Numbers 6:22-27; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21
Happy New Year, 2017: When Change Becomes a Blessing
Philosophers pride themselves in discovering that “change is the only thing permanent or constant,” but theologians mock their ignorance because they fail to know that God does not change. Scientists celebrate every discovery and innovation, Christians wait patiently for education to catch up with the knowledge of God. Universities keep multiplying, but common sense is as rare as ever. Wealth and money increase by the day, but poverty kills more people today than every before. More Nobel prizes are won today, but violence and strive show no signs of abating, making Mr. Nobel’s peace dream remote. In fact, who is changing who?
The good news is that there is nothing called “change,” there is only God. Last year, it was I who was one year younger, not change. Few New-Years ago, I was in primary school, but I am now a worker. Some years down the road, I will be dead, but the celebration of New-Year will continue. Honestly, I keep changing, so I am not constant. How can “change” be constant when it is I who experience change, while change remains unaffected? I’ll tell you what: “change” is a vehicle which makes my movement to God possible. The fact that I look different today than ten years ago simply means that I am closer to my destination, God, today than I was yesterday. That I will die sometime means that change itself has its limitation, it cannot keep changing forever, it stops at some point, at death. How wrong we are when we measure a journey by a means of transportation!
New-Year is a celebration of our nearness to our destination; that is, a reminder that we are pilgrims on our way to God. It is when we are with God that we drop off change, our vehicle to God. You see, permanence and changelessness is God! If anything at all, the journey of the Shepherds to see God-man, Jesus, teaches us that all roads lead to him who is changeless and the author of change itself – God. The journey of the Shepherd came to an end when they met Jesus. In their meeting with Jesus, they acquired immortality and changelessness – their story and the news they carried continue forever. In this connection, it was Jesus who said “this will be told in memory of her,” talking about the woman who anointed his feet! To be separated from God is change, to be with God is changelessness. Whatever is done with God and for God takes an eternal dimension, just as God is eternal.
The journey of life, with its necessary vicissitudes, is not discoverable to science because it is a matter of revelation. It is the unchanging constant, God, who provides this knowledge because it exists outside of time, but time makes the impact of our journey through life felt through its vagaries. The GPS (Global Positioning System) which keeps human beings on track as they travel through life is Blessing. At creation, God blessed his creation, to set creation in motion through time. Our first reading, on this New Year Day, 2017, begins with an ancestral blessing. A blessing which takes its cue from God’s blessing since creation.
According to our first reading, every “blessing” does three things: 1) recognizes that only God can keep life safe on its journey through time before it returns to God; so, the very first blessing says, “May God keep you.” The second blessing emphasizes the fact that only the presence of God assures that one doesn’t derail in the journey of life; hence, the second blessing says, “May God’s face shine upon you” because the face of God equals the presence of God. The third blessing asks for “peace” – shalom. “Shalom,” even though it is translated as peace in English, means “wholeness.” In other words, “shalom” asks God to be present to every facet of human life, health, business, spirituality, etc.
If the blessings of God came directly from God to his creatures at creation, it continues in the world in two forms, 1) parents and all well wishers blessing one another, no less priests like Moses in the first reading, 2) also angels who announced peace to the shepherds at the birth of Jesus, according to our gospel reading. Through the original blessings of God, creation has become the source of God’s blessing and presence of God’s goodness among his creatures.
The epitome of New Year Day is the realization that every human being is a child of God, the unique blessing celebrated on New Year Day. This is the fundamental change that has taken place outside of time. When Paul talks about “the fullness of time,” in our second reading, he does not mean time measure by the motions of luminaries, it means the intervention of God, to put a stop to physical time, and do something new – the adoption of every human being as God’s child. This change is the blessing we talk about; it is the New Year we celebrate, that God has divinized human beings; that God is one of us and gives us a new direction and destiny in life, which go beyond physical time to timelessness with him. This timelessness, when a definitive stop will be put to time, and God will intervene again to do away with change because he himself is the changelessness that will happen to every human being.
Proclaim it loud and clear; speak about it with absolute conviction: you and I have been blessed by God, so our compass through life is God himself. To say “Happy New Year” is to recognize the triple blessings of God upon our lives, blessings of protection, presence and peace; to celebrate “New Year” is to celebrate our adoption as children of God, our eternal identity; to feast on a New Year Day is to acknowledge that God is the Master of time, and he intervenes in time to bring about something new, something not seen before.
Since you and I are God’s children, it means we must imitate God. Our God blesses, and we have seen his triple blessings, in the first reading. This New Year, 2017, it is our turn to bless others and not to curse them. Since our God blesses us with peace, we all need to become architects of peace. Because God watches over us, let us become our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. When we do these, then we can truly say that “change” is blessing because our old selves have given way to our new identity in Jesus Christ – sons and daughters of God.
Happy New Year, 2017, to you all!
Assignment for the week:
Bless someone with a meaningful and memorable gift this week or spend the whole week blessing and not cursing everyone you meet.
Homily with an African Flair
Numbers 6:22-27; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21
The Gospel of the Manger: When Poverty Becomes Divine
From demographics, all one needs to do to be convinced that anything North and Northern is tantalizing is to go to the embassies of North Atlantic countries. The queues for immigration visas to the United States and Canada, two North American and North Atlantic countries, is unbelievably long. Closer to Nigeria still, queues for immigration to European countries, England, France, Germany, etc, part of North Atlantic countries, is divided between those who seek visas to those countries from their respective embassies, and those who take boats and canoes to traverse the Mediterranean Sea to Europe without visa. By hook or by crook, all roads lead to the north.
In political realm, the idea of a ladder is for upward mobility. Popular opinion puts whatever is best and enviable upon the echelon of society; one needs to go northward to be upward. Even in Nigeria, one needs to be a northerner to be worthy of royalty and significant political position in the polity. Only those who know those at the top can arrive at the top. All eyes are at the top, looking downwards is considered condescending and infra dig; and not to envy the top is a disease, altitude syndrome or sickness.
God and nature seem to find it easier to go down south, than to climb up north. Swimming down stream is easier than going up stream; flying down south has the help of natural tailwind to push aircrafts to their destination. Even God went down to a manger to find an abode because there was no room upstairs. But why do human beings want to go up north and seek what God does not seek? God came to earth to make earth heaven; why the need to go up north? The angels came to poor shepherds, in the middle of nowhere, to announce the arrival of his Son; why seek the high places?
Yes, down below is where God is found, not up above. God has changed his abode, he now lives with the lowly, the humble and the meek. He is not measured by his distance but by his presence. He is not approached through protocols but physical visits. The smell of cow dungs and urine of animals are the available perfumes he cherished and still cherishes. People who are barefoot are his guests, those who are not sure of their next meal. Individuals without complicated knowledge but those who value, celebrate and protect life did he send his angels to announce the birth of his Son; with no gifts in hands and not bags, they came to the baby Jesus to present themselves and to bear testimony to the angels’ message and revelation to them.
The message of the Manger is the massage of humility; that God accepts everyone the way they are; the fact that those up north sit on those down south does not mean that God loves southerners less. That the wretched of the earth are co-citizens with God rang out in the angels’ hymn. The shoulder of the southerners is broad and strong enough to carry the northerners. That God will suffer loneliness, if every southerner were to abandon the south for the north. The vulnerability of the southerners only reveal the strength of a child-God.
Southerners are all those oppressed in whatever way. The sick, aged, disabled and poor make it to the list, irrespective of their geographic location and racial categorization. Every southerner is that vulnerable person whose only hope is God; that person whose skin colour is denigrated, whose body odour discomforts, and whose presence irks and irritates decorum; he or she is the nobody that God still considers somebody; they are the children of God. In the baby Jesus, divinity comes into humanity and not into pecuniary possessions and political positions. Nature is what is renewed not the ideas nurtured by political technocrats and skillfully dissected by pundits.
“Testimony,” indeed, “testimony” is all that the southerner has to offer to the world. Their lives proclaim a God who loves everyone and sends his Son into the world. They are the announcers of the goodness of God, even in difficult and impossible situations and circumstances. Theirs is the continuation of the message of the angels – “glory to God in the highest and peace upon earth among those whom his favour rests.” These are those who prove that violence does not solve every problem. That poverty is not a reason not to be humane and charitable. That the highest gift of God to humans is the gift of himself, and that humans should offer themselves back to God to reciprocate his good gesture towards them.
God’s Manger is in the south, and southerners are proud of it and identify with it. What is more, the resolution of every southerner is to continue to keep the baby Jesus company, bearing witness with our lives that, indeed, “glory to God and highest and peace upon earth” as we work for peace in 2017! Nigeria is a Menger, there is still something Divine about our poverty.