Spirit of the Heartland

It's almost here: 2001 Okay .... so we're not visiting a Hilton Hotel in outer space, like the one the movie "2001, a Space Odyssey." And while my computer DOES speak to me sometimes, she never claims to be perfect, as the HAL 9000 computer did in the 1968 film.

We're beginning a new millennium, and tomorrow we begin another new year. At new year's it always seems as if things should be different. Perhaps not as magnificently different as in the movie 2001, or the Richard Strauss music that goes with it, or our Gospel reading .... but different somehow.

So, it's time for New Year's Resolutions. I wonder how many folks make them and keep them all year long? Some of us may have given up making them altogether, because they seem to go nowhere. Some of us keep making them over and over and keeping them for a little while before they kind of fizzle out. I dutifully make "spiritual" resolutions at our liturgical new year in Advent: I'm going to read all the lessons for the daily office every day.... I'm going to spend more time in silent reflection .... And by the first of the calendar year, they're forgotten, so sometimes I make some new ones for January 1, or I make the same forgotten ones over again.

A resolution begins to seem just so many words. We read, "In the beginning was the WORD ....." Not, "In the beginning was the resolution."

There's a big difference between the "Word of God" and my words. When God speaks, things happen. God's resolutions don't fizzle out; God's words are full of power.

Long before John began his gospel with, "In the beginning," Genesis began with "In the beginning God created..." And just HOW did God create? God SPOKE .... and things happened. There is no distinction or difference between God's word and God's action. God imagines something wonderful. Then God says, "Let there be light"; and there was light. God says the magic word, and it's a done deal. God practices what God preaches. God's New Year's Resolutions always happen....

Except for us. God made Godself a people -- that's us -- and God said, "I will be your God and you will be my people." And we didn't get it. We didn't listen to God's word. God gave us the freedom to mess up the plans a bit. And we did. We, like Adam and Eve, keep reaching for forbidden fruit. We, like the Jews handing over Jesus, keep hurting those who love us most.

God made a resolution to love us. God spoke a word of love, and God expected to be loved in return.

But we, having been given freedom, didn't hear the word. We just didn't get it. Maybe we didn't have the imagination to recognize something as intangible as love. An eleventh-century bishop of Canterbury, Anselm, defined God as "that than which nothing greater can be thought." God, who is love – God, who is the word – is beyond our wildest imagination.

We just didn't get it. So God tried again: God made God's word into something we could see and touch. "The word became flesh," and Jesus lived among us.

Jesus, God's word, is God's demonstration for the love we could not hear or imagine. God speaks a word of love, and Jesus happens. God imagined love in human form.

Imagination – Perhaps that's part of how we are made in the image of God...? Like God, we can imagine, and speak, ....and it just might happen.

That makes those new year's resolutions seem almost possible.

Whatever we can imagine might really be possible: We might imagine ourselves as good or happy or as traveling to Jupiter.

Of course imagination alone is not enough to make it happen. The pattern God follows involves word and action as well: Don't just think it. Say it and do it. And keep doing it ... practice it. That's what we hope for in our new year's resolutions, isn't it? That our habits will change. Yet we seem too often to want it to happen without practice, without discipline. We forget that ‘virtue' and ‘habit' go hand in hand.

My Aunt Weezie, a virtuous and somewhat eccentric character, used to say, "The older I get, the more like myself I get." It wasn't so much that age makes people more free to be themselves. It's that behavior repeated over a long life becomes stronger and more obvious with age. One who repeatedly practices generosity, may with age become extravagently generous. A sarcastic person may become bitter. For better or worse, practice makes perfect.

Perhaps this is how we build our own heaven or hell. And most of us are pretty good at constructing the latter. Yet, even those who resolutely practice goodness fall short sometimes. We are not computers to be neatly programmed. And we are not any more perfect than HAL, the 2001 computer that became a murderer.

There's often a big gap between what we say and what we do. We don't follow the program. Our imagination fails us. Our resolutions fall short. We don't get it. But God does not give up. God keeps her resolutions. The Word (without which nothing can come into being) comes to our rescue: We are told that "you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give."

God says the word, and things happen: we are renewed. We can begin again. Our actions may not live up to our imagination and our resolutions. But God's word always true. And God's love is new every morning.

So, go ahead and imagine, and make resolutions, and try to practice them. It's part of being human, part of being dreamers, part of having hope to be more than we are today.

Maybe we can't zip off to Jupiter like in the 2001 movie. But the imagination that made the movie did speak the truth: A truth about human imagination. And about the unspeakable awe of a truth that is greater than our imagination. The truth that in the beginning – and now, and always – is God. And that WE are God's children, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

(Pause. The following is read with "Also sprach Zarathustra" in the background.)

"In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through him,
and without him not one thing came into being.

What has come into being in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us,
and we have seen his glory,
the glory as of a father's only son,
full of grace and truth.