Promises, Promises

What It Takes for a New Year to be Truly New.

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree, putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes - some have gotten broken - and carrying them up to the attic. The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt, and the children gotten ready for school. There enough left-overs to do, warmed up, for the rest of the week. Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot, stayed up late, attempted - quite unsuccessfully - to love all our relatives, and in general grossly overestimated our powers. Once again, as in previous years, we have seen the actual Vision and failed to do more than to entertain it as an Agreeable Possibility; once again, we have sent Him away, begging, though to remain His disobedient servant, the promising child who cannot keep his word for long.

These are the words of author and poet W.H. Auden, from his Christmas poem, “For the Time Being”. In this poem, Auden addresses the fears and anxieties of Man in the twentieth century, presenting the story of Jesus as the “Vision” which alone can satisfy human fears. In the “Christmas Oratio”, quoted above, Auden puts himself among those who attend to Christmas as a temporary reprieve from the monotony of daily life. Christmas day (or perhaps the Epiphany, by Anglican reckoning) has come and gone, and what do we have to show for it?

Auden suggests that in Christmas, the human race is yearly confronted with a Jesus who transcends the holiday. But we, for our part, hold back; we are hesitant to take him at his word, and we know it. So to us, Jesus remains a figure before whom we promise each year to believe, trust, and obey. But unfortunately, our human nature falls short. We are but “promising children” who cannot keep our word for long.

This is not an altogether different story to the one which appears in the Gospel of Mark. Mark announces “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (1:1) Almost immediately, Mark presents John the Baptist as the herald who announces Jesus’ coming, and who calls on people to prepare for his coming by repentance. Those who heard and heeded John’s message were clearly looking for something which could not be satisfied by mere ritual observance in Jerusalem; they responded to the call to go to an out-of-the-way place, in order to do an out-of-the-ordinary thing: to prepare for the appearance of One greater than John.

The crowds who came out to be baptized, were, like us, promising children who knew their words would be betrayed by their actions. Their baptism conferred on them nothing which changed their proclivity to unbelief and disobedience. What they needed, John made clear, was another baptism:

After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. (Mark 1:7-8)

That baptism, is immediately demonstrated in the moment of Jesus’ baptism:

And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased. (Mark 1:10-11).

The “baptism” meant for the crowds to experience was none other than an adoption into the family of God. And it was Jesus who reveals to the reader of Mark the pofound, nearly unimaginable love of the Triune God into which every believer now experiences by faith in Christ. This is the “time” which was the hope of prophets and kings in Israel from ancient times.

There is nothing more typical of Western culture than to greet the New Year with a set of resolutions: to eat less, to exercise more, to get projects done, to take an extended vacation, and more. The problem, of course, is that these resolutions are made by promising children, who cannot keep their word for long. For something truly new to take place in our lives, there must be a fundamental change in who we are and understand ourselves to be. For life to be new (whether at New Year or not), we can’t be “promising children”; our hope lies in being children of the promise.

That promise, of course, is the gospel - the promise that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; that whoever hears Jesus’ words and believes the Father who has sent him has passed from death to life.

I’m carrying into the new year the pain and discomfort of a fractured kneecap, the second round of some respiratory bug, and the inevitable ten-day round of antibiotics needed to clean me up. But, I am not threatened by an imminent death. If I need to put my affairs in order, it’s because I’m too disorganized in general.

None of us know what awaits us in 2025, except for this:

Remember my affliction and my wanderings; the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, therefore I will hope in him. (Lamentations 3:19-24)