SERMONS

In 1582 October 4th was followed by October 15th. Well, in some parts of the world. Pope Gregory XIII sought to remedy the slightly-too-short Julian calendar year. By that time the loss of that many quarter days (as you know it actually takes the earth 365 and a quarter days to make it around the sun) so the loss of those six hours every year had made a difference and it needed to be fixed. And so in addition to eliminating ten days, the Pope ordered the establishment of the additional day in every year divisible by four. Many Protestant countries resisted the change. England didn't recognize the new calendar, thus not abolishing those ten days until 1752.

All of the history aside, it makes me wonder what it must have been like to be told that ten days would disappear. Did people stock up on supplies, just in case? Did they contact loved ones before the dreaded disappearance? Did they imagine the worst? Were there predictions of widespread chaos? How could they be sure things would ever be the same?

We wake most days with so much certainty. We take so much for granted. Tomorrow will be January 3rd. We will find things as we left them. Not much will have changed. And if some things do change, we are assured, they will be fixed soon enough. Frankly I found it a little refreshing to wonder. To be pursued (in a sense) by something so mysterious and seemingly uncontrollable as Y2K. To imagine what it would be like to be without power. To lose our power to control so much. I have the luxury, I realize, of averted (or only imagined) disaster-that makes my fantasy possible. Planes did land safely. Hospitals operated without any problem. I just can't help thinking that a little more insecurity might do us good. (scarcity and abundance-material and spiritual resources)

So now that y2k is behind us, people are focusing their attention on other sorts of prediction. Many, as you know, predict the worst. I loved an op-ed in the Tennessean last week by a local United Methodist minister. He acknowledges that doomsday predictions are made by people of faith based on their reading of sacred text. But he suggests that many are misreading biblical prophecy.

True prophecy emboldens God's people to dream of a world too good to be true rather than to accept one already too horrible to imagine. The gift of the prophets for the new millennium may just be the rebirth of idealism over the cowardly rhetoric of pragmatism voiced on the evening news by political and corporate empires.

Yes, the new millennium, aided by the prophetic imagination, may energize people of every faith toward a more lasting "peace on Earth." To opt for some cataclysmic, world-ending doomsday is not prophecy's fulfillment, but rather its abandonment.

Again, from Annie Dillard:

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead-as if innocence had ever been-and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and involved. But there is no one but us. There never has been.

Did you catch some of the idealism in the celebrations around the world? The only one I really saw was the celebration in Washington, D. C. I heard about the beauty and power of others. But in Washington they showed a great little film by Steven Spielberg and orchestrated by John Williams. It was called "Unfinished Journey." It included words of Abraham Lincoln and of several of our poet laureates. It's a combination that gets me every time-booming orchestra, resonant voices, poetic words. But Maya Angelou especially caught my attention. I was under the weather, and didn't manage to get to paper and pencil in time to record her words, but she started with a line something like this:

"We stand before a giant gate that opens on to all time." I'm not really sure what she said next. Here is what I would say next, inspired by the spirit of what she said. Behind us is much to bring pride. The accomplishments of many who served the causes of freedom and justice and peace. Now we stand together ready to cross this great threshold. Ready to mark the passage into the future. But we need not bring all that we carry with us. Greed, hatred, enmity, these we can choose to leave behind as we pass through.

Ah. It's a moment of opportunity. A moment holding within it the possibility of transformation. (I know, I know, just like every other moment in our lives.) But think of it. We have a choice here. We can decide to walk through this threshold unburdened.

I don't know what burdens you might need to leave behind. Anger, perhaps. Resentment. Regret. There are two burdens that I would offer for your consideration to go along with whatever burdens come to you. First is the burden of cynicism. I consider cynicism the opposite of faith. Cynicism is present in the doomsday predictions. And it is present in resignation. Deciding that our lives do not matter. That our commitment will make no difference. That we are not the ones and now is not the time. If we could unburden ourselves of all this cynicism we would move in the world with a great deal more power.

Second, we might unburden ourselves of the illusion that we are walking this journey alone. Perhaps we don't always go there. Sometimes we recognize companions. Sometimes we remember that we share this life. But too often our lives reflect a fundamental assumption that we are alone. We cannot face this gate, this threshold, this moment by ourselves. We need each other. Dillard says "There is no one but us." Not "there is no one but me."

Just think. If we can pass through this gate without the burden of resentment, of anger, of regret. If we can let go of cynicism, and our illusion of separateness. What peace we will find within ourselves. What love will move us toward justice. What power will enliven our every act.

In the silence, consider the burdens you are carrying. In the silence, commit yourself to releasing them. You may write as much as you'd like on the piece of paper you were given. When you are ready, bring it forward to be burned.