The Rev. Joseph Farnes
Christmas 2A
All Saints, Boise
In a new year, we generally focus our attention on what we hope will change in the next twelve months. We make the resolutions about what we will change, and we give it a good try even though we know the success rate of New Year’s resolutions is rather low.
Yet in the midst of wanting to change we also need to take a loving yet firm look at the current situation. Why is it that we do the things we do right now? Why is it that we have certain habits, and what are those habits doing for us? When I work with people with substance use disorders in counseling, I ask them to look at what alcohol or drugs is doing for them – not in a judgmental sense, but in a gentle and firm way. Yes, we can list off the consequences of substance use: how it impacts relationships and work, how it impacts physical health, the financial and legal consequences. But we also have to ask what are we trying to deal with – does the alcohol help suppress trauma memories, does the amphetamine soothe undiagnosed ADHD, does a reliance on cannabis tamp down unmanageable anxiety?
When we ask those questions, we start looking at what we need to also treat. When someone is working through alcohol use and has a history of childhood trauma, if we take away the alcohol without caring for the trauma, that suppressed trauma comes right up to the surface in different ways. We must help with healing the whole person, rather than treating symptoms.
This same insight has helped move how we help our siblings who are experiencing homelessness. In years past, it was always “give up the drugs and treat the mental illness, then we’ll house you.” But how do we help someone build the stability that makes new habits away from drugs possible if we won’t give them a safe place to stay? We want them to build more helpful habits that promote their healing and well-being – but if you’re on the streets, how can you build those habits without stability? So we need to get people to stability and housing before those changes have a chance of lasting.
Once we have a larger picture, we can figure out better ways to make change happen and make that change last. We can address the patterns that lead to those habits we want to change. We can put all our energy into trying to make a new habit by sheer force of will, but more often than not that leads to disappointment as we slowly reset back to the way things used to be. We go back to the familiar. It’s cognitively comforting.
It’s not just individuals who exhibit this same behavior. Institutions and groups do the same thing. Old habits tend to keep rolling along. “We’ve always done it that way” is not just a way of thinking, it’s a way of doing. It’s a way of being. It can be part of our identity, even.
And even if that way of doing, thinking, and being isn’t suiting us well, we might still cling to it. It’s familiar. It’s spiritually comforting. In a world that seems like it’s flying apart at the seams, repetition and familiarity can be a blessing.
At the same time, however, we should know what we are choosing and why we choose it. Are we choosing it because we’re afraid of the alternative? Are we afraid that we’ll lose that touch-stone that has given us a lot of meaning over the years? Are we scared of the new chapter we might create because it won’t be the same comfort in a messed-up world as the chapters already written? How will we address those needs, those questions, if we are to build new habits that help us grow as Christians and as a community?
I get it – the world is a messed-up place indeed. I’ve stopped writing my sermons earlier in the week and now entrust them to the Holy Spirit and to Saturday so I can at least take in what news headline will be erupting on the weekend, such as the US arresting a foreign head of state and trying them in a US court on US charges. All the preparation I do earlier in the week to chew on the next Sunday’s Bible readings is always tentative because the facts on the ground may change, and the proclamation of the Gospel may need a different set of words to preach the same truth in Christ.
And, if you’re wondering about the tie to the Gospel reading itself today, let me ask this: who held King Herod accountable for his murderous rage? Who holds the rich and powerful accountable today? Who holds the law accountable for holding people accountable? Do we wash our hands and hope someone else does it, or that judges will do it, or a tradition we call “precedent”? Or is it our duty to hold ourselves and others accountable? Or do we wait for God to do it – and we can ignore it in the meantime?
The world is a messed-up place. It truly is. And yet, it always has been. Always. Our frame of reference might shift – we might read the news more, or have more time to chew on the “big picture” stuff because we’re not working full-time and raising kids. We might feel the pressures of economic decisions more sharply because the margin for error has gotten thinner and thinner as productivity increases while wages are depressed.
So it makes sense that we might want to hold to the familiar more tightly in these times, like we’re waiting out a storm.
But the Gospel invites us to courage and hope.
The Gospel invites us to draw closer to God and be changed, to draw closer to one another and be changed, to draw closer to the world and be part of the change the world so desperately needs. When we draw deeper into God, when we grow more loving for one another and when we let ourselves be loved, we find healing, we find courage, we find hope, and with those we have more than enough to share.
Back in the pledge campaign you might recall the letter from me and Al your Senior Warden about how essential church community is in this messed-up world. It is. It’s in communities like ours that we practice the Gospel call of love: to care for one another, to let others show care for us, to help one another and to help our church community in its work together. It changes us over time. We learn how to love and be loved, we learn how to draw near to God more deeply than a surface-level religion. We learn how to grieve and mourn, we learn how to pray, we learn how to sing out our praise.
We learn how a constant conversion to Jesus Christ is not sad repentance but a joyful return. We find in Jesus a deeper, greater life, and we rejoice and sing and share. Each time we do that, we are changed. To love and to be loved changes us.
If I were the same person I was when I first became Episcopalian, I would be infinitely poorer for it. If I were the same person I was when I first went to seminary, I would be infinitely poorer for it. If I were the same person I was when you called me to All Saints almost seven years ago, I would be infinitely poorer for it. Each season of life has brought new things to the surface – things that I did not see in myself, or things I did not want to see in myself. There has been change. Along the way, I have found healing, courage, and hope infused into my life from God, and also from you all.
As we gear up in the next few weeks for Annual Meeting, I want you to start praying and contemplating what we as a community of faith here in Boise are called to do. What is it that God puts at the center of our life, at the center of our mission and ministry here? What are we called to do together for the Kingdom of God, what are we called to do for our neighbors? What are we called to do with our hands and our hearts? What is it that makes us All Saints in this moment, and what is it that we carry forward into this year ahead? What might stay the same, and what might change?
No matter what goes on around us, inside us, in the world – we are always rooted in God. Whether it is windy or calm, sunny or stormy, whether we are a simple stalk of wheat or a deeply rooted pine, we are rooted in God. Whether we are a sprout or fully grown, we are rooted in God. We grow, we change – we grow together, and we change together.
A blessed New Year to you, friends, and a Merry 11th day of Christmas, too. Amen.