New Every
Year,
New Every Morning
by the Rev. Lee Woofenden
New Year
& Communion
Bridgewater, Massachusetts, January 10, 1999
Readings
Lamentations
3:22-26 New compassions every morning
Because
of the Lord's great love we are not consumed,
For his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
Great is his faithfulness.
I
say to myself, "The Lord is my portion;
Therefore I will wait for him."
The Lord is good to those who hope in him,
To those who seek him.
It
is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
Luke
22:7-20 The new covenant
Then
came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had
to be sacrificed. Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, "Go
and make preparations for us to eat the Passover."
"Where
do you want us to prepare for it?" they asked.
He
replied, "As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of
water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, and
say to the owner of the house, 'The Teacher asks: Where is the
guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?' He
will show you a large upper room, all furnished. Make
preparations there."
They
left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they
prepared the Passover.
When
the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And
he said to them, "I have eagerly desired to eat this
Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not
eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of
God."
After
taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, "Take this and
divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again of
the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes."
And
he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them,
saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in
remembrance of me."
In
the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying,
"This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured
out for you."
Arcana
Coelestia #8426.2 Evening and morning
In
the next life we go through cycles that are like the times of
day in this world: morning, noon, evening, and night, and then
morning again. Everyone in the spiritual world goes through
changes in their state of mind. This makes it possible for them
to be continually perfected.
Without
changes of state--meaning variations continually flowing one
after another--we cannot be perfected. Like the times of day and
the seasons of the year, the stages that follow one after
another in order are never exactly the same when they come
around again; rather, they are varied.
The
first stage corresponds to earth's morning, and is often
symbolized by morning in the Bible. The last stage corresponds
to evening, and it is often called "evening" in the
Bible. It is morning when we are in a stage of love, and noon
when we are in a stage of light or truth. But it is evening when
we are in a stage of obscurity about truth and when we have
cooled off toward goodness, since in this stage we are governed
by the pleasures of our material loves.
Sermon
Because
of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his
compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is his
faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22, 23)
We
are already a week and a half into 1999, but since church was
canceled last week due to an ice storm that never materialized,
this is the first chance I have to say: Happy New Year!
It
is a tradition in this church to celebrate the Sacrament of
Communion on the first Sunday of the year. We do celebrate
Communion on Palm Sunday, which is appropriate since that is the
time it was originally instituted: just before the Lord's
crucifixion and resurrection. But our reading from the Gospel of
Luke gives us a hint that the beginning of a new year is also an
appropriate time to celebrate communion. When Jesus shared the
cup with his disciples, he said "this cup is the new
covenant in my blood." Although we call that first
communion meal the Last Supper, it was also the start of
the new covenant--a covenant that began a new church: the
Christian Church. And so, here in our Gospel story, we have the
old giving way to the new, just as the old year is now giving
way to the new.
This
reminds us that in spiritual things, as in nature, there are
cycles of old and new, cycles of summer and winter, cycles of
day and night. As Swedenborg tells us, God created the world
that way because we humans need cycles in order to grow
spiritually. We need our spiritual times of warming up and
cooling off, of seeing clearly and of groping around in the
dark. And even though it sometimes seems as if we are going
around in circles, if we are growing spiritually, each new year
and each new day brings us a little farther along our path
toward heavenly community.
I've
been going through an experience in the last few days and weeks
that illustrates for me the renewal of old giving way to new. A
few months ago, I came to the conclusion that my eight-year-old
computer simply couldn't keep up anymore. I had souped it up
about as much as possible, but it was coming to the end of the
upgrade road. There was no getting around it: this old computer
was slowing down my work. So I ordered a new one, which arrived
about a month and half ago. At first I had a few problems
getting the new computer set up the way I wanted it, but for the
most part it went fairly smoothly.
However,
getting the old computer set up for the rest of the family to
use was a different story. There was eight years worth
accumulated treasures and trash on the computer's hard drives,
and I decided it would be best to make a clean start. So after
copying all the files on the old computer to the new one, I
erased everything on the old computer and started over from
scratch.
And
then the problems began. I won't bore you with the
details--there's nothing worse than being a captive audience
obliged to listen to a lot of computer talk! Let's just say that
the moment I started setting things up again on the old
computer, Murphy's Law went into overdrive. I don't know how
many times I opened up the computer case to fix something, or
how many times I reinstalled the same program I had already
installed before. Like the cycles of day and night, summer and
winter, it seemed as if I kept doing things over and over again.
There were several times when I could have very happily picked
up the whole computer and thrown it bodily into the trash can!
But
you know, each time I installed something yet again, I got a
little bit better at it. As I went along I learned new things,
and re-learned things I had once known but had forgotten. As a
result, the computer's setup was getting better and better each
time. I still have a lot of work to do on that computer; it is a
work in progress. But I'm getting there.
Each
one of us is a work in progress, too. Sometimes, when we have
headed down the wrong path, or have simply gone as far as a
particular path in life is going to take us, we need to wipe the
slate clean and start over again. And when we face our times of
ending the old and starting over again with a new, it is nice to
know that there is someone with us as we make these new
beginnings--someone far wiser in the ways of human beings than I
am in the ways of computers. There is someone we can turn to who
will help us avoid so many of the mistakes we might otherwise
make. We read in Lamentations:
Because
of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his
compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is his
faithfulness.
When
I had a problem that I simply couldn't figure out while I was
reinstalling the computer, I called technical support. When we
have problems making are new spiritual beginnings, we
have an even better technical support line: we have a direct
line to the Lord through the Bible and through prayer. With
technical support, the line might be busy, or we may have to
wait and wait on hold, or we may have a problem after hours when
tech support isn't open. But as our text tells us, the Lord's
compassions never fail. The Lord will carry us right
through the night if we need it, and then, even though we may
be exhausted, the Lord's compassions will be new each morning.
And so we continue in Lamentations:
I
say to myself, "The Lord is my portion; therefore I will
wait for him." The Lord is good to those who hope in him,
to those who seek him.
We
all have our times of emotional winter, our periods of spiritual
midnight. When we are in the middle of those times we may
sometimes feel ready to give up and give in. But one of the nice
things about the cycles of life is that after we have gone
through them time and time again, we begin to have faith that
the morning will come, that our winter of struggle and
hardship will give way to the spring of new hope and new
life.
At
the same time, our emotional winters are tempered by the memory
of past springs, and our experience of the Lord's presence with
us in times past gives us new hope in the present. We are able
to call on the Lord with a certain confidence that he will help
us through this passage as well. We know that the Lord is good
to those who seek him. And so we can echo the words of
Lamentations:
It
is good to wait quietly for the salvation of Lord.
In
all of our winters and summers, all of our nights in days, all
of our endings and new beginnings, we have the consolation, the
hope, and the joy of knowing that we are gaining something truly
new. In each of our cycles, both the small and large, we learn a
little, we grow a little, we gain a little more understanding of
one another, we become more able to love one another. And
through it all, as our days and our seasons come and go, we are
setting aside those old and worn out parts of ourselves, and
with the Lord's help, we are becoming a new person.
This
is what the new year and the new covenant of communion are all
about: renewing our spirits and our lives in the image of the
Lord's love, wisdom, and kindness. Amen.
|
