Sunday, January 6, 2008
Sermon: "I Resolve in 2008?"
Scripture: Ephesians 3: 1-12
Reverend Larry Gerber
This is the first Sunday of a new year. We will emphasize Resolution ... or re: Solution ... or Re-Solution.
Every year many people look at New Year's Resolutions. Self-improvement. This means that Christian and non-Christian alike are engaged in a kind of spiritual formation. People are seeking -- even resolving toward -- personal transformation.
The origins of the New Year's Resolution go all the way back to 153 B.C. when January 1 was fixed as New Year's Day on the Roman calendar. The Romans had a mythical god-king named Janus, from the Latin ianua, an entrance gate, and it's for Janus that the first month of the year is named. Janus had two faces, which allowed him to look both forward and backward in battle. He was the god of doorways and gates because both can be passed in either direction. He was made the namesake for the first month of the New Year for obvious symbolic reasons: Janus could look both back on the past year's events and forward to the future year. Janus and the New Year season became connected with the notion of resolutions. Many Romans sought forgiveness from their enemies and also exchanged gifts before the New Year began.
Today, 1855 years later some of us still make resolutions. What are the most popular resolutions?
A survey of 300,000 people determined these as the Top 10 Most Popular resolutions:
1) Weight loss/Get in Shape
2) Stick to a budget
3) Debt reduction
4) Enjoy more quality time with family and friends
5) Find a spouse
6) Make new friends
7) Get a better job/Change careers
8) Learn a new skill/hobby
9) Volunteer/Serve people
10) Get more organized
40 to 45 percent of American adults make one or more resolutions each year
Do you wonder how long resolutions are kept:
-- past the first week: 75 percent
-- past two weeks: 71 percent
-- after one month: 64 percent
-- after six months: 46 percent
Persistence is the key to life change. With less than half of the people in America making resolutions and only 46% of those keeping them, is there any wonder that we are becoming a people with less than standard work ethics and a people who find less family time with each passing year?
Those who make a resolution, and strive to keep it, have a strong commitment to change. Last- minute and unreflective resolutions tend to be broken. "For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?" (Luke 14:28).
Those who make, and strive to keep, resolutions set up coping strategies to deal with the failures and setbacks that will challenge resolutions. Confession, repentance and accepting grace. "Flee temptation ?"
Those who make, and strive to keep, resolutions keep track of progress in a journal or through conversations with friends. The more monitoring one does and feedback one seeks, the better chance for success. Accountability and community.
To be successful, when a a resolution involves stopping one behavior, it must be coupled with a replacement behavior. Instead of the cigarette, chew gum. Instead of sitting in front of the tv, get up and exercise, or help a neighbor, or go for a walk. When you resolve to stop complaining so much, find a way to help others find happiness. Put off the old, put on the new.
The Bridge
This is a great opportunity to connect God's desire that we might experience life change with our own desire for life change. If you are a non-believers or seeker of the Way, you can practically take the gospel into your personal world, showing how Jesus embraces changed lives and resolutions. You will be able to see that perhaps it's God who's behind your desire for self-improvement. People want to rise above mediocrity; can't God be behind that, showing you how life isn't working, while offering at the same time the means to deeper fulfillment? New Year's resolutions may be signposts pointing to God, not unlike the way we describe natural theology. God wants to be the solution in your resolutions.
Those of you who worship regularly can bring your New Year's resolutions to God, offering you submission to God's Spirit so that God will animate your life change. For the Christian, this need not be a human self-improvement effort; it can be a divine life change. After all, Jesus didn't come just to save souls and populate heaven. He came to establish a kingdom on earth that advances through changed lives.
The Themes
Resolution, re: Solution and Re-Solution. We just talked about resolution, now let's look at re: Solution and Re-Solution.
re: Solution
The "re:" appears on e-mail replies, faxes, memos and any place where shorthand is helpful. "re:" stands for "in reference to" or "in regard to." It comes from the Latin word "res," which refers to "a thing" or "matter."
