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Sermon for the First Sunday after Epiphany – January 13, 2008
It’s been just about two weeks now since the year 2008 was welcomed with revelry, ribaldry and rejoicing. Or so I imagine. I think I managed to stay up all the way to 11:30 on New Year’s Eve, not even stirring when the annual illegal fireworks display went off at midnight in the park next door. Never much of a partyer to begin with, I am rapidly becoming one of those people for whom the 31st of December is just another night and I bounce out of bed on the 1st, ready to take down the Christmas tree and return my house to some semblance of normalcy.
Still, people must have celebrated somewhere; I saw it on TV. And, though I cannot personally vouch for it, at the stroke of midnight, I’m sure a certain tune rang out as everyone began to sing an ancient air revised in the 18thcentury by Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet and, says the Encyclopedia Britannica, “without doubt the greatest songwriter Great Britain has produced.” Of his hundreds of songs, this one is best known: “Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and days o’ auld lang syne. And for auld lang syne, my jo, for auld lang syne, we’ll take a cup o’kindness yet, for auld lang syne.” Everyone sings it, usually fairly heartily, being by then well under the influence of what are believed to be voice enhancing beverages.
Everyone sings it – some folks even get misty eyedwhile doing so; credit the above mentioned beverages for that as well. Everyone sings it; everyone loves it; few havethe foggiest idea what it means. Indeed, few have the foggiest idea what the words are once they get past the opening verse and the chorus. That’s when the humming begins. Here’s the third verse in the original Scottish lowland dialect version: “We twa hae run about the braes and pu’d the gowans find; but we’ve wander’d mony a weary foot sin auld lang syne.”
Now, if that doesn’t make you tear up, I don’t know what will. Perhaps this will. The English translation reads: “We two have run about the hillsides and pulled the wild daises find; but we have wandered many a weary foot since old long past.”
That’s what “auld lang syne” means – “old long past.” More fitting for an end than a beginning, the song is a sentimental summons to sip a few pints and remember the good times you used to enjoy in the halcyon days before time and geography got in the way. But New Year’s is more than looking back; we look ahead to a fresh start as well. Why else are health clubs and Weight Watcher’s meetings so crowded in January, only to thin out again in March?
Indeed, the first month of the year in our calendar is named for the Roman god Janus, typically depicted as having two heads, one looking backwards, the other forward. According to historians, the worship of Janus actually predates the founding of Rome - the god representing the spirit of doorways and archways. In Rome there were many “jani,” ceremonial gateways used for symbolically important entrances or exits. Particular importance was attached to the departure of the army, for which there were lucky and unlucky ways to march through a “janus.”
Some scholars’ think that Janus was originally the god of all beginnings and his association with doorways only camelater. This makes sense. The beginning of the day, month and year were sacred to him. So sacred that, in 46 B.C., Julius Caesar decreed that from then on in the Roman Empire the New Year would be celebrated on January 1st, beginning of what is known as the “Julian Calendar,” bringing the dates back in step with the seasons. Before that, the Roman New Year began on March 1st, and the year had only 10 months, causing all sorts of confusion, some still in evidence today as our tenth month is called October, “Octo,” meaning, of course, eight.
Everything went smoothly thanks to Julius’ reforms. Everyone had a fine time welcoming the First of January. Too fine, the Church – and there was only one Church back then - thought. Over time, the rowdy celebrations ringing in the New Year were considered too pagan and in 567, the Council of Tours abolished January 1st as the beginning of the new calendar. Talk about confusion: depending on where and when you lived in Europe, the New Year was celebrated on Christmas, Easter, or the feast of the Annunciation, March 25.
It wasn’t until 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII revised the calendar once again, restoring January 1stas New Year’s Day. While Catholic countries immediately accepted the change to the Gregorian calendar, Protestant nations were slower to jump on board. The British Empire, for example, which included the American colonies, did not adopt the reformed calendar until 1752. Until then, “Happy New Year” was not heard until March.
Still, in our world today there is no uniformity in dating this arbitrary transition. Other cultures and other religions that follow a lunar calendar continue to observe the beginning of the year on days other than January 1st. Jewish New Year can fall any time between September 6 and October 5. The Islamic New Year was actually last Friday. And the Chinese will ring in the year of the Rat – 4706 – on February 7.
