Time to Tell a New Story
As I begin preaching I invite you to imagine meme after meme scrolling across 21st-century, high-tech, integrated video screens here in the sanctuary:
*Black text from Lutheran pastor, memoirist and public theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber on rainbow colored background: Yearly reminder: there is no resolution that, if kept, will make you more worthy of love. You, as your actual self not as some made up ideal, is already worthy.
*White text on black background from novelist Jonathan Edward Durham: Sorry but January is not the month for resolutions. We're all sick, exhausted, cold, broke, depressed, back at work, and in no mood to commit to anything. January *is* the month for outrageous Victorian self-care rituals, because who needs a new gym membership when you can just take a good long turn about the parlor to ease your agonies.
*A ladybug in a stocking hat cuddling with a bird on a snow branch against a white background with black text: Just a little reminder that you don’t have to make resolutions. Or huge decisions. Or big proclamations. You can just set some sweet intentions and take each day as it comes.
*White text on black background: The best new year’s resolution I ever made was to start devouring my nicest things, and save no small pleasure for an unspecified future. Now I burn the good candles, wear the expensive perfume at home, scribble imperfectly in pretty notebooks. You can’t pin joy like a moth.
*Bold white text against the rainbow progressive Pride flag overlaid with flowers: You are loved.
*Bold white text against large colorful flowers: You are deserving of rest.
They’d be on a loop and just keep scrolling by:
*You, as you actual self…, [are] already worthy.
*January is not the month for resolutions.
*Take each day as it comes.
*You can’t pin joy as a moth.
*You are loved.
*You are deserving of rest.
Scrolling by, without interpretation from me. Just there in the periphery of your attention. Eliciting a sigh of relief. Or a scowl of annoyance. Comforting or unsettling you.
*You are worthy.
*You are loved.
*You are deserving of rest.
Christmas is over–or almost over; today is the 12th day of Christmas–but the tales of the season linger in my mind. Scrooge promising to “honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the years.” The Grinch's heart growing three sizes that day. The bitter, grieving father in a nearly forgotten After School Special bringing a tree at long last into The House Without a Christmas Tree. The sophisticated illusionless mother and her mature-beyond-her-years daughter coming to believe that the department store Santa Claus really is Kris Kringle. The Winter Warlock's icy heart melting when he's given a toy train.
One of the recurring themes of Yuletide stories is the magic the season has to soften even the hardest hearts. We surely must love the tale, for we write it and read it. Tell it and watch it, year after year, with only minor changes in character and setting.
Over and over again, the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, or the rejoicing voices of the Who's down in Whoville, or the generosity and luminous goodness of strangers, offer us the promise of joyful hearts, and lives transformed by love – for ourselves, or those bah-humbugging around us. But despite our deep desire, we don't have much faith, it seems, in the power of Christmas magic to change lives in meaningful, lasting ways, so we follow Christmas almost immediately with New Year's, a holiday given over to willfully changing our lives through grit, determination, hard work and sacrifice.
*January is no time for resolutions
*Set some soft intentions
*Save no small pleasure
If Christmas stories are about the miraculous capacity of human hearts to soften, expand, heal, the stories we begin to tell almost before the sun has set on December 25 are stories about the need to transform human bodies and minds without benefit or miracle or magic or love. Corresponding roughly with the 2nd through 12th days of Christmas–December 26 through January 5–and slightly beyond before it peters out at varying dates in different years, we exist in what I’m naming the Season of Resolutions. And the stories of this season are harsh:
Our bodies aren’t fit enough, small enough, buff enough, pure enough.
Our habits are too slovenly, lazy, greedy, and wasteful.
Our pursuits are too boring, self-centered, routine.
Our minds are withering from lack of rigorous study and conversation and surfeit of screen activities.
We are too small, in mind or body, to build great big snowmen or do other wonderful, powerful things.
Having identified and enumerated all our particular failures, flaws and shortcomings, the stories of the Season of Resolutions continue on identifying and enumerating solutions. Demanding, unforgiving, rigid solutions: diet plans and exercise routines, word-a-day vocabulary building calendars, a page-a-day journaling prompts, six weeks to a tidier home clutter purging schedules, chapter-a-week study guides to classic novels or books of social activism, and on and on.
