Holy Name, Year B

Happy New Year!  At least by the secular calendar, you are starting off the year with a great start, getting in some worship right at the beginning of the year!  Maybe worship and prayer was part of your New Year’s Resolution.
Do you have plans for New Year’s Resolutions?  Perhaps you have made some, and if you’re anything like me, every year they tend to gravitate around the same goals—eating healthier, getting a bit more exercise, and oh yeah, having a better prayer life.  One of my friends posted on Facebook that her sole goal this year was “to be a better person,” which seemed quite reasonable.  And on NPR on Friday I heard a commentator discussing how it took “willpower” to pursue New Year’s resolutions—that we only have so much willpower, so the fewer things we focus on at a time, the better our chances of being able to stick to a given goal.[1]

The idea is that, rather than making a list of all your possible attempts at improving yourself, you might stick to one or two goals better.

OK, I thought, this is helpful, but how does will power interact with God’s power?  How do our New Year’s Resolutions and plans work as we remain open to the movement of the Spirit?

The Holy Family tells us a little about trying to stick to the plan and being open to the Spirit in today’s passage from Luke, wherein we have the angel-dazed Shepherds running to Mary and Joseph to tell them about who Jesus is, and understandably they both seem a bit amazed. 

Following the naming and circumcision, we have the scene of Jesus’ presentation in the temple, wherein Simeon will wax lyrical about who Jesus is and Anna, half-starved from fasting and with stars in her own eyes, will sing the joy of her heart about this promised one, the one named Yeshua, or “God saves.”[2]  But before all of this, we see Mary take a moment to treasure it all in her heart, take a moment just to cradle this baby to herself, to feel his weight against her as her own before he became fully, irretrievably, the world’s. 

As Simeon will say later in Luke, “a sword will pierce your heart, too” (Luke 2:35), that heart that so treasured these thoughts—these wonders.

Somehow in the birth of any child, not just this amazing child, there is a sense of belonging to our families and plans and yet being a part of the wider world.  So often the realization of this happens at such moments when the baby is still so new to us—the naming in the temple, the christening, the baptism.  Take my christening, for example.  In the middle of the festivities, an older woman entered off the street, not half as scruffy as Anna probably was, took me into her arms and said, “this is an old soul,” a fact which amazed, delighted and probably bewildered my mother. 

Perhaps you have had a moment wherein a stranger taught you something new about a loved one, wherein you were reminded that your beloved family member was as much a member of the world and God’s wider creation as of your family?  We Christians are for the world, for each other, just as Christ was so much more for us than for his mother.

Which means that our plans, no matter how grand, how much willpower is involved, are also only as good as our openness to the Spirit because we are ultimately God’s more than we are our own.  Anna and Simeon were planning on something big, Joseph and Mary were following the Levitical laws, but they were all open to the Spirit. As the Spirit swept Shepherds from their fields and flocks to the manger, so it swept Simeon into the temple to greet Jesus just after the gospel reading for today. 

Following meeting Jesus, Simeon bursts into his famous song, Nunc Dimittis, “Lord now let your servant go in peace as you have promised, for my eyes have seen the salvation, a light to enlighten the nations and the glory of your people Israel” (BCP), and I think it is interesting here to look at as a response to meeting Jesus in our lives, and to trying to follow him. 

This song can be sung every night in the traditional Evening Prayer of the Daily Office of our church[3], and it can be a meaningful way to ask God to “dismiss” us from the worries of each day, even as we recall the salvation that has come and that will come again in Christ.  Despite the fact that we may not complete all of our resolutions, whether daily or yearly, we can trust in his saving grace.  

Jesus is making some divine sense (maybe more through grace than design) of our all too human attempts at striving for the Kingdom and being better people.

Yet, every day we still continue a vigil, just like Anna in the temple, just like Mary holding those secrets so tight in her heart.  Following Christ no longer means following all those Levitical laws as we hear in Galatians, but we “heirs” have to keep striving to do Christ’s work in the world. 

That might be about making plans but it is as much about openness to the Spirit, too.  Because being a Christian means not making one set of resolutions, but being made new every day.  This also refers to the work that All Saints is doing as a church. 

As you prepare to talk about your history later this month, you may be drawn toward action plans for your future, but the challenge will be not just finding the collective willpower to carry out such plans, but finding the openness to keep ears peeled for the Spirit’s guidance.  Where has the Spirit led you in the past?  Where is the Spirit leading you now?  It may be radically different.  It may be a variation on the same old tune.  Often, as in the biblical story, we are both fulfilling the old laws and listening to a new story at the same time.  All this is wild stuff.  It means changing yourself but also letting yourself be changed and moved even as we hold onto our beloved rituals and traditions as we all wait for Christ’s coming again in great glory.

Wild Stuff.  But this is the stuff we believe in, because Jesus is constantly redeeming and transforming our work together, which is a long way of saying that “Jesus” means, “God Saves!”

Amen.

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[1] “Making Resolutions that Stick in 2012,” Talk of the Nation December 30, 2011, http://www.npr.org/2011/12/30/144485208/making-resolutions-that-stick-in-2012.

[2] One translation: http://www.catholic.org/clife/jesus/jesusname.php.

[3] Check out your Book of Common Prayer for this or for an electronic version, try the Mission St. Clare office (it even has a great phone app): http://www.missionstclare.com/english/.