Will the Real New Year Please Stand Up?
Good Morning Friends,
Looking for a little peace and quiet?
This year New Year’s Day falls on a Sunday. And that is a good way to start off the year, for let’s face it, our celebration of the New Year secularly and spiritually are rarely unified. Today we have fiscal years and calendar years and church liturgical years and school years and they are, more often than not, starting on different days and dates that do not mesh with our Religious Holidays. In fact the January 1 date is really a bit of bad news for Jews historically. The ancient Romans originally dedicated New Year’s Day to Janus, the god of gates, doors and beginnings for whom the first month of the year, January, is named. Janus had two faces, one looking forward and one looking backward. This is credited as being the source for the custom to make an accounting of the past year and to make resolutions for the coming one. It is a celebration of cycle of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun and the circle of life converging. However the Hebrews had multiple New Year Days just as we do today but not on January 1. They kept a lunar calendar so the feast day dates changed if one was keeping track of the number of days and not weeks. Interestingly Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year is also a day of judgment, and a time at which it is thought that God determines our future in the year to come. It all makes one wonder why if Christ the King Sunday, is the culmination of the liturgical year and Advent is the beginning of the New Year for the church, why we continue to celebrate this pagan holiday of January 1. Maybe we should be wishing each other Shana Tova… eating apples and honey with our Jewish friends.
Maybe we should be celebrating it with the Passover and Easter but that too has turned into a pagan holiday. Will the Real New Year Please Stand Up?
Scripture: On the first day of the seventh month you shall have a holy convocation; you shall not work at your occupations. It is a day for you to blow the trumpets, and you shall offer a burnt offering, a pleasing odor to the Lord: one young bull, one ram, seven male lambs a year old without blemish.
Numbers 29:1-2 (NRSV)
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NRSV)
And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
Revelation 21:5 (NRSV)
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and their entire multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.
Genesis 1:31-2:3 (NRSV)
Message: Whether you’ve just walked through the greatest year of your life, or are incredibly glad to see 2016 finally over, one truth still rings clear amidst it all. We are not alone. Not ever. Whether we celebrate the beginning of the Word made flesh or the Annunciation or the Advent of Christ into the world or the Resurrection, it really does not matter for God is continuing to create new things each and every day. And the beauty is that God is with us in the process. Interestingly, uniformity and order seems to have won out for the choice of January 1 as the first day of the year. It is now almost universally celebrated. But it has not always been that way. Of course the Chinese had their own calendar with the New Year being closer to the First Day of Spring, but in the Western civilization it was around 46 or 45 before Christ’s birth that, Roman emperor Julius Caesar established January 1 as New Year’s Day. But why I am not so sure. It was probably political. Unfortunately, Caesar celebrated the first New Year’s Day by ordering a major attack on Jewish forces in the Galilee. Eyewitness accounts say that blood flowed in the streets. Caesar was killed the next year. Sometime later, Roman pagans began marking December 31 with drunken and immoral gatherings. It is noteworthy that during the early medieval period, that most of Christian Europe regarded Annunciation Day (March 25) as the beginning of the year. It is also of historical note that after William the Conqueror became King of England on December 25, 1066, he decreed that the English return to the date established by the Roman pagans, January 1. This move ensured that the commemoration of Jesus’ birthday (December 25) would align with William’s coronation, and the commemoration of Jesus’ circumcision (January 1) would start the New Year, thereby rooting the English and Christian calendars and his own Coronation. William’s innovation was eventually rejected, and England rejoined the rest of the Christian world and returned to celebrating New Year’s Day on March 25. But that did not last either. And the history gets more convoluted for Jewish New Year is celebrated in the seventh month. According to Jewish tradition God completed the creation of the world on Rosh Hashanah which is a good thing to celebrate. Every year on this day God takes inventory, an annual accounting. A true day of judgment. Our lives are in the scales. The central feature of Rosh Hashanah is the blowing of the shofar, the ram’s horn and recalls the near sacrifice of Isaac and the test of Abraham’s allegiance to God. This apparently all happened on Mt. Moriah – the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and took place on the first day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei – the future date of Rosh Hashanah. Therefore, by blowing the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, God is reminded of the allegiance that our forefather Abraham displayed, and in that merit, God will seal us for a year of blessing. We are to have faith in God’s provision. But in reality today, the New Year can often bring a mixed bag of emotions and memories for many of us. Some may have just experienced the best year ever and look forward to an even greater one looming ahead. Others may have just trudged through one deep struggle after another. The fresh calendar year brings desperate hope for things to be better, with an ache for the still-fresh wounds to slowly begin their process of healing. Why we celebrate it is however important. And today it has evolved to again witness that God is with us. For we celebrate it on the heels of the celebration of the birth of our King and that reminder has the power to carry us right into a fresh, new start. He is Immanuel, God with us. And though things and people around us shift and change, our God continues on. So let’s end today’s message on this thought of connecting it all. The Bible always starts with the spring holiday of Passover. Interestingly both Isaac and Jesus carried wood on the journey to a place of sacrifice. Both walked with their father so that they had someone to be with them. Perhaps this central act in the history of the world is the one that should mark our cycle of life. But then it is based on a lunar calendar and that has been given up a long time ago.
Pray we walk with God into the New Year. Pray we remember to thank God for what is provided. Pray we rejoice in the making of all things new. Pray we allow our past to be our past so we can focus on the presence of God in our lives now. Pray the Holy Spirit would lead us each step of this New Year. Pray that the doors that need opening will be opened and the doors that need to be shut remain shut. Pray we be filled with wisdom and the strength and power to glorify God. Pray we would be lovers of the truth. Pray we make a difference in the year to come. Pray we realize that our efforts at improvement are only perfected when we allow God to guide us on the journey. Pray that during the next twelve months we practice the art of living with new skills and spiritual insights. Pray we discover the path to prosperity by believing in the promises of God. Pray we realize that each day can be a new creation, refreshed with the presence of God’s love in our life. Pray we rejoice and learn to become better lovers of life. Pray we be unified, together as one people, so we might bring about a year of blessings.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 