Revelations not Resolutions
New year. New decade. New digs.
So, here we are. As a child of the 80’s I had imagined that at this point (at least, by 2015, according to Marty McFly) we would have transporters and flying hover boards. Instead we find ourselves in a world on the brink of (or fully in the thick of) climate disaster, economic disparities that are mind-bogglingly vast, displaced peoples roaming every continent, and every kind of -ism, anti- and -phobia unabashedly articulated by the citizens of so-called liberal, modern nations.
It’s a lot.
I’m going to try writing here more regularly. Because I think I need to be intentional about seeing (and listening, speaking to, and expecting) the ways God is present, and since I have Epiphany on the brain, I wonder if the new year should be less about resolution and more about…revelation.
As I was setting up this website and transferring old blog posts over I was amazed by the massive archive — not written by me, but certainly curated —so many wise voices contributed to this space, to my thinking, to my struggling, to my growing. I’m looking back now then at past Epiphany Sunday reflections:
This one from Andy: What are those things that light our way and lead us, lead you, lead me, to Jesus? What is it about God that excites you - makes you feel alive - and how can you pursue it? What is your light? if there is someone here today who is wondering what in the world that light or sign to follow might look like, here is something more to glean from our text – with the wise men God used an ordinary object for them — a star. Remember, they were astrologers after all. A star makes perfect sense for them. So don’t be surprised if God might just decide to guide you by something ordinary or familiar too, something that is already in you, or before you, that makes sense to you…and if you have you eyes open and are willing to look for it…you will see it…And, we will always have the help of peasants and shepherds, wise men, babies, and a star…and so much more around us.
This from Barbara Brown Taylor: Remember, there is always risk involved in answering the call of Jesus to follow Him. We cannot know where the call to follow will take us. But ours is not the only risk. Jesus also took a risk on the disciples. For reasons known only to heaven, God is constantly taking risks on all kinds of people -- people who fish for a living, people who are too young to have jobs, people who have retired. Every day God takes risks on the human race, takes risks on people like you and me.
This one from poet Katie Cook:
Let us go in peace now;
For our eyes have seen God’s salvation.
We have stood, dumbstruck,
before the manger.
We have exchanged glances with the shepherds
and looked, sheepishly, out of the corners of our eyes
at the wise men.
We have listened, with terror and delight,
to the messengers with their extraterrestrial song.
We, who have walked so often and so long in terrible darkness,
have been flooded with holy light.
Let us go in peace now;
We have brought our gifts to the manger—and for some of us
it was merely our broken selves—but now, like the shepherds,
we must go back to our fields;
like the magi,
we must go home another way.
Let us go in peace now;
May this Holy Child guide our steps
into the new year
And give us the courage
to give birth to God’s realm.
Something I wrote for the Christian Century: “In the time of King Herod” are 6 words that gesture towards more than a temporal marker but a deliberate anti-kairos behind the status quo’s reactionary fear at the potential rupture signaled by Jesus’ birth. Matthew’s orientation toward genealogy and lineages as we approach the end of this Christmas season means we can’t read “in the time of King Herod” without recognizing how genealogies suggest a beautiful inevitability even in the midst of a political impossibility.
And finally, if you don’t subscribe to Broderick Greer’s Tiny Letter, you need to. He has some prophetic and revelatory thoughts for us today on the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, and how naming is a form of resistance.
I don’t know what to make of the next year, of the next decade, of really the next month. I never have, and I have made thousands of resolutions. But I know that I can, we can participate in these little revelations—receiving them…giving them— and that might make all the difference in our world.
