A New You in a New Year: How to Keep New Year Resolutions
Mark 1 : 4 – 11
Welcome to a New Year and welcome to the first Sunday in the New Year. In the church Calendar, it is the Baptism of the Lord and the Epiphany. Today we celebrate with the Church universal the giving of the Christ child and recall the ancient traditions of Baptism of the Christ child. In our postmodern period we may be forgiven for not keeping up with much of the church’s Calendar since we have so much to keep up with like, the Kardashians. Yet throughout the history of the church we are called upon, following the celebration of the birth of Christ at Christmas, to reflect on our lives as Christians. The New Year is also a time of resolutions to change our lives and to pursue different things for different result. I once was a smoker about 30years ago and I still recall making a New Year resolution to give up smoking in the New Year. It was hard and with taunts and a dare from friends. I gave it up with so much struggle and pain. When I look back at it, I am glad that I did.
Ever wonder why people make New Year resolutions? Experts think that the desire to change one’s life and pursue what is good and desirable is at the roots of New Year’s resolution. People make resolutions to change bad habits like I did with smoking. When life is not going the way you want, it is human nature to review and promise oneself to redouble effort and do better. Here lies the root of the New Year resolution. Our Gospel reading this morning as recorded by St Mark may appear as a story to introduce John the Baptist and the Baptism of our Lord. In a way that is what it is, but this morning I want to lead you to another angle of the story namely, a resolution and a promise by individuals to do better. I want you to think about those individuals who responded to the invitation of John the Baptist.
Pay attention to the introduction of John the Baptist by St. Mark in Verse 4: He “appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Mark spends very little time in the introduction of John except to quote the Prophet Isaiah and get straight to the point. John “appeared” and preached the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” This piece of information is relevant for our purpose in the New Year. To understand why it is relevant let me remind you about the history of Palestine during the period. The Romans colonized the Jews and had taken control of the land including stationing soldiers at the temple. The people of God realized that they themselves had contributed to their situation by not following God. They have seen their situation deteriorate from bad to worse and even worship at the Temple required a tax to a foreign power – Caesar. This was prove enough that God had abandoned them and so many knew that if a change was to come, they had to change their ways, make amends with God in order to see a better day and live a better life. St Mark captures the language of the time in his rendering of the word “metanoia” or “change of mind”. It was the changing of the mind or repenting for a purpose and that was to have one’s sins forgiven so one can receive the blessings of the Lord. And so John came with this singular message. Baptism was, and still is, a sign that one has resolved to live a better life. Before John the Baptist, people either immersed themselves or went to the priest to be baptized to affirm this willingness that they have changed their lives. John “appeared” and baptized others as a witness to prepare others for a changed life. In the Church, we baptized in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit as a witness to faith in Christ.
The people in the time of Christ endured hardship and oppression and so they realized that if a change was to come, they too must do self-introspection as a way to understand their contribution to their problem and then see what changes were needed to bring about a solution. It was time to heed the call for changing of the mind and recognize that individual actions lead to collective pain. This was not new. The Prophet Isaiah had called for repentance and a re-examination of life as a way to prepare for a new era. (Isa. 40 : 3). The Prophet Malachi had also called for change and corporate re-direction (Mal. 3 1 – 3). You cannot see change if you continue to do the same thing in the New Year like you did in the old year. So how do you keep Your New Year Resolution?
