our newest members came to me and asked what we were going to do for Watch Night. This individual had grown up in churches where every year the community observed a full evening in Church, in a tradition started by Black Christians during the civil war, keeping Watch for Freedom. The custom is said to have begun on New Year’s Eve of 1862, just one hundred and fifty-five years ago tonight, as Black Christians in the North and the South alike gathered to keep vigil and pray for Abraham Lincoln to sign the Emancipation Proclamation the following day. Mr. Lincoln, who had, despite intense personal feelings, waffled on slavery for years, kept his resolve. Those prayers of the faithful that night were answered, not by Lincoln but by God.
In many Black Churches to this day, the tradition of Watch Night is a powerful tradition, remembering how ancestors watched and waited and prayed for freedom. The faithful of every kind of church would do well still to keep watch: keep watch for deliverance, for justice, for freedom. The rest of us would do well to learn from the Black Christians of 1862, and gather to watch, to wait, to name the needs of our world, and pray to God for help.
III.
The Eve of a New Year is a good time for remembering: for some of us, remembering why Jesus came to humankind. And it is a good time for claiming that cause as our own. It is not too hard, it is not far away. We can do this.
When asked the simple question about why did Jesus show up, born in Bethlehem of Judea, many will immediately say “John 3:16”. It’s what they memorized in Sunday School—plus they see it at football games. “For God so loved the world”, goes that passage, “that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” I am not about to argue the importance of that line. But when we carve down to a single verse, we often carve out a large part of the picture. Jesus came for the sake of our eternal lives, he also came to end human slavery and servitude.
Hear again the words of the apostle Paul to the Celtic (Galatian) Church in Asia Minor:
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent God’s Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.
Okay, let’s take a moment to unpack that: here’s what Paul is getting at. In the Roman world, almost everyone belonged to someone else, one way or another. Young children were legally their parents’ belongings. With few exceptions, marriage made women property. And many people of all nations were in situations of bond-servanthood or slavery as workers.
So, here’s what Paul is saying in that Roman world. God sent Jesus, God’s child and heir, born to live under the constraints of every human limitation and legal requirement, to redeem—to set free from slavery—those who were likewise held captive. In the Roman world, childless parents sometimes set free a slave and legally adopted that person as an heir… Paul even picks up that image, and says Christ came so that not only can human beings be set free from slavery, but we learn in our hearts that God has adopted us as God’s children! “So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.” And what’s the price tag? How do we know we are set free? Paul talks about a spirit in the heart, crying out to God with love.
In part, this awareness of freedom, and belonging, and value as the adult children of God is a spiritual and personal awareness. Christ came, if nothing else, so that we might understand that we in our deepest selves don’t belong to any one—don’t belong to our social status, or our legal status or our low-self-worth but to God. Don’t belong to a caste, or a superior.
Through the history of Christianity, the overwhelming trend has been to read these words with deeply spiritual meaning. If you accept Christ,” we have taught, “then you will know inwardly that you are free, and that you have value in God’s sight, and you too are a child of God.”
That’s a profoundly good spirituality, as far as it goes! On the positive side, in times of terrible oppression and slavery, those under the master’s rod have sung in the night “Before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave”--there is a deeper better reality than what I am going through, and I have a freedom no one can take away. [paraphrasing Rev. Leon Watts lecturing and preaching at Yale Divinity School in 1984].
However, and this is a big however, it has been the deep hypocrisy of too much of Christianity to stop with a spiritual reading of Christ’s role as the emancipator. It has permitted preachers to promulgate a pie in the sky spirituality: “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through.” In the sweet by and by we’ll have it all, so just be a good servant here! Even Paul the apostle may have fallen into that trap.
IV.
Recognize this: for the apostle Paul-- despite all his own personal failings—for Paul to preach, in the Roman world, that women and children, prisoners of war and slaves were fully human, and in fact co-heirs of God with Jesus, inheritors of God just like the emperor claimed to be, was a deeply political assertion, with huge social consequences. For us too! If what he was saying is as central as I believe it is to the message of Jesus—then Jesus came not just for our eternal souls, and not just to give us that warm sense of blessed assurance, but also to set us free from the social bonds of servitude and mastery just as much as the inner bonds of fear and sin.
Do you follow me? Let me give you a second example from US history. For abolitionist Christians in the south to baptize and ordain black folk in the 1700’s and 1800’s and to ordain them to become preachers of the Word, in a world built on chattel slavery, was to recognize not only that they were human but in fact that these were sisters and brothers, and in fact co-inheritors with Christ of the reign of God. Some of the white folk doing the baptizing might not have understood their own actions. Some might even have thought they could use religion to pacify the new believers. But the people being baptized and later ordained did understand.
Black folk got the message despite all the arrogance and flaws of the messengers. They understood that Christ came for their liberation. And that’s why on New Year’s Eve of 1862, across this land they gathered in churches and in homes, in the fields and in the woods, openly and in secret. To keep watch. They understood that you cannot separate souls from bodies. You cannot separate the health of individual spirits from the well-being of communities. You cannot separate peace of mind from peace between peoples. And you cannot separate God’s salvation from God’s justice. Soul Freedom leads inexorably to full human freedom. And God sent Jesus, God’s heir, and our brother, to implement that reality.
V.
You and I gather here on New Year’s Eve, a small crew on a cold morning, for a purpose. For we too are watchers, we are witnesses testifying to a world longing for the freedom and dignity, the emancipation, the full equality, for which Jesus came.
May our resolution this year not be so much a single deed or a single habit, but the resolve to be part of that movement, in whatever ways we can, be they little or great. May we live and breathe and act out of the awareness that we have already been set free, already been made heirs with Christ, not only in the next world, but in this one. And be it resolved that we will work to make the spiritual reality a bodily and practical one as well.
Christ Has No Body
(Widely attributed to the Spanish saint Teresa of Avila, but not found published in her known writings.)
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
"Peace on Earth" Banner by Deb Gehman; "Emmanuel Friedens" banner by church members at the time of the Federation of Emmanuel Baptist and Friedens United Church of Christ, 1997 .