TAKE IN THE BLESSINGS
Numbers 6: 22-27 & LUKE 2: 15-21
NEW YEARS DAY 2024
Together we have entered into the great unknown of a new year. When that midnight hour clicked … I know some of you were awake and some of you were half awake just barely aware of your surroundings. While others of you were safely in bed at 8 or 9 o’clock before some of us even consider it to be night not even sensing the transition of one year to the next.
There’s such a great unknown when it comes from one year to the next. And, it is funny how we set aside our calendars, our histories and lives by years. I can remember 1973, 1985, and I can remember 1990 and a variety of other years from my life. Years that hold memories of specific peoples and events. The question of New Year’s Eve falls into the questions of where we are going to go and what is going to happen to us on this journey in the days to come.
Together we have heard the angels chorus from Scripture or at least we remember hearing the story perhaps from Linus on A Charlie Brown’s Christmas or here in this church or someplace else. Where we have sensed or sort of imagined the angels’ chorus declaring that Jesus is born but you do remember the impact the angels had on those men whose lives involved caring for sheep. Leave your sheep on the hill! Those shepherds called to be with Jesus hadn’t showered … they hadn’t shaved …
Why is it that people care what others wear to worship God? Whether they smell or not or what they sound like or look like or who they live with? They are in church … we should be YEAH they are here to worship God! Or if they have a different accent, aren’t all of God’s people… all of humanity loved equally by God and shouldn’t we welcome all people equally into worship. You might not have noticed but yesterday and actually for the last few weeks there has been a family sitting over there <<point to the overflow>> a mother, her daughter and son-in-law. The mother and daughter have heavy Spanish accents and actually I think the older woman only knows a few words of English but she smiles and is in church to worship God! Pretty darn awesome … here at St. Paul’s week after week! Three Sunday’s …
Think about it … worship … who did God choose to worship Jesus first they were sweaty undereducated men or at least in those days shepherds didn’t have the advantage of an education. They were worn out just like they had been up to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Times Square to watch the ball drop but then made it into church on New Year’s Day to worship.
Not enough coffee … tired they were called by the angles. It is doubtful that those men were men of faith. It is doubtful that they had been individuals who knew the high and holy days and spent hours in the Temple of God in their free times. The angels and God chose them it is doubtful that they knew the prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Jehoshaphat. Actually Jehoshaphat is not one of the prophets, he was the fourth king of Judah whose reign was approximately in the years 870 to 849 BCE.
And they experienced joy! They worshiped Jesus … no membership card required … no holy life qualifications to be met … hard workers not planning on worship discovered Jesus Christ!
Friends as this year’s blank slate awaits to be colored in with brilliant prose, rhythmic poetry, the sounds of music, and the artistic creations we are all capable of … we come to church to be with God. We come to worship or perhaps knowing our need for forgiveness, and I think we all realize that a new year’s calendar offers us the opportunity for a new start. A time of new discovery. A time of blessings.
I went hunting for a Scripture for today’s service. As I read and reread today’s Scripture from the TORAH, the first five books of the Bible are essential faith sources for our Jewish friends and they lay the groundwork for our faith journey although truthfully Jesus came to incorporate all of those old rules and laws into a central theme of love. Love and joy!
Yesterday I mentioned how in Luke chapter 2 we heard the elimination of the exclusionary claus … the exclusionary connection between the Jewish community and God. A community to which Jesus’ earthly family belonged heirs to David transitioning to a global community Jews and Gentiles welcoming ALL with equal love! ALL peoples … those of Jewish heritage, Asian heritage, African heritage, Arab heritage, Latino heritage … well you get the message.
As we enter into 2024 our challenge is to accept God at God’s Word and to not align with anyone who tries to deny equality of God’s love for all. It’s so easy to join groups in one corner or another corner.
We need to join with Jesus Christ and to experience blessings that are not in disguise but are openly available to all of us … those of us who actually leave behind our worldly thoughts and embrace Christ’s teaching.
One of the joys of my life … during the years 2003 through 2011 I attended Wesley Theological Seminary, which is in a short walking distance from the National Cathedral, which is an awesome and beautiful church in which you can sense God. You can even find amidst the gargoyles, if you are a Star Wars fan, a Darth Vader gargoyle. But it is inside that cathedral … if you pause and sit and look around and breathe in or attend a worship service … you can feel the joy of your faith. It’s s one of those special churches …
There’s an awesome bookstore in the National Cathedral. I opened up a special book of blessings and there inside was a bookmark reminding me of my times in seminary and my early mornings, afternoons, and evenings worshiping God in that church.
We desperately need to sense God’s blessings in our new year. We need to remember all that God offers and I found in John O’Donohue’s ‘To Bless the Space Between Us” a ‘Blessing for a New Year’ the spirit of hope and reflection of life that I need today and tomorrow.
We need to focus in on blessings. On bright days we need God’s blessings, on dark miserable days we need blessings. On a day of frustrations … blessings. On a day we are filled with joy and happiness … what do we need? God’s blessings! And, when we start to take in those blessings, we will start to cash in on God’s love for us and his restorative love. It will change who we are.
Last year I asked the church to focus in on the Twenty Third Psalm and to search for the still waters God offers to restore our souls. To discover goodness and love. That’s where you feel the blessings …. In the quiet not when you are rushed and can’t focus.
A call for blessings that I hope each of you can benefit from through John’s words from his book, ‘To Bless the Space Between Us:’ [1]
“On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.
And, when your eyes
Freeze behind
The gray window
And the ghost of loss
Gets into you,
May a flock of colors,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
In the curragh of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you home safely.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.
The angels called out to the shepherds … to rejoice in the birth of Jesus.
” The LORD spoke to Moses: Tell Aaron and his sons: You will bless my people as follows. Say to them: The LORD bless you and protect you. The LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The LORD lift up his face to you and grant you peace. They will place my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them. “
A blessing for a new year, for 2024. A reason to rejoice in our world! I pray that we each can find the space or the creativity to connect with God’s soul restoring waters.
AMEN