Sermon on Second Sunday after Christmas: How are we to enter the New Year?
Another year behind us and what a year. If I get a chance to write a new edition of my history textbook, I will certainly begin a whole new chapter with the pandemic. I’m not sure, however, how that chapter will end—we have to live through some more history to see what new turning points happen, where things will go from here.
The convenient and comforting thing about reading history, is that it has already happened. For every past event there was a beginning, middle, and end. The wheel of history turns from good times to bad to good again, along its path.
Now sometimes, prophets spoke up to people in their present to tell them how the current story would end. The stories of the prophets also show how most people of those times did not believe prophecy.
Jeremiah is perhaps most famous as a prophet who was not believed. Today’s scripture about one prophecy is going in a positive direction—how the Hebrews enslaved in far off Babylon will be gathered together, how they will be consoled, how they will sing about the goodness of God, how their mourning turns into joy.
That prophecy did come true in its time, but on the turning wheel of history more misfortunes always await.
Today’s scripture ending the Christmas story has things heading in a negative direction. Mary and Joseph have a child about whom the wise men predicted good things. Yet the Holy Family have to immediately flee thanks to an angel warning. Fortunately for them, the regime of Egypt allowed the refugee Holy Family into their country, seemingly unlike our American government’s current policy. And the soldiers of Israel, under the command of a foreign king, carried out the atrocity of the “Slaughter of the Innocents” (left out of today’s selection).
Yet, as Paul writes to the Ephesians, God has blessed us with Christ. Jesus is the ending of history, where, ultimately, the world and all its suffering and slaughter is no more.
Our future as we enter this next year is uncertain. As always there is some good and some bad; some within our control, much beyond it. Let us try to use what wisdom has been revealed to us with our enlightened eyes of our hearts to work for a world in love.
And a big part of that, I believe, is moving beyond our misplaced focus on the nations of this earth. We must reconcile humanity, putting aside divisions based on homeland born in, ethnicity born with, skin color inherited, language spoken, clothing worn, food preferred, history remembered. Instead, we as the beloved of God are to keep our desire on everyone’s inheritance of the heavenly kingdom.
Written for the parish of St. James & St. George 2021 January 3
URL: <http://therev.brianpavlac.org/srms/20210103.html