And None Too Soon!

Marie’s cousin Bonnie says that she’s gonna stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve just to make sure that 2020 really goes! Most of us will be glad to turn our calendar to a blank page, appreciating the chance to make a new start. Perhaps THIS year… Scriptures of this coming weekend will affirm that God’s intent is to constantly change things for the better–“see, I am making all things new”–even though we fuss about the long time this takes. Somehow the greeting of “Happy New Year” seems more real, this time around…

We begin with words from Third Isaiah (62:1-3) addressed to a “renewed” faith-community only recently returned to Israel from exile in Babylon. Be of Hope, he advises, for hope is holy even in depressing situations. “You shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give.” Separation is painful, whether it be an exile from the homeland or a lingering death unattended by family except through a window. Yet inside each heart a vision speaks! Isaiah reminds his disgruntled hearers that new life is symbolized by a renewed, rebuilt Jerusalem. From the debris of what was once considered stable is raised a NEW stability, a ‘city’ of hope. Can we who stand on the doorstep of a New Year be cheered by this holy action?

Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, 4:4-7, is an affirmation that these Gentiles from mid-Asia Minor are children of God, heirs to the renewal of salvation. By transfer, then, WE dwellers in mid-Earth have this hope of a spiritual second birth as well. “In the fulness of time…” is when we say goodbye to the Old and welcome the New, when we can move on to new resolutions and put off the political paralysis, when we can affirm that a new normal is really possible. The New Year finds us not only wealthy, but free.

The Gospel, Luke 2:22-40, needs to be heard because usually the reading thereof is drowned in tinsel. Simeon and Anna need to be included in the Christmas narrative in order to complete this story of who the Baby Jesus was: “My eyes have seen your salvation….” I like to picture Old Simeon in the robes of Father Time, the Old ready to toddle off now that the New has arrived. Here at last is seen the light for the Gentiles and for the glory of the people of Israel. Simeon and Anna had stayed faithfully at their posts, sustained by God’s Spirit, until their shift was over–that is, until they had seen that God’s Eighth Day of Creation was well underway in the shape of the ChristChild.

We can’t erase 2020, nor should we; times of crisis are important to the Story of the People. Like the Panic of ’73, or the Great Depression, or the horrific wars we’ve endured, the narrative must include How Bad It Was just so we can compare the Bad Old Days with what we now have… Rejoice! Enjoy a Blessed (and thus Happy) New Year!

In the process of unfolding, Horace Brown King

My encounters with readings assigned to the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com