If you want to celebrate in Thailand you have plenty of time to make your reservations. The festivities there begin on April 13 and, according to the official government tourist board, “For about five days the whole (country) explodes into a frenzied water fight, with everyone from toddlers to overgrown kids joining in the fun.” Stepping from your hotel onto a public street, they say, “As likely as not you’ll be hit by a stream of water from a high-powered squirt gun, or a bucket of water thrown from a passing pickup truck will drench you from head to foot in an instant.” Apparently the origin of this practice predates the founding of the country, to the time over 2500 years ago when the ancient Tai people moved down from China and developed a rite of purification.
While admitting that, initially, this is not what most people have in mind as a way of saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new, the tourist board says that once you realize that this is a free for all “and you too can dump and spray water on anyone you choose, giving your inner child the free rein it never gets back home, impish notions begin to hatch.”
“Impish,” mischievous, playful; the word originally referred to a plant’s shoot making its first appearance in the ground, one that requires watering by the way. Impish, like a child, used by the ancient Greeks to symbolize the New Year; often depicted as standing beside a grey headed man who represented the days of “old long past.” Through the gate of time they go, facing different directions. The older one, perhaps, ready to relax, sing sentimental songs, and become dewy eyed over what was and what could have been. For me, that has little appeal. As Garrison Keill or pointed out recently, the cure for nostalgia is reading history.
As much as I enjoy reading history, I still prefer looking in the other direction, alongside the one who, with childlike trust, enthusiasm and impishness is eager to face what comes; fresh out of the water – clean, pure; washing off the old, ready to try again. That’s the way to begin a new year - just another day that can occur at any time in the year.
While the Christian calendar officially began on the first Sunday of Advent, with the Gospel warning us to prepare for the unexpected return of Jesus as the Son of Man, ready to render judgment on those whose cup of kindness was a bit shallow, today seems a more fitting way to start things off. Indeed, the Gospel for the First Sunday after the Epiphany is always an account of Jesus as the newly baptized one, ready to walk the fresh path of righteousness in a tired, impure world, ready to try again to encourage us to walk with him.
As in some cultures, the belief that what a person does on the first day of the year is a sign of what he or she will do for the remainder of the year, for us, as Christians, entering 2008, affirming our baptism along with our Lord’s is an ideal way to begin – not just a new date or a new month, but a new existence.
Every year – no, every day – we are given a chance to consign the old to memory and live as we were meant to. It’s never too late, although that doesn’t give us license to carry on as if our entire existence were one long New Year’s Eve party.
A priest was conversing with an elderly church member about a relative of hers who, after a life time of excessive living, had joined the congregation and become quite the straight arrow.“Will my converted cousin’s sins be forgiven, Father?” she asked. “Oh, certainly,” the priest assured her. “Remember, the greater the sins, the greater the saint.” The woman thought for a moment and said, “Oh, Father, I wish I’d known all this fifty years ago!”
“Do you not know,” St. Paul asked the Romans, “that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
Echoing symbols and stories that had been swirling around the near and far East for centuries, Paul took the baptism of Jesus and saw in it images of ritual death and resurrection, new birth. In fact, the earliest Christian theologians ran with this theme. One described the baptism as a descent by the heroic Christ into the abyss of death where he did battle with a sea monster, only to emerge victoriously from the waters, a new man.
It’s all about what is past and what is to come. In ancient times New Year’s Day’s celebrations – wherever and whenever they occurred – were a time of beginnings, just as they are today; a time, in fact, in some cultures, when the re-creation of the entire cosmos was symbolically represented. As the participants relived the original creation, they felt their own lives re-born.
As do we; as do we. We too are born of water and the spirit; the same waters breathed on by God at the dawn of creation bringing order out of chaos; the same waters parted by God at the Exodus, bringing freedom to Israel; the same waters from which Jesus arose, seeing the heavens opened, bringing the Spirit of God descending on him like a dove, hearing the voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved.” Because of his willingness to go to any lengths – and any depths - on our behalf, that same spirit rests on us as well; that same voice speaks to us; that same water washes us.
Those who manage to stay on their feet for the fourth verse of Robert Burns’ song on New Year’s Eve sing this, in the English translation: “We two have paddled in the stream, from morning sun till noon; but seas between us broad have roared since old long past.” Now we can stop paddling and climb out of the water, God has narrowed the sea; God has banished the distance between us and him, between us and each other. His Beloved Son, the shoot of Jesse’s tree, has invited us to share in his baptismal righteousness as later we will share in his cup of kindness, for all that is long past and all that is yet to be.