Our culture is talking about resolutions ? New Year's goals to address problems in life. You can break the word down into meanings. re: Solution. This Sunday service is in reference to, it's occupied with this thing, this matter of conversation -- this Solution. Jesus is about bringing healing and redemption to brokenness in human life. He sees the problems you see, and he offers solutions.
The Solution is obviously an eternal one which leads to a natural presentation of the gospel. But it's also a solution offered now ? for today's life change needs. Jesus offers forgiveness to the lame and heals their maladies. He's always calling people into his kingdom, and always calling people to life change. "Go your way, and from now on do not sin again" (John 8:11). "Sell your possessions ? then come, follow me" (Matthew 19:21).
The kingdom is about the solution offered in Jesus -- for salvation and for transformation. The gospel is re: Solution.
Re-Solution
Doesn't receiving the gospel mean forgiveness completely and forgiveness again every time we confess and receive it? Isn't mercy new every morning? "Morning by morning new mercies I see," as the hymn writer puts it. Isn't receiving grace a process and an event? Yes, yes and yes.
Again, that's because the gospel isn't merely a one-time solution for human depravity and separation from God. It's also a re-solution. God's always inviting us to re-address the same areas of life in need of grace ? he offers Jesus as his re-solution.
If the research shows that 25 percent of resolutions are busted by January 8, then we don't need just a solution. We need a re-solution. That which needs attention will continue to present itself in the transformation process.
In creating a New Year's resolution, everyone is in essence saying, "I'm going to re-solution this. The old solutions certainly haven't worked. Time to re-solution my life." God echoes that sentiment, and the gospel provides the means to extend it to people -- through forgiveness, grace, prayer, community and the empowering of the Spirit.
Despite how tragic or dark one's life seems, and despite how many times people have failed in an area of life and obedience that needs fixing, a re-solution is always at hand in the gospel of grace. Part of the divine scandal of forgiveness is that no matter how many steps we have walked, or run, away from God, we need only one step to return to him. That's why these themes lend themselves so well for service design at the New Year.
The Text
Paul is addressing an Ephesian church that had some problems in need of solutions. A notable one is the suspicion that some Jew-Gentile disunity may have been rumbling through the community (Ephesians 2:11 ff.). The church "family" appears torn apart by "who-is-in-and-how" religious dissension.
Therefore, Paul talks about a mystery, which until now had not been disclosed: The Gentiles have become equal co-heirs with the Jews in the family of God (v. 6). The foundation of Paul's calling (v. 1), revelation (v. 3), ministry (v. 7), message (v. 8), and sufferings (v. 13) is one and the same: the gospel of Jesus. He has no other solution for his own life or the lives of the Ephesians.
The Solution that Paul preached on his first two visits to Ephesus (Acts 19 and 20) is the same Re-Solution that he offers to maintain unity among those converted.
Then and now, this gospel is about radical inclusion and unity in the family of God. It's a "you are accepted here just as you are" scandal. God takes people on grace despite their sense of unworthiness. God's solution is to offer them forgiveness and grace despite their track record.
But the same gospel is also a re-solution. Grace and forgiveness go with us every time we fall short of God's hopes for our lives.
Then as we begin to grasp this, then the gospel becomes our resolution. We resolve to live motivated by grace and forgiveness. We cannot achieve the life change and "goodness" that we would all like to live up to. So a motivation to fix our own lives or to win God's approval falls short. We just respond to love with love. We resolve to live the gospel that re-solves us time and time again.
The Service
The first Sunday of the year on the heels of the New Year's season is a perfect time for a spirit of dedication and rededication.
Next week we will remember our Baptism. This week we prepare ourselves for that time of renewal through the act of Communion.
As we prepare to break bread together, some of you may need an invitation to enter a relationship with Christ for the first time. For others, there's a need to recommit your lives, passions and priorities to Jesus ? to submit to Jesus Christ as your re-solution. Still others are faithful followers, but can still recognize one or two areas in your lives where growth is needed. While you normally address them through resolutions, today you can include the Holy Spirit in the process of your transformation and seek God as your re-solution. Take the elements of bread and juice as outward symbols of that which you are seeking inwardly. Be ye transformed in the taking of the bread and the cup....
