New Year, New Creation

Readings (Epiphany 2 Year B: alt.)
1 Samuel 3.3b-10, 19
Psalm 40.2, 4, 7-10
1 Corinthians 6.13c-15a, 17-20
St John 1.35-42

At the beginning of a New Year, we always make resolutions. And surprisingly, some of us even keep them, at least for a few weeks! Is anyone game enough to tell us any of their resolves, successes or even failures, past or present, in the field of resolutions?

I guess a common resolution for Christians to make is that somehow we become better followers of Jesus… I know I often think that resolve through—not just at the New Year, but at other times during the year… At the beginning of the year, it is fitting that we pray to be good disciples.

Jesus asks his first followers for what they are searching. What a very good question to replace any New Year’s Resolutions we might have made and lately put aside. We are given the freedom by God to pray for that for which we have deepest desires.… What might that be? Peace maybe? That’s something badly needed at this time. But only our hearts can tell us what to pray for and ask of God. To find what we are looking for?

Some questions arise. Like, what are you looking for? How can we find God? Where do you live, God? John tells us elsewhere in his gospel that (according to one translation) Jesus came down and pitched his tent amongst us. We can pray to desire to know where Jesus lives and move slowly towards staying with him in 2003. And so with that in mind…

By the use of our imagination, we might be more open to the gospel reading. Jesus is walking through a village stopping now and then maybe to look around… As he does so, John, who had baptised Jesus in last week’s Gospel reading, recognises Jesus and with excitement remembers his having also heard the voice from heaven announcing Jesus as the “Beloved.”

John releases his disciples and indicates that they follow Jesus and see what he has to offer them as meaningful for life. The disciples are caught between what they know as familiar and the new, the unfamiliar to which John points them. They begin following Jesus with some curiosity or maybe excitement or even a touch of fearful reluctance…

John’s narrative of the events and meaning of Christ’s life begins with this calling-story we hear today. John the Baptist has prophetically declared himself not to be the Christ and has publicly ordained Jesus in the waters of the Jordan to be what God has called him to be—The Anointed. Today we watch and listen as Jesus begins his church. The Greek name for “church” is literally “The Called.” We hear two very good questions, which seem to be a necessary part of Church and call. Jesus asks the two disciples of John who have begun literally to follow him about what they are looking for. They respond with a question of their own; they want to know where Jesus stays. He encourages them to find the answer themselves. They stayed with him that day. Larry Gillick, Jesuit scholar, has given us a way of understanding this passage…linking us back to the stories of the creation…

It was the “first day” continuing the theme from Genesis; Christ is the “anointed” to be and effect the “new creation.”

The first act of God’s creating love was the separation between darkness and light. Jesus’ entering human history as the “light” is the beginning of God’s completing the blessing of this world through the Covenants. God continues seeing creation as “very good.”

The two who ask where Jesus is staying ask on behalf of all of us. They discover that Jesus is staying and has come to stay with us, having “pitched his tent among us.” They came, they saw and they were enthralled—and they stayed. On the “second day” in Genesis, there was separation, the earth with its waters and the heavens. On the second day of John’s Gospel, Andrew, one of the new followers of Jesus finds his brother, Cephas, whom he brings to Jesus. Jesus announces a separation by calling Cephas by a new name, “Peter”, which means “Rock.” Peter then begins his slow separation from being of the earth towards being of the heavens. God also saw that it was all “very good.” And then the Old Testament story. Samuel, in today’s First Reading has no problem about sleeping, but rather being awakened by a divine snooze alarm. Eli is the holy man of the temple, but God is calling Samuel into his future mission. After three distinct calls in which Samuel thinks his master Eli is beckoning him, Eli encourages Samuel not to come running to him, but to discern that God is calling and desires Samuel to wake up and listen. This he does and grows up to be a good listener and proclaimer (as one translation puts it).

Samuel, Andrew, Peter, and even John the Baptist were not given road maps or Owner’s Manuals to accompany their being summoned, although you could see the Bible as a service guide. They all received “wake-up calls” in various ways. They were being dealt with by a God of the unlikely who creates out of nothing, calls the sleeping, invites the curious and chooses the “rocks” upon which to bring about the new creation. With all that, this unlikely God does not project clearly. All are called from the known, but the “to where” and the “how to” are not even hinted at.

The “familiar” can be the most secure prison. The known has such a comfort no matter how hard the “familiar” may be. C. S. Lewis in the first of his Screwtape Letters has the devil write his nephew who is trying to keep a particular soul from trusting God, “Keep pressing upon him the importance of the familiar.” The “old creation” has passed away and Jesus begins the redemption, the re-creation, by inviting the “called” into the unknown and in Peter’s case, a new identity and name. And us—the same with us. We all have received “wake-up calls” in various ways in our lives and perhaps still regularly are. We are being dealt with by a God of the unlikely who creates out of nothing, calls the sleeping, invites the curious and chooses the “rocks” upon which to bring about the new creation. With all that, this unlikely God does not project clearly. We are called from the known, but the “to where” and the “how to” are not even hinted at.

How, where, what for, why is our calling? We have woken up, have heard him call our names, and have stepped out into….

Well only we can answer that, with our own hearts and minds, souls and bodies… in this brand New Year.

What are some of your thoughts?