A new year is coming: 2019 is on its way out and 2020 is on its way in. What do you think of first? The ball falling in Times Square? A date night with your partner? Trying to stay up until midnight to ring in the New Year? Champagne? Party hats? Noisemakers? First night celebrations? Dancing the night away? New Year’s resolutions?
There are many ways to ring in the New Year. (Please have a designated driver if yours includes alcohol.) But the metaphor that we’re given of a clean slate is one that is really appealing to many of us. The New Year in 2020 is an opportunity for a new start. All the old can go away. Many of us will make New Year’s resolutions: those dreams for how we are going to improve ourselves in the coming year. We’re going to become new people.
The metaphor of a clean slate is one that is used in Christianity also. One of the basic beliefs of Christianity is that our sins have been washed clean through the power of Jesus Christ. At least that’s what we profess we believe. Yet so many of us hang onto the guilt and shame that we should be letting go of. We are blameless in the eyes of God. How are we living as new people because of that? This is a good time of year for us to be looking at what it means to be freed from guilt and shame. How can we walk away from it and shoulder it no more? How can we recommit ourselves to being followers of Jesus Christ?
In the United Methodist heritage, Watch Night services have been a part of the church calendar since the mid-1700s. