Jeremiah 31:31-34
“God’s New Year’s Day Resolution”
Let us pray. Come Spirit of the Living God and fall afresh on us. Melt us and mold us to your will so that there is more of your grace and love in our lives and less of our stupidity. Come Spirit of the Living God. Come. Amen.
How is it with your soul? Notice I did not ask the polite question of “How are you?” Nor did I ask a casual version of “What’s new?” Rather, I asked the soul-searching question that John Wesley would often pose at small group gatherings. How is it with your soul? It is a soul tending question… inviting reflection, vulnerability and insight. It is the kind of question that my spiritual director and I wrestle with once a month. Often it requires that I breathe deep and stop and think. So, I put this question to you…How is it with your soul? Let this thought steep in your mind like an excellent brew of tea leaves because we’ll come back to it.
Our culture enjoys creating resolutions for the new year. It is our means to reflect on the past and look ahead to the future. This tradition harkens back to an ancient Babylonian practice which honored the pagan god, Janus (whose two heads looked to the past and to the present.) The most popular expression of this tradition 4,000 years ago was to return farm tools neighbors had borrowed from one another. Anybody have my rake?
Today, we spend most of our January 1st… with fingers to keyboard typing our resolutions that usually include one or two of the following: Drink Less Alcohol, Eat Healthy Food, Get a Better Job, Get Fit, Lose Weight, Manage Debt, Manage Stress, Quit Smoking, Save Money, and/or Volunteer to Help Others.
On this the first day of a new year… with God’s grace new every morning and new every year… we stand at a precipice of great opportunity. God loves us. God’s grace is freely given to us. We do not earn it, but received it as the gift of Christmas it was… so that we can begin again. We can indeed turn away from our muddled past and live life differently in the year before us.
Each of us has regrets about the year past… shoulda’s or woulda’s or coulda’s. We all wish we could have done better as a wife or husband, be a better parent, or have more patience with an annoying relative. Some of us know all too well the broken promises we made to ourselves, our accountability partners, and even to God. How many times did you or I mutter in 2011, “Oh God if you only will get me through this… then I will….” But many of us failed on our end of the bargain.
I know a young man who had a tough time in 2011 and 2010 and 2009. His tough times were the combined result of one or two random bad circumstances and the accumulation of a series of bad choices he has made. He asked his friend after recounting his recent difficulties, “Why is my life so hard?” You have probably heard the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Perhaps, this young person needs to realize… he has been doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result and that does indeed make life very hard. Insanely hard.
Today we can stop our insanity and start fresh… with the best choice. A choice for God to influence and impact all of our decisions. In this worship service we will do something uniquely United Methodist as we participate in the Covenant Renewal Service. This is our moment to set things right with God, once again. To start fresh. To begin anew. To re-commit ourselves and our lives to the ways of God.
John Wesley first observed this practice from his contemporary Richard Allene in 1663, who was a Puritan. Wesley found the covenant service rich and meaningful, as expressed in his Journal: "Many mourned before God, and many were comforted" (April 1756); "It was, as usual, a time of remarkable blessing" (October 1765); "It was an occasion for a variety of spiritual experiences ... I do not know that ever we had a greater blessing. Afterwards many desired to return thanks, either for a sense of pardon, for full salvation, or for a fresh manifestation of His graces, healing all their backslidings" (January 1, 1775).
Since that time… the people called United Methodist have been sharing this service especially on New Year’s Day. One United Methodist writer from Britain writes, “This is an occasion for people who wanted to try to live the Christian life better—which really meant to actually live out the vows of the baptismal covenant—to get together, have a time of intensive searching of the scriptures and prayer, culminating in a ritual of commitment”(Mr. Burton-Edwards).
The heart of the service, focused in the Covenant Prayer, requires persons to commit themselves to God. This covenant is serious. Individual copies of the Covenant Service are recommended for all worshipers so that they may sign and keep them as reminders. I encourage you to sign your bulletin today before you leave. Former DISCIPLE 1 Bible students will recognize the prayer from their 34 week study together. Later in the service you will find this prayer… which we will pray together… listen now to it in its entirety.
The Wesley Covenant Prayer
I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.
Covenants are promises like marriage covenants, baptismal covenants, etc. Each party or side in the contract or promise makes a commitment. The prophet Jeremiah finally stopped telling the ancient Israelite people the bad news of their failure to fulfill their part of the covenant… and began to preach consolation and hope to them. His message? What we read from chapter 31 this morning… that God will do something new in God’s side of the promise… God will put God’s law or love or Godself in people’s hearts. This covenant was fully completed in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
God will be our God that is God’s side of the bargain. We will be God’s people that is our part. And what lies at the root of this covenant? The same thing that lies at the root of the Covenant Prayer… God’s unconditional forgiving grace. God forgives our sins, failures, and “our insanity”. I appreciate what one writer said about this new covenant… "We are most ready to hear these words when our own efforts are exhausted. When we are weary of our inner turmoil we are ready to hear Jeremiah."
If you are exhausted from the insane way you have lived 2011 … if you are weary of the manner in which you lived 2011… and you want 2012 to be different… then let’s start again. Let us renew our promise to God as we receive God’s generous love in forgiving us.
Now is the moment to return to the question… How is it with your soul? The most flavorful teas require steeping time… and so does this question. We’ve steeped it for a while now. Bishop Woodie White, our former Bishop of Indiana, writes about soul tending, “The question of the condition of one’s soul does not require a response to others, but one’s self. It is not so much an accountability issue to the community as it is an assessment of one’s own faithfulness and discipleship. Really, one’s condition. Not just in doing, but perhaps more importantly in being.”
So, I ask this soul tending question not to drudge through the deep recesses of your soul… but to give us all some light in which we can each ponder our own souls. What is your assessment of your faithfulness? What are your successes and failures in discipleship? How is it that you want to begin afresh in 2012? What scary goals lie before you that require grounding in the forgiving grace of God?
Let us ponder this in silent prayer….
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