Our Hope for Change: the coming
of the New Year and the drama of the Holy Eucharist
Thoughts of what possibilities the future may hold always seem to accompany the coming of the New Year.
We all know of the tradition of the “New Year’s Resolution.” At the turning of the year we our selves
make, or we hear of others who make, promises to bring about some change within
their lives. And why? Why do we always
make these promises? Why each year do we look to the next year hoping that it
might be somehow different from that last?
The answer lies within the very nature of who we are as
persons. Rooted deep within us as humans is a continued hunger, a constant
desire, for change. It seems that we have been “hard wired” to be unsettled in
the present and to always be looking for and working toward the possibilities
of the future.
And I think this is good
to recognize about ourselves. I believe this is an intensely religious
compulsion that indicates something very important about us as individuals. We
hunger, we desire, we are looking for that something new. We are looking for
something else that might bring completion, which may satisfy.You see, I think this is good to recognize because this
hunger for change indicates that God has created us for relationship. We are
unsatisfied, we are always searching, because we ultimately desire to be cared
for, to love, to know that we are wanted and desired. So, we look for that
something that might fill us, make us happy, and bring us to a place of rest
and satisfaction.
The Christian Tradition teaches us that these realities are
symptoms of a God shaped hole within each of us that only God can fill. Our consumerism, our “me”-ism, our materialism, our desire
for self-satisfaction, they are all deeply rooted in our desire for God. Yet,
in order to receive the completion, the change we desire, we simply have turned
our focus in the wrong direction. We think that if we pay more attention to
ourselves, if we situation ourselves in our world just right, then we will finally
be satisfied. But, actually our answer for true completion lies elsewhere, in
the option direction.
The only way we will truly be satisfied, find the rest
and joy we truly desire, is to look to God and seek relationship with God in
and through the world. Our brokenness lies in the fact that we try to receive
the world as an end in itself. We use (or rather abuse) the world as something
to satisfy ourselves on our own terms. All the while we miss the gift that God
has given us in creating this good world as a means to relate to him, to grow
in relationship to him and others.
Each week we act out this great truth in the drama of the
Eucharist. We take the things of this world – bread and wine - and instead of
using them as an end in themselves to satisfy ourselves, we offer them back to
God, for God to use for God’s purposes in our lives. We take this world and
again receive it rightly, as a means to relate to God and not as an end in
itself.
So, we desire change and hope the New Year will bring it. But,
more accurately, may we ultimately desire God. This next year let us search for and
related to God in and through this good earth! Amen.
