SERMONS

I have good news. I learned it from a church sign near where I live. I live within three blocks of two churches. One of them has a sign that often carries invitations to join them for worship. The last two invitations have been provocative. When John and Caleb and I left for our trip to visit parents, the sign was somewhat foreboding. "Last Chance Sunday," it read. It was an invitation to the last service in 1997. I was relieved to see, when we returned from our trip, that today is being billed, "First Chance Sunday." That's good news. We do get another chance.

I've always liked new years. I am a little less excited about it than usual this year, but only because my year has been filled with so much that is new. Another new beginning feels a little scary. But I'm a liberal to the core. Any moment that might symbolize the chance for change and growth is irresistible. But I'm also getting older. So, it takes more to convince me something is new. Is this why they say we become more conservative with age? With age we find it harder to discern what is truly new. With age we discover the truth of how little things change. As Kaky McTigue writes, "So it is: everything is the same, bound into its history as we ourselves are bound." "Yet," she goes on, "also we stand at a threshold, the new year something truly new, still unformed, leaving a stunning power in our hands." I am a liberal to the core. This is a piece of what separates us from many who are more traditional. We believe in the truly new. We believe in the potential of that which is still unformed. We believe that within our own hands is stunning power.

Just over a week ago Caleb helped me see again this difficult paradox. It was Christmas morning, the day we were leaving to visit grandparents, and as you would expect there was a fair amount of chaos. It is still a little confusing (to all of us) that Caleb's birthday falls on Christmas. We want him to have his own celebration, but there's no denying a date of birth. So, Caleb hadn't been up long when John said, "Happy birthday, Caleb." He just smiled a little. Then I said, "Caleb, you're three years old." Well there couldn't have been more delight. This being three is a great thing. A little later he surprised us. "Mom, when I'm fourteen, will I still be Caleb?" I wasn't surprised he was thinking about being fourteen--he is fixated on teenagers and being a teenager. But what a great question. I told him "yes." And of course that's the right answer.

But I guess it is also the wrong answer. Another moment of enlightenment came to me after visiting my father. He has been through a great deal in the last six months but is recovering. When I was asked by a friend about his condition I answered with what I thought was a meaningful answer, "He'll never be the same." Right. You know what I meant, I'm sure, but that kind of statement with its obvious truth surprised me. And reminded me. It is a confusing truth about our lives. There is something about how we understand the world which leads us to believe we stay the same. And yet we also know that we are never the same. Ever.

The metaphysics we inherited from Plato (which was appropriated by Christianity) contributes to our confusion. Metaphysics is the science which seeks to explain what is. Classical, Platonic metaphysics sees the world in two arenas: the experience of change, time and real relations, which of course is the world we know and experience, and (secondly) the timeless, changeless, unrelated "Being." In Plato's words, the first is "the twilight of becoming and perishing," and the second is "the absolute and eternal and immutable." The first world, the inferior one, is not actually even real. The world we know, the experience of growth and change, birth and death, and relationships with one another, this experience finally has no significance. All that really matters is what IS. The unchanging essence of reality. The already-created. That our experience is only an illusion of reality is difficult to accept. We believe in our reality, or at least in the significance of our experience. We do not accept that what is temporal is of no value, even though we know it perishes. We believe that there is stunning power in our hands. That freedom has meaning. That our choices matter. We would side, I believe, with some of the more contemporary philosophers, like Alfred North Whitehead, who suggest that "being" is not the essence of reality--"becoming" is. Process philosophy rejects Plato's metaphysics. And thereby rejects a great deal of what many still take for granted about who we are. Alfred North Whitehead was an important mathematician in England working for some years with Bertrand Russell. In 1924 he moved to Cambridge at the age of sixty-three. There he began the most productive part of his career, turning his attention away from math and toward philosophy. Within two years he wrote Science and the Modern World and Religion in the Making. Later he wrote Process and Reality, which has had a significant impact on contemporary philosophy and perhaps even more so on contemporary theology. Process philosophy, as well as process theology, have turned classical Western thinking on its head. Process is reality. Becoming is what matters. What is, is an illusion.

Which brings us, inevitably, to God. From Aristotle many Christian thinkers imagined a God who is Being. A God who does not change, is not touched, is eternal. God with a one-way relationship. This is the ultimate reality which goes hand in hand with the classical metaphysics I've described. And it supports the idea that our own "twilight of becoming and perishing" is not of any ultimate importance. Just like the devaluing of our own experience doesn't work for most of us, this kind of theism falls short. As early as the sixteenth century there was some challenge to this kind of idea of God. And it came from a man who was a Unitarian. His name was Fausto Socinus and he went to Rakow, Poland where he had been invited to provide a liberal religious community with leadership. They had read his work, his writing about the unity of God, and about freedom and tolerance. He went there and continued to write, and to this day his writing about God is important in the work of process thinkers. He believed that God is not immutable, but rather God is affected by the choices we make. That our process of becoming affects what God is. That God changes. This was truly revolutionary for the sixteenth century (maybe even the twentieth). Think of the ways this kind of understanding of God affects our understanding of who we are. Free, yes. But even more than that. We are partners in creation. Some would call us co-creators. Co-creators with God. What is real is the process of becoming. Whitehead calls reality not substance but "actual occasion." We tend to think in terms of substance. Whitehead suggests that becoming is a series of "actual occasions." Am I the same person I was when I was fourteen? Perhaps not. I am, rather, a progression of different selves, constantly changing, constantly becoming. We create a new synthesis each moment by our choices and our experiences of the rest of what is becoming. But this does not deny our true experience of constancy. Of course I am the same person I was when I was fourteen. I share with that person the series of experiences which made her and so make me. Process theology does not force us to deny the paradoxical nature of our existence. And it also affirms the stunning power we hold in our hands. We are co-creators, at least with each other, if not with God. None of this is surprising. It resonates far better with our experience than the classical theism which still predominates in our culture.

But are you convinced that any of this matters? It is all very theoretical, abstract. What difference could this possibly make in our lives? Well, take the new year. Do you make resolutions? Or take any day. Do you acknowledge the stunning power that is yours to create your life and to create the world? Do you take the responsibility that comes with power seriously? Or is there a part of you (like there is in all of us) that, with Plato, rejects the importance of our immediate actions because, after all, they perish. Here is Whitehead's response to Plato's characterization of our lives as "the twilight of becoming and perishing": He writes that our craving is justified, "the insistent craving that zest for existence be refreshed by the ever-present, unfading importance of our immediate actions, which perish and yet live for evermore." What is truly new is everything, every moment. What is truly new is ourselves. This is a great truth that Liberalism offers. It is about freedom, about God or ultimate reality, about responsibility, about who we are.

This moment of marking the new year is somewhat arbitrary. You might make the case that nothing changes. Isn't there a risk that deeming everything truly new makes the notion of newness meaningless? I guess that is partly true. But I believe it is also true that each moment is meaningfully new. We hold a stunning power in our hands. The power to create. To choose, to become. So for us, let us take this moment of the New Year to recognize this great gift of freedom and power, and to use it well. Something Truly New.