Hope for the New Year

        We have begun a new year.   It seems to me that the chief function of these celebrations is hope.  Hope that the new year will be peaceful, prosperous and helpful to all of us.  We wish each other well on New Year’s day, and for a moment, at least we look forward to a new twelve months with some kind of joyful, hopeful expectation.

This is an election year, 2012.  We will be inundated with campaign commercials for the whole of the year.  The political conventions will fill the summer and if you have no stomach for all of this, that is too bad.  It is going to happen anyway.  My profound hope is that through it all, God will be watching over us and our leadership will be given God’s grace somehow to be genuinely concerned about the
needs of the country and its people, instead of the special interests that seem always to clog up the system.

The book of Genesis begins in such a matter-of-fact way.  Simple, really in all of its complexity:

                   In the beginning when God created the heavens and
                the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered
                the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the 
                face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and 
                there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God  
                separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day,     
and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and
there was morning, the first day.   -Genesis 1: 1-5

Up to this point in God’s creation, all was well.  Humankind hadn’t yet been created.  There was no contention about who was the ruler, God was firmly in charge.  God was the light and the darkness, the content of the day itself.  There were not yet any arguments, no special interests, only light and darkness, which God called good.

Then humankind came along.  God created them, male and female, and he set them in the Garden of Eden, telling them to eat of every tree in the Garden except the tree that produced the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.  God did not want humankind contaminated with the kind of knowledge that only God can handle.

But we ate of the fruit anyway, knew that we were naked and we hid from God in the garden because we were ashamed.  When God came to visit, we were discovered in our hiding and thrown out of the garden.  That is when the world began to fall away from its maker and humankind began to think that we ourselves are god.

Many times, God tried to bring it all back.  But still the original creation was not restored.  The people went their own way, not keeping the commandments and creating terrible societies where the poor were not cared for and the rich prospered.  God sent prophets to preach to the people, but they killed the prophets and continued to do what they wanted.

Finally, God decided that only if he came to earth himself and demonstrated what he intended by his commandments and prophets could the people have some understanding of what creation was intended to be.

So we have the story of the Christ, born without a home in a lowly manger and living a life of poverty, yet with remarkable grace and peace that radiated from his person.  This is the Jesus who came to John the Baptist to be baptized in the Jordan river.  When he came up out of the water, the skies opened and a voice was heard by Jesus to say,  You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.  The word of God to his son who was God present on this earth in human form.

Well, so what?  Look around you and you still won’t see creation restored in the way that it was intended by God from the beginning.  The poor are still not really cared for and the rich still prosper.  As a matter of fact, it seems to be getting worse.

A lot of good things are mouthed by the politicians, trying to get our votes.  They talk as though they are on the side of  The American People .  I think if I hear one more of them from either party use that phrase, I will scream.  What the American people need is for politicians who honestly want this country to be a model to the world of what God’s creation was meant to be.  That means care for the poor, health care for all, the rich to be contained and for the riches of this nation to be shared by everyone.  We can stop trying to be the policemen of the world and let the world see to itself.  If we honestly place our faith in God, regardless of our religion, we will find all of the help that we need.  Jesus brought into the world the power of the Holy Spirit, that great empowering arm of God to give us the strength to do everything that God requires.  All that we need to do is to listen to the Spirit and we will know the way.

Again, the politicians mouth the words of faith.  They want us to think that they are faithful, deeply religious people.  They are fond of doctrinal issues like abortion and sexuality.  They condemn homosexuality in every form and want to deny abortion in every case.  They make it sound that if we got our doctrine straight, that is all that we need.  It doesn’t take much to see the fallacy of that.  What we need is leadership to move this nation in the way of God’s kingdom.  A Kingdom that includes everyone in this country, rich or poor, of whatever sexuality or condition and demonstrates love and peace for everyone.  That can’t happen if the only basis for political discourse is what we have before us.  We need our attention to be focused on those who are in dire need, and to care for them above all.  If we can figure out how to do this, we will find the Kingdom at our doorstep. Let the election take care of itself.  Reach deeply into your baptism, listen to the Spirit, and find your way back to God’s home.  Remember what Jesus told us about the commandments:

Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, 
soul and mind.  This is the first and greatest
                               commandment and the second is like unto it:  
                             Love your neighbor as a person like yourself.
On these two commandments hang all the law
                              and the prophets.  -Matthew 22: 37-40 

Could anything be more simple than that?