What Kind of Year Will It Be?
It is always amazing to me to look back at the end of a year at all the things that happened in my life, in my circle of relationships with family and friends, and in the world. While we were at Jill’s parents for a few days this week Greg and I enjoyed watching the Back to the Future movies with Michael J. Fox. One of the plot devices in the second film is how you could get rich if you lived in the 1950’s or 1980’s if you had a sports almanac that listed who won every major sporting event for the last 50 years of the 20th century so you could always bet on the winner and never lose.
January 2, 2011: Titus 1:1-16, What Kind of Year Will It Be?
Douglas Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
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It seems to me that most people are pretty lousy when it comes to predicting the future. Whether it involves something relatively insignificant like the outcome of a sporting event, or something with more of an impact like economics or predicting the stock market, the so-called experts are rarely consistently correct. Do you know what an economist is? An economist is a trained professional paid to guess wrong about the economy. Economists have forecasted 9 out of the last 5 recessions. There are a lot of great economist jokes, but I’ll stop. (One more: three economists go hunting and see a large deer. The first one shoots and misses a yard to the left.
The second one shoots and misses a yard to the right.
The third one doesn’t shoot but shouts in triumph “We got him! We got him!”
Not that we are much better at predicting the future than most economists. On January 1, 2010 how many of us could have imagined or accurately predicted the major events that took place in our lives or in the world in the year that just ended? The likelihood of our prediction skills being much better this year are not very good. There is so much uncertainty about the future.
When the future is unclear and uncertain, and it always is, how can we know what kind of year it will be? How shall we enter the year and live in it as followers of Jesus? Christians in the first century found themselves in a somewhat similar position as we do pondering these questions. As the years went by first century Christians were no longer convinced that the world would soon change with the glorious return of Christ. The spiritual vigor that characterized the mission and church planting efforts of Paul and his co-workers like Titus had to be entrusted to successors who, by virtue of their personal example, authority, and leadership would be able to defend the faith entrusted to them, and be ready like Paul to take their share of suffering for the gospel.
For most of us living in the United States suffering for the gospel is something we are not familiar with at all. On Friday morning as I read the news I saw the following Associated Press story from Bagdad, “The latest bloody attack on Iraq’s Christians was brutal in its simplicity. Militants left a bomb on the doorstep of the home of an elderly Christian couple and rang the doorbell. When Fawzi Rahim, 76, and his 78-year-old wife Janet Mekha answered the doorbell Thursday night, the bomb exploded, killing them. The bombing was among a string of seemingly coordinated attacks Thursday evening that targeted at least seven Christian homes in various parts of Baghdad that wounded at least 13 other people, a week after al-Qaida-linked militants renewed their threats to attack Iraq’s Christians.”
Then yesterday morning I read, “At least 21 people were killed and 79 wounded when a bomb exploded outside a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria in the deadliest terrorist attack in Egypt since 2006. The blast occurred after midnight as worshipers were leaving a New Year’s service.”
Can we imagine hearing our doorbell ring and worrying about whether someone left a bomb on our doorstep? Can we imagine what it would be like to walk out of Christmas Eve worship wondering if some one had planted a bomb outside our church? 2011 will be a year requiring great courage, faith, and resilience for Christians in places like Egypt and Iraq and they need our prayers.
I think about those Christian brothers and sisters and their lives and the choices they face. I try to think about what it must be like to be a pastor with people facing such violence. Where would you turn for guidance?
In the New Testament there are three letters 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus that are called the Pastoral Letters and they are addressed to the concerns of second-generation Christians. How will they go forward in faith regardless of opposition and hardship?
Listen to Titus chapter one:
“Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and the knowledge of the truth that is in accordance with godliness, 2 in the hope of eternal life that God, who never lies, promised before the ages began— 3 in due time he revealed his word through the proclamation with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior, 4 To Titus, my loyal child in the faith we share:
Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.
5 I left you behind in Crete for this reason, so that you should put in order what remained to be done, and should appoint elders in every town, as I directed you: 6 someone who is blameless, married only once, whose children are believers, not accused of debauchery and not rebellious. 7 For a bishop, as God’s steward, must be blameless; he must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or addicted to wine or violent or greedy for gain; 8 but he must be hospitable, a lover of goodness, prudent, upright, devout, and self-controlled. 9 He must have a firm grasp of the word that is trustworthy in accordance with the teaching, so that he may be able both to preach with sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict it.
10 There are also many rebellious people, idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision; 11 they must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for sordid gain what it is not right to teach. 12 It was one of them, their very own prophet, who said,
“Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.”
13 That testimony is true. For this reason rebuke them sharply, so that they may become sound in the faith, 14 not paying attention to Jewish myths or to commandments of those who reject the truth. 15 To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure. Their very minds and consciences are corrupted. 16 They profess to know God, but they deny him by their actions. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.”
This isn’t the easiest or most straightforward passage for us to grasp. I am not going to talk about the high qualifications in terms of character for those who would be in positions of Christian leadership although they are well worth noting. I’m not going to debate whether the ridicule directed toward people from Crete is accurate or fair. I would prefer to focus for a few minutes on one simple clear thought in verse 16, “They profess to know God, but they deny him by their actions.”
