The Spiritual Life

January 2000

A New Year, A New Life, A New Heart

By Rev. Michael Lee Burgess

"In one of his sermons John Wesley asked, "Does your heart glow with gratitude for the Giver of every good and perfect gift?" Our Creator is Giver. Every morning all of us receive an amazing gift. It is an ancient and daily miracle. With the rising sun, God says to each of us, "Good morning, my child." At days end - whether we have sailed through calm waters or slogged through quicksand - God speaks again with the setting sun, "I love you, my child." And we respond…." (from Marilyn Brown Oden, Manger and Mystery, quoted in Alive Now, Nov/Dec 1999)

I have been thinking of the New Year, of all the wonders we have accomplished in the last 100 years and the attitude that makes for a life that sounds a clear note in history or is lost in the static. I think the difference is a life lived in "joy" or "fear". I am not talking about the skidding on ice fear or the joy on your wedding day. I mean the day to day pattern of life that makes up the years of our "lived in" story.

Our pianist Kathy told me about a friend of hers, who bought a gun, "I've got to protect myself from the looters when Y2K hits". She shook her head and I just stared. When did we become a people afraid of each other? We live in Nebraska. When we lost our electricity for weeks during the ice storm two years ago, the world didn't fall apart, we helped each other get through it. What kind of people did he think we are? Are we in this together? Are we neighbors helping each other get by or bullies preying on the weak? But to be fair, I remember a week before the New Year I thought about taking my pension funds out of the stock market, then decided that acting in fear was more dangerous than being too trusting so I did nothing. I never even got around to getting extra cash or bottled water. Instead I thought about my new life, the second half of my life in the 21st Century. Am I following the joy, or am I living in fear?

I was working like crazy trying to get a New Years worship service together and get it "just right". My friend Jason stopped by early to see if he could help (and he sure could). But around 6:00 p.m. he wanted to listen to the radio for the Omaha New Year's speeches and the 2000 member choir singing to welcome in the New Year. Afterwards the city going to set off Fire Works and he wasn't too excited about that. But when we started to hear the thumps go off in the distance, I just had to leave the office and drag him off to see the fireworks on the television at home. We walked home and I remembered my delight when I was young at the magical surprise of light in beautiful colors. I feel like I have been losing my ability to take delight and wonder in the world around me lately. I also wondered if this was really worth doing during my preparation time for worship. We got to the TV in time to see the last two minutes of fireworks and hear the end of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. It was glorious, and glorious was the best preparation I could have done for a New Years Worship time, for it reminded me of wonder and joy, where I first found the God that I come in love to worship.

At midnight I stepped outside to see ordinary people all over town turn the sky to wonder. Some crazy person even took a revolver and fired off 6 rounds as a noise-maker. I wasn't scared, I just jump anytime a gun goes off around me and that's hurts on my neck. But I had that tolerant feeling of knowing somebody doing a dumb thing doesn't mean any harm, so just smile at his enthusiasm.

Your see, the joy doesn't depend on everything being "just right" in the world around you. Which is good, because everything is never going to be "just right". Something will always be a little out of tune, let me show you what I mean, joy in the midst of trouble.

"Tragedy marked the day preceding Christmas in a Honduran refugee camp filled with Salvadorans who had tried to flee the violence engulfing their country. National guard members had tracked down a young catechist, bound him by his thumbs, and taken him away. When he tried to escape, they mowed him down with machine-gun fire. Later his pregnant wife and five children gathered around his coffin as a single candle burned in the darkness . . .

Despite such sorrow, when Christmas Eve came, the camp burst into joyful preparation. Women bakes sweet cinnamon bread in an adobe oven, while men butchered hogs for making a special pork tamales. The children made figurines out of clay from the riverbed for the nativity scene, adding local touches to the usual characters: pigs, an armadillo, and baby Jesus sleeping in a hammock. They painted beans and kernels of corn in bright colors and strung them into garlands. They made ornaments from small medicine boxes and shaped figures from the tin foil that wraps margarine sticks and hung these on a tree branch.

The children dressed as shepherds and passed from tent to tent, recounting the journey of Maria and Jose in search of shelter. "This Christmas we will celebrate as they did," said one mother, "looking for a place where our children can be born."

A refugee woman asked a U.S. church worker in the camp why she always looked so sad and burdened. The worker said she grieved about the suffering she saw around her and limited amount of time she could give to help the refugees.

The woman gently confronted her: "Only people who expect to go back to the United States in a year work the way you do. You cannot be serious about our struggle unless you play and celebrate and do those things that make it possible to give a lifetime to it."

She reminded the worker that every time the refugees were displaced and had to build a new camp, they immediately formed three committees: a construction committee, an education committee, and the comite de alegria - "the committee of joy." Celebration was as basic to the life of the refugees as digging latrines and teaching their children to read . . .

Just as people with the least are often the most grateful and generous, I have found that people who suffer most are often the most joyful - another irony of faithfulness. Their joy is something wholly other than the sort of shallow happiness that the world offers. It comes not from trying to avoid pain by accruing comforts but rather from moving deeply into the world's pain and finding reasons to rejoice in the midst of embracing what is difficult . . .

Living as we do in a world that suffers so much, two opposing possibilities can easily tempt us: either to turn our backs and live oblivious to the pain or to allow the pain to overwhelm us and despair to take up residence in our hearts. The truly faithful option is to face the pain and live joyfully in the midst of it. Those who suffer most remind us of how tragic and arrogant it would be for us to lose hope on behalf of people who have not lost theirs. They are teachers of joy." (Joyce Hollyday, Then Shall Your Light Rise, quoted in Alive Now, Nov/Dec 1999)

Joy happens in life when for a moment you let go and feel/see the wonder around you. There is good, even in the darkest times. I don't have to be happy to find joy. I want it that way, but God is present, and the morning comes even when times are hard. But if I want Joy in my life, I need to look for it, work at being present to it. I must ask myself, "In my New Year, in my New Life, am I following the joy"? If I want to have a New Heart, then I must. Come let us look for "joy" together, in this New Year.

Your brother-in-Christ, Reverend Michael Lee Burgess

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