I said just now that stories of this season list our faults first and then the ways to address or eliminate the faults, but that’s not quite right. Actually the memes and the listicles skip right to the plans of action, simply assuming the faults–they wouldn’t sell much of whatever they’re selling if they came right out and told us in so many words you’re too fat, too greedy, too lazy, too ill-informed. No. In telling us what we should do as the new year unfolds and how we should we do it–on schedule, like it or not–the creators of these of the memes and the listicle, as writers of old fashioned paper magazine articles of yore, depend on us to fill in the backstory ourselves: if we’re supposed to diet/exercise/read/purge/write our way to a better self and brighter future, then, we learn to tell ourselves, we must not be good enough as we are in this very moment, as we have been up to this point. We’ve learned to tell that story about ourselves really well over the years. The resolution-making industry wouldn’t be as strong as it is if we hadn’t.
I’m not generous enough with my time or money. I’m not strong enough. I’m not a good enough housekeeper. I’m not green enough. I’m not a good enough social justice warrior – wow! Talk about harsh and unforgiving. We don’t expect ourselves to act for justice. We expect ourselves to be warriors. But even if we don’t use words like “warrior” when we talk about the other ways we don’t measure up, the message is clear. There is enough, over here. And there is us, over here. And they are far, far, far apart, one from the other.
And let’s consider the word ‘enough’ for a moment. In the story of the Season of Resolutions, justice warrioring aside, we don’t set our sights on ‘perfection’ or ‘optimal’ or ‘excellence’. We set our sights on ‘enough’ and even at that we tell ourselves we fall short. What kind of story is that for us to tell about ourselves, year after year, January after January?
2025 is time for us to tell a new story about ourselves. A story in which we are more than enough, right at this very moment.
*You, as your actual self…, [are] already worthy.
*Take each day as it comes.
*You are loved.
You are deserving of rest.
I know those memes we’re imagining scrolling across our imaginary screens would elicit some sighs of relief and some defensiveness and irritation because when I told a few people what I’d be preaching about this morning, those are the reactions I got. Some people are relieved by the prospect of opting out of the traditional not-enough story of the Season of Resolutions. And some people are almost panicked by it.
But the world needs to be saved! But I’ve been eating too much/unhealthfully since Thanksgiving! But my body doesn’t feel good the way it is! But my spending is out of control! But the world needs to be saved and so do I! This is the time and resolutions are the way.
That all may be true, except for that last sentence.
Yes, we need strong, healthy bodies to live our best lives. Yes, we need resilient, robust interconnected communities of creative, engaged, flexible, vibrant persons for the facing of 2025. And the surest, most sustainable way to achieve both is by turning away from the old story of the Season of Resolutions, and toward a new story. A story that says we are worthy, we are loved, we are deserving of rest.
When we know we are worthy, know we are loved–know it to our bones and without hesitation or doubt– what great and powerful waves of generative energy are released, unfettered by fears of inadequacy, undistracted by profit-driven illusions of perfection that exists anywhere other than in us as we are! All that energy available to heal and strengthen bodies, as and when they tell us they need strengthening and healing, not according to the artificial schedules of the Season of Resolution. All that energy available for study and discussion, coalition building and advocacy, peacemaking and justice creation–according to the needs of local community and informed by the wisdom of those most affected by the absence of peace and justice. And, furthermore, when we know–to our bones and without hesitation–that we are deserving of rest, then we are less likely to become exhausted or ill or overwhelmed. And when we’re not exhausted or ill or overwhelmed, the energy keeps flowing, keeps healing and repairing communities and the world.
I understand that this may feel dangerous or irresponsible, with so much at stake. We are embodied beings whose individual survival does depend on proper nutrition and physical activity, and a mixed regime of solitary pursuits and the companionship of other beings. Our communities and planet home are almost always poised between the brink of annihilation and a renaissance of repair and new beginnings–and the scale is in our hands. Still, we’ve been listening to the traditional not-enough story of the Season of Resolutions for a long time now, trying to will and diet and list ourselves to better health, stronger communities, a healthier planet through an emphasis on eliminating and redressing failures and shortcomings and flaws. Where has that story gotten us? Isn’t it possible that telling a new story this year, this January, might be no less futile and perhaps a great deal more effective?
Yuletide stories offer the promise of hearts transformed by love. This year may the sequel to those stories be the promise of minds and bodies and communities transformed by the power of deep knowing: that we are already worthy, we are loved, we are deserving of rest.
Amen.
