2 Corinthians 5:17-6:2
John 8:12-19
New Year’s Eve 2024
©Suzanne Grimmett
One of the reasons people love New Year’s Eve is for the hope -the hope that next year will be better, different. The hope that we will be different and the promise of new possibilities that this next calendar year may bring.
And it will bring new possibilities. There is no doubt about that.
The problem with hope, though, is the way we think about it. If hope is about wishing for something we want but are anxious we may never have, then hope is really just fear in disguise.
When hope is masquerading like this, human beings tend to fall into one of two traps- that it is all down to us, or, that it is all down to fate, the gods, the universe or however we name the Big Other that we credit for shaping the circumstances and conditions of our lives. Often, of course, we flip between the two, taking credit and blame for some things ourselves and ascribing others to that force outside ourselves, whether we see it as benevolent or malevolent.
The problem with the “it’s all up to me” kind of thinking is that we can become our own toughest task master. This evening’s Gospel reading seems to have some contradictory things to say about judgement, where Jesus says he does not judge alone, but only through his union with the Father- the source of all being and love itself. Why then, do we think we can judge ourselves alone? Yet we are pretty good at it- our own toughest judge and jury always in our head. When we surrender to love itself, we see the truth about ourselves, but only in the simultaneous knowledge and experience of being held by a love that will not let us go….regardless of what that searing light reveals.
Yet when New Year’s Eve rolls around we are very prone, are we not, to laying down a new regime that we think will help us ‘measure up’. Nadia Bolz Weber often reminds us at this time that there is no New Year’s Resolution that, if kept, will make you more worthy of love. You as your actual self, and not some made up ideal, are already worthy and already loved.
The problem with locating all agency outside ourselves is even less healthy. We can begin reaching for that supernatural something when we are motivated by the fear of missing out, or plagued by anxieties about never becoming who we planned to be. This can lead to looking for something to invade from outside and change our circumstances- the lottery win, the love affair with that perfect person, the supernatural experience that arrives and turns our life around. While there is no doubt such things would bring change, the risk is that we fall into the trap of thinking we do not have what we need right now, locating our salvation way outside ourselves.
And then there is the problem with religious language, and how it gets co-opted into this same binary thinking. That word, ‘salvation’ we heard triumphantly proclaimed in the reading from 2nd Corinthians; “now is the day!” Often we have shied away from that word salvation because we have lost that sense of immediacy, seeing the idea of salvation instead as some kind of dividing line; a separation between those who are “saved” and those who are not.
There is no hope for any of us if we are stuck in binaries, yet isn’t Jesus speaking like that too?
“I am the light of the world,” he says, “whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”
Light and dark- there is a binary if I ever heard one. Or is it?
Light is a fascinating metaphor. Its speed is the one universal constant. Richard Rohr notes that, ‘Scientists have discovered that what looks like darkness to the human eye is actually filled with tiny particles called “neutrinos,”…’
…slivers of light that pass through the entire universe. Apparently there is no such thing as total darkness anywhere, even though the human eye thinks there is. John’s Gospel was more accurate than we realized when it described Christ as “a light that darkness cannot overcome” (John 1:5).[1]
It is an immensely hopeful thing that there is an inner light in all things that can never be destroyed. It is hard to continue to imagine light and dark as a binary when light infiltrates everything and everywhere.
It might make us pause to consider the meaning of this light. Importantly we must remember that light is not so much what we see, but the means through which we see– by light we are enabled to see everything else. Light reveals, and it takes vulnerability and no small amount of courage to surrender to that kind of truth at times.
One thing so often hidden or obscured that light enables us to see, is that everything belongs. While religion has so often been a force for division, and has been abused far too often down the ages by those in power to support their own will to dominate, this is but a twisted form. True religion always restores…puts back together. We hear that in the word itself, re-ligio:re-ligament or reconnect.Hope for the world is always found in relationship, connection and the essential oneness of everything.
Yet in embracing this truth of unity, we must not deny the pain and brokenness we see in the world. We might think of the darkness of greed or racism… the darkness of prejudice and discrimination…the darkness of war and all forms of violent oppression.
These things are real. I am not suggesting that when we walk into the new year with all these prayers and blessings, that such evils will cease to exist. But we can know the truth of the light- that courage and generosity are stronger than racism and greed, that love and justice are more powerful than prejudice and discrimination and that peace is the only future hope for humankind. We can know that we have a part to play in this, and it is a part we never enact alone.
Thankfully it is not all down to us, but nor is it all down to some Big Other who is really pulling the strings like some giant puppeteer. God’s love for the world overcame all separation first through the creation of this physical world and then through the incarnation of God in Christ, that humanity and divinity might be united. As Richard Rohr says;
God loves things by becoming them… God loves things by uniting with them, not by excluding them.[2]
This is the third way, beyond our binaries, overcoming all division in a slow work that insists on freedom.
The light reveals the divine in everything and everyone.
For you see, Jesus not only said, “I am the light of the world.” He also said, “You are the light of the world.” (Matthew 5:14) We do not need to wait for an incursion from without, nor do we need to think it is all down to ourselves and our New Year’s resolution regime.
The light has come into the world and invites us into this new thing that is both divine and human, Christ in us, but not in a way that sets us apart from creation or the rest of humanity, but that invites us to into solidarity with all.
In that belonging, in that grace, in that compassionate mercy, both received and shared, let there be hope for this new year.
+Amen
[1] Rohr, Richard. The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe (p. 14). SPCK. Kindle Edition.
[2] Rohr, Richard. The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe (p. 16). SPCK. Kindle Edition.