My hope and prayer is that 2011 will be a year where that will not be true of us. I hope it will be a year that you can look back on in 363 days and people would say of you and me, “They profess to know God, and they make God real by their actions.”
This is a worthy goal and it takes conscious effort on our part to make it happen. Dr. Frank C. Laubach (September 2, 1884—June 11, 1970) was a Christian Evangelical missionary and mystic known as “The Apostle to the Illiterates.” In 1935, while working at a remote location in the Philippines, he developed the “Each One Teach One” literacy program, which has been used to teach about 60 million people to read in their own language. He was deeply concerned about poverty, injustice and illiteracy, and considered them a barrier to peace in the world.
One of his most widely influential devotional works was a pamphlet entitled “The Game with Minutes.” In it, Laubach urged Christians to attempt keeping God in mind for at least one second of every minute of the day. In this way Christians can attempt the attitude of constant prayer spoken of in the book of Colossians. The pamphlet extolled the virtues of a life lived with unceasing focus on God. Laubach tried to call the attention of Christians to this fact. Any one of us can spend our day in Christ’s presence, he observed. And yet we do not. He urged us to think to Christ instead of thinking to ourselves. And he suggested turning to Christ constantly for advice on what to do next. He once said, “The trouble with nearly everybody who prays is that he says “Amen” and runs away before God has a chance to reply. Listening to God is far more important than giving Him your ideas.”
His diaries and books on prayer are filled with his many experiments to remain in constant communion with God. On the first day of 1937 he wrote in his diary, “God, I want to give you every minute of this year. I shall try to keep you in mind every moment of my waking hours….I shall try to let You be the speaker and direct every word. I shall try to let You direct my acts. I shall try to learn Your language.” Three months later, he noted his progress in learning to practice God’s presence: “Thank Thee that the habit of constant conversation grows easier each day. I really do believe all thought can be conversations with Thee.”
This is a marvelous resolve. However, it’s not as easy it sounds. We must want it and seek it out. We must order our lives in particular ways and take up particular courses of action that will draw us more deeply into constant communion with God. One of my favorite writers on Christian spirituality, Richard Foster, offers one such course of action in his book “Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home.” He suggests it as a way that opens us to God’s presence every waking moment. “Simply seek to discover as many ways as possible to keep God constantly in mind,” he writes. ‘What’s so new about that?’ you may be thinking, ‘that practice is very ancient and very orthodox.’ Foster‘s response: “Exactly! This desire to practice the presence of God is the secret of all the saints.”
What kind of year will it be? Well I can predict with a fair degree of confidence that it will be a year that will bring unforeseen problems and challenges as well as those we can anticipate because of our current situations. It will be a year in which we make thousands and thousands of daily choices and decisions the cumulative impact of which will shape our life to a significant degree. It will be a year in which God’s presence and help, if we seek them, will make a difference in our resilience and ability to cope. It will be a year in which we can choose to be a source of encouragement to others or a source of criticism.
I truly admire John Wesley the great English preacher of the 1700’s. He was considered for all his discipline a rather spiffy dresser. The story goes that one Sunday morning he wore a bow tie that had long ribbons that hung downward. After the sermon was over a lady walked up to him and said,
“Brother Wesley, are you open to some criticism?”
He said, “I guess so. What would you like to criticize?”
She said, “The ribbons on your tie are entirely too long and inappropriate for a man of God.” And she took out her scissors and cut them off!
A hush fell over the people standing there as Wesley calmly asked,
“Now may I borrow the scissors for a moment?” As she handed them to him, he said, “Ma’am, are you open to some criticism?”
She answered, “Well, I suppose I am.”
He said, “All right then, please stick out your tongue.”
What kind of year will it be? Will it be a year when we rely solely on our own strength and power or on the strength and power of God? Yesterday was the 122nd Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena, California. The floats use tens of thousands of flowers and cost anywhere from $75,000 to as much as $400,000 to make. One New Year’s Day, in the Tournament of Roses parade, a beautiful float suddenly sputtered and quit. It was out of gas. The whole parade was held up until someone could get a can of gas. The amusing thing was this float represented… the Standard Oil Company. With its vast oil resources, its float was out of gas. As Christians we do not want to neglect our spiritual maintenance in the coming year and find ourselves out of spiritual fuel.
What kind of year will it be? For us I hope it will be a year of faith, purity, and holiness. Jonathan Ryder, a young man who is a writer and attends BBC has written a poem, The Quick Fix with which I close.
The Quick Fix by Jonathan Ryder
We now live for
the quick fix.
Seedless watermelons,
roses without thorns,
religion without the church or charity,
love without the pain.
Casual encounters found
on craigslist.
It’s archaic to court
and foolish to buy without a test drive.
We live lives with less mystery.
Every bone identified and
every sickness in its place.
Personalities can be diced and deduced
into convenient little words.
Simple psychopathic serenity.
The common interest
weights heavier than the common good;
a decent profit can compensate
for collateral damage.
But we are more than this.
We can still hear the murmurs of the past
and the promises
of the future.
Friends still grow gardens
and strangers still search
for one another.
We are of the stars and sand,
more depthless than any
rational mind could explain.
Don’t let anyone
tell you different.
I pray you will fulfill the promise of the future that lies ahead this year and make it one to celebrate and be thankful for on December 31st.