What Do You Worship?

I give great thanks to God for the New Year and for each of you, my beloved and faithful parishioners.  I offer thanks to you for the many ways in which you bless this community of faith with your faithfulness. I give thanks to God for the opportunity of serving you and for beginning this new year with you. My heart always burns with love for you and for walking alongside you in faith, and I am grateful for the positive energy that abounds here at Christ Church.

Each new year, month, week, and day brings its own challenges and opportunities. On the one hand, challenges can be life-transforming; they shape us, as someone once said: "Stay with the discomfort; that’s where true transformation comes from." Opportunities, on the other hand, open a different window for us; they offer us a view that helps us develop a perspective, and they also reveal our true character - what we are made of, and to an extent, what we worship. 

With our best efforts, we handle those challenges and opportunities. But we do so bearing in mind that although there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to the challenges and opportunities that life presents to us, there is one source from which springs forth wisdom, faith, determination, perseverance, and courage to handle both the challenges and opportunities that come our way. 

I have no doubt that there is one source that opens our eyes to the opportunities that come our way and teaches us the best way to take advantage of them in the service of the greater good. It is that one source that generates within us the strength to embrace challenges and even find the silver lining in them. 

To acknowledge this source is to reject these substitutes for God - wealth, power, pleasure, and honor. For some of us, these are the gods we have built for ourselves because they provide us with some latitude and control over them. But there’s no way we can serve these gods and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Jesus, in one of his admonitions, said this: "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot worship God and money." This is the highest test of our loyalty, and our choices betray our faithfulness. 

The question "What do you worship?" arises because we can tell a great deal about a person from what they worship or where their loyalty lies. 

Romano Guardini, in his book The Lord, writes about wrestling with Christmas. One day, he was standing at the manger, looking intently at it and trying to understand why: "Why did God do this?" An older person who stood nearby and overheard him responded, "Well, because love does things like that."

You and I may never understand why the God who needs nothing from us, and has no lack, would decide to become a human being. Think about the depth of love that we have been loved by this God, that this God would decide to do something like that for you and for me.

While I admire the love symbolized by the baby in the manger, we are not only supposed to look at it but also to ask, "What do you want from me? What is the gift that we can give in return for this love?"

To ask these questions is to reflect on your faithfulness. For what would be the gain if you embrace the gift from the manger, but miss the salvation that Jesus offers? 

There’s a story of a monk who was teaching his students about enlightenment. He gave them a hypothetical: "If you are holding a cup of coffee and someone bumps into you and you spill the coffee, why did you spill the coffee?"

The entire class answered, "Because someone bumped into me."

"No," said the monk, "You spilled the coffee because there was coffee in your cup - that was what you were carrying. Had you been carrying tea in your cup, you would have spilled tea. Whatever you carry is what you will spill out."

Life, I am afraid, is the same way. When life shakes you - which it will - whatever you are carrying inside of you will spill out of you. If you are carrying anger, fear, hatred, bigotry, pride, and a host of vices, that is what will spill out. But if you are carrying compassion, love, empathy, kindness, grace, authenticity, and a host of virtues, then that is what will spill out of you.

The point is this: It has to do with what is inside of you. And for me, the good news is that this is primarily determined by what you worship.

As we begin this new year, what comes to mind are not only the values I carry, but also who brings them to life and gives them meaning. So then, whether it is I who carries them or you who carries them, we can insist on their relevance and power in every situation of our lives.

It is for this reason that, despite all the challenges in our world and in our individual lives, I remain hopeful.  And this hope is grounded in the faithfulness and trustworthiness of the one whom I worship. 

If there is some joy to be found in all of this, it is the joy of knowing that the only gift worthy of all that I am and you are, all that I will be and you will be, and all that we have, is the gift of our salvation which lies softly in a lowly manger, surrounded by God’s creatures of cows, sheep, goats, rabbits, ox, donkeys, camels, chickens among others.

Here’s a poem for you. It was written by Edward Everett Hale:

I cannot do everything, 

but still can do something.

And because I cannot 

Do everything 

I will not refuse to do 

The something that I can do.

Each of us can do something. And the least that we can do is to honor each moment of our lives with a choice that honors the God who comes to us in the most unusual way, in the form of a baby. And then invites us to offer what we have. 

Surprisingly, all that God asks of us is a grateful heart. This year will be a great year because we can turn our hearts in faithfulness to the God who knows each of us by name and invites our loyal worship.

To the God who reveals the self to us in the form of a baby, to this God be praise, glory, honor, and thanksgiving.

Happy New Year.

Manny+