1. There is a reason people make New Year resolutions in January. It is a month that is not really done with the old year but looks with expectation towards the new. It is like driving, you cannot ignore the rear view mirror but you also must concentrate on what is in front of you. So to avoid the bumps you hit in the distance in the rear mirror, you must always keep your eye on what is in front to avoid making past mistakes. If you take your eyes off the road and drive the same way you did in the last mile, chances are you will continue to hit the bumps you should have avoided. Albert Einstein is quoted as defining insanity as people doing the same thing but expecting different results each time. We do that as Christians. We fail to recognize the causes of our hardship and misery and refuse to change then we blame God when we feel our prayers are not answered. You know smoking is not good for you. Yes, you have heard that you need to stop smoking but you make up an excuse to smoke and convince yourself that it “calms you down” With continued smoking, improving your health from what it was in the past year could be hard. Yes you have a resolution to lose weight, but you see, the excuse of having another piece of cake because you do not want to waste food may sound good, but it cannot reduce your waist line. In the New Year, do what John the Baptist invited the people of God to do: Change your mind so that you can receive Grace. Let us all have a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
2. It has to be a total change of mind. In the Greek, it is called metonia. It means the old things that were bringing pain and stagnation must be changed. This involves not just change for change sake, but a purposeful change of mind. Those things that were forcing themselves on you must be changed. We all have done that. We eat too much, yet do not exercise. We know we should do something constructive, but we rather lounge around and watch television. We want to get involve in the choir and participate more in church activities, yet we spend far too much time doing other things. We want to give back a little more, but we find ourselves spending more on those things we do not need. St Paul captured this human dilemma well in his letter to the prosecuted church in Rome in his letter to the church (Rom. 7 :15) The Apostle wrote: “ For that which I am doing, I do not understand, for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing that I hate”. We all have been there. This has even worried social scientists. Why do we do the things that we do even though we know what is good? As you can imagine, there have been lots of theories and explanations of why this is so. Some say that we can understand why change does not occur if we can examine the stages of change and get ready to deal with the challenges of each stage. Interestingly, despite recognizing the stages, they recognize human weakness and included relapse as the last stage because people do fall off the wagon. The social scientists left something off in their stages and that was God. You cannot change if you try to do it alone. Mark captured it well by referring to our propensity to be sinful. It is in the forgiveness of sins that we can change. It is in the decision to say I have given all my sins to Jesus that we can say lead us kindly light for we cannot do it alone. There might have been people in the time of John who called for the tough-person approach, but John was saying come examine yourself repent of your sins to obtain grace and mercy.
3. How do we keep our New Year Resolution? It is by doing it with the community and having a witness. John’s Baptism was a public act for the community and a witness by John that the individual in the presence of the community has affirmed and has made a commitment to change his/her ways. You cannot make a commitment to change and try to do it alone outside of the community. Christian Baptism for us, after John, is a public declaration witnessed by the church community that we have changed our ways and have made a commitment to follow Christ. With such public declaration we hold each other accountable and hold up each other in prayer. We keep our resolution when we do it as a community, publicly as the people of God.
4. We keep the New Year Resolution by holding on to our God who has promised to be with us always. We may not know what tomorrow brings but trust in God is essential because God made tomorrow. Whether we fail or succeed we know God has promised to be with us always.
I want to leave you this morning with a story of a man named John Rowe. Mr. Rowe was an Irish immigrant who came to the United States with little education at the age of twenty-four. As all immigrants, he took whatever job he could at first. He worked for the rail road as well as working for the Humane Society in New York. In those uncertain days when keeping the body warm and fed kept many immigrants up at night and produced anxiety, Mr Rowe tapped in his Christian faith and wrote the hymn that we sing in Church. In those dreary days when it was hard to see the future he wrote the hymn: God Holds the Future in his Hands. Listen to the lines of this beloved hymn:
Dread not the things that are ahead,
The burdens great, the sinking sands,
The thorns that o’er the path are spread,
God holds the future in His hands.
God holds the future in His hands
And every heart He understands.
On Him depend,
He is your Friend,
He holds the future in His hands.
We know not what tomorrow hides,
Of sun or storm or good or ill;
We only know His dear hand guides,
And He will be our Father still.
His hand created earth and sky,
The zephyrs and the storms that rage,
And years to come and years gone by
To Him are but an open page.
Live close to Him and trust His love,
Assured that while on earth we roam,
Whate’er may come, He bends above
To guide His children safely home.
As we enter into the New Year, resolutions will be made and broken. Plans will be made and discarded but it is nice to know that with God on our side, we can never dread what is ahead for Our God holds the future in his hands. Thanks be to God. Amen.
