Sandston Presbyterian Church
A Sermon by Ken Goodrich
January 3, 2010
Scripture: Matthew 28:20
““A New Year’s Meditation”
According to Matthew, the last thing Jesus, the risen Christ, said to his followers was this: “…[remember] I am with you always until the end of the age.”
Years later, one thing Paulsaid about this Christ being with us and our living in him was that, “the old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.
* * * * *
I have been these last couple of weeks in a state of perpetual confusion. Which should come as no surprise to those of you who have long thought that I am always in a perpetually confused state. But specifically, these last couple of weeks, here are the examples, in chronological order.
When we were in Gloucester on the morning of her sister’s tragic death, I thought to call one of Debbie’s dear friends with whom she taught 4th grade down there for many years to let her know. I found a phone book and opened it to the “County Government” section, which is where you would find the school listings if you were looking in the Richmond phone book. In the Gloucester County phone book, instead, this is what I read: “Schools: see Yellow Pages Under Heading Schools.”
I had never heard of a “Heading School.” Didn’t know what one was. Couldn’t imagine why the public schools in Gloucester County, apparently all of them, would be characterized as “Heading Schools.” But who was I to question why, and so, obediently, I searched the Yellow Pages for “Heading Schools.” There was “Healing,” “Hearing,” but no “Heading.” So, I went back to the “Government” section to reread, before it finally…
About a week later, I was half watching a television commercial about who knows what when the screen began to show, one word at a time, a listing of attributes of this outfit or person, the first of which was—and in my defense, the letters were spaced a bit apart—“ l-e-a-d-e-r-s-h-i-p,” and I could not for the life of me figure out what a “leader’s hip” had to do with anything. Any leader’s hip.
I am not making this up. I have witnesses to this next one. Last Wednesday night, I walked into choir practice, and, as is my habit, looked at Elizabeth’s white board to see what we were singing this Sunday. She always has the pieces listed up there: the choral call to worship, the prayer response, the anthem, the benediction. Next to “Anthem,” she had written, and I quote, “We shall see.” So, I started looking through the stack of music for “We Shall See.” And I looked. And I looked. And I didn’t find it. So I asked, “Where is ‘We Shall See’?” I think it was John Warriner who replied, “It’s in that folder right under, ‘How Dumb Thou Art.’”
Finally, or at least finally so far, just this last Friday I was watching the Rose Bowl game between Ohio State and Oregon. One of Oregon’s running backs is a fellow named LaGarrett Blount, who’s fiance`, it turns out, gave birth back in the fall—remember that. I didn’t know. So, there was a play involving Blount which required an “official review.” For those of you who do not watch much football, there are certain plays that necessitate “instant replay,” although the replay is never instant. The official makes a call on the field, the official upstairs in a booth with television access looks at it from every angle to determine whether the call will stand or be overruled. It is a process that can take awhile, and, sure enough, in this case, it was maybe a minute-and-a-half review.
While this is going on, the announcers have to fill the airspace talking about something, and so Brent Musberger and Kirk Herbstreit yapped about the play, the game in general, and then, specifically, talked about LaGarrett Blount and his season and his life. And just before the official finally announced the ruling, this is what I heard (which proves that my hearing aids, good as they are, are not perfect) Brent Musberger say: “LaGarrett Blount became a father during the call.” I not only heard that, I processed it. I sat on my couch and actually thought, “How’d he do that?” before the closed-captioning caught up with what Musberger had really said.
I am fervently hoping, now the old year has passed away and the new one has come, and I have gotten beyond that discombobulating transition of flux between the two, that clarity of thought will return. (Long pause) Okay, where was I?
I think I was talking about the lack of clarity in transitioning from the old to the new. Generally speaking, most everything old, with the obviously glaring exception of age itself, is comfortable for and comforting to us. Personal relationships we have forged, jobs we have held or careers we have built, the streets on which we live, the cars we drive, our machines and tools and gadgets, the clothes we wear or, rather, the clothes men wear, habits, a way of life—in short, people we are familiar with and what we are used to—all of it equals contentment and serenity; it is a good place to be. Consequently, those things, places, rituals, relationships are hard to give up, to let go of, to move on from when time or circumstance or opportunity demands that we must; that we must live differently, in new places or situations or ways, whether we want to or like it or not.
The new, then, whatever it may be, is preferable or will be accepted or becomes endurable only as it gets to be “old.” Only as the newness wears off. Only as we learn to live with the new and without the old.
How many of us, for example, who were once were so dismissive of ever even trying such silly gadgets, now wonder how we ever lived without the internet, emails, cell phones, microwaves, remote-controls, artificial Christmas trees, MP 3s, Artoo-Detoos, and Ipodzoids? How many of you once swore that you would never leave a hometown or your family, but did anyway and prospered for it. Or that you would never move again, or marry again, or start all over again, but were forced to and have been all but born again? How many of you believed with all your heart that you could not live without the spouse who ended up leaving you or the child or sibling or best friend who died on you, but here you are living on, finding a life beyond; not necessarily a better or preferable life, but a new, a different life beyond?
It is the leaving behind, the letting go, the moving on, the getting there that is so hard for us. The time in between what was and what shall eventually be, between the familiar and the as yet unknown, between what we are used to and what will take some getting used to.
We all of us have our own take on 2009. Whether it was a very good or an all-gone-wrong year, whether it was memorable or forgettable, whether you were okay with it or indifferent to it. Were someone to ask us how 2009 treated us, we would all of us answer most truthfully if we said, “That depends on what month or day or minute it was you’re asking about.”
Regardless—regardless of what that year was for you, what you did with it, what it did to you—it is past, done, gone. And yet there is not a one of us who has a clue, who can so much as make an educated guess, what 2010 will bring. The year it is to be stretches before us as uncharted territory, a wilderness road. It is new, it will be different.
But what is not new, what shall be no different, is that there, come what may, is where Christ will be, as Christ always has been, and always is. Waiting for us to catch up, waiting to go through it with us.
That we do know. That and him, we do know.
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Thursday, January 21, 2010 8:57 AM