By Reverend Laurie DeMott

Resolutions are based on the assumption that we really know what is best for ourselves. Though time and experience has frequently proven this assumption wrong, we continue to decide what we think our “best self” should look like and then develop a strategy for making that self come to be. Think about that for a second -- all of our resolutions assume that we know what our ideal “self” is but isn’t it possible that there may be within us potentials that we cannot imagine, or that our world could look a way that we have not yet conceived? The comedian Paula Poundstone said that the real reason adults ask children what they want to be when they grow up is because they are looking for ideas. If Moses had resolved to be the best son of a Pharaoh Egypt had ever known, the Israelites would have remained slaves but God convinced a rather unwilling Moses to allow himself to be changed into a leader he never could have imagined.

Perhaps this year, instead of resolving to change this or that about ourselves, we should make this resolution:

In 2009, I resolve to allow myself to be changed for the better by God and those I encounter.

The gospel of Matthew tells the story of magi coming from the east to visit the toddler Jesus in his home in Bethlehem. Matthew includes the narrative of the visitation by these astronomers to foreshadow of one of the most dramatic changes that is to come to the infant Christian church: the admission of Gentiles into the company of the faithful. When Jesus first traveled the roads of Galilee, everyone assumed that he had come to save the people of Israel, and when Jesus died, his followers operated on that assumption. They continued to consider themselves to be Jews and argued that new converts to the Christian way must also embrace the Jewish law. Peter and James and those first apostles were Jews who believed that they had discovered the Messiah and they set about to try to bring that Good News to other Jews. They thought that they knew what the ideal church should look like and resolutely developed a strategy to bring their vision to reality. However, God had a different vision. Within a few decades it was clear that non-Jews were also excited by the message of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection; the Gentiles wanted in too and they didn’t sure didn’t want to have to go through a circumcision ceremony before sitting at the Lord’s table with the others. Now you would think that it would be wonderful for those early apostles to have newcomers flocking to their services, so exciting that Peter and the others would be willing to bend a few rules, but as the numbers of Gentile Christian wanna-be’s increased, the church members’ anxiety increased. The Jewish Christians were very much afraid that if you let Gentile Christians into the church without requiring them to first be Jewish, the Gentiles would change the Jewish Christians as much as the Jewish Christians changed the Gentiles. In other words, it’s O.K. to change someone else, but it’s much harder to allow someone else to change you.

We still struggle with the visitation of magi -- the coming of strangers who carry change with them. My family’s church in Rochester, Lake Avenue Baptist, began a ministry to the Karin people, refugees from Myanmar (what used to be known as Burma), a few years ago, welcoming Karin families to the area and helping them to manage the transition to American life. The church’s ministry has been so successful that now on Sundays a third of their congregation is Karin which means that the service has to be done bilingually and Karin children wander freely through the pews as is the custom in their home land. My mother tells me that many of the older members of the church have stopped coming to worship because they say, “It just doesn’t feel like our church anymore.” Congregations face this sort of difficulty all of the time – wanting to invite new people to their congregation yet expecting those new people to adapt to the old familiar ways of thinking, behaving, and worshiping and feeling very uncomfortable when new members bring with them new ways of doing things. We forget that it is not “our church”; it is God’s church and that the God we come to worship is the same God who told Amos to leave behind his comfortable life as a shepherd and Peter to leave his fishing nets. We worship the God who urged the Pharisees to sit at the same table with the tax collectors and to relax their long cherished rules in order to mingle with the unclean. In fact, it seems as if every time a person approached Jesus, certain that he or she knew best how to embark on a self-improvement plan that would result in a person fit for heaven, Jesus rejected their ideas and demanded instead something totally unexpected. The best resolution we can make, Jesus said, is not to take charge of our lives but to put God in charge of our lives ready to accept whatever change that might require of us.

In 2009, I resolve to allow myself to be changed for the better by God and those I encounter.

The gospel of Matthew and the story of the magi warns us that those who are serious about following Christ must be prepared to be changed by Christ’s call and by those we encounter on the path. After telling of the travels of the magi and the joy of their encounter with Christ, Matthew ends his story with these words, “and they left for their own country by another road.” God promises us that our own encounter with Christ will bring us joy that we could not have imagined or envisioned because God sees farther than any human eye can see, and God knows us better than we know ourselves. But to embrace that encounter requires that we also allow it to change us, to let go of our comfortable ways and our certain opinions and our most cherished traditions so that we can be remade in newness.

This year, instead of resolving to change this or that about ourselves, let us make this resolution together: (Say it after me)

In 2009, I resolve/ to allow myself to be changed for the better/ by God and by those I encounter/ so that I may know the joy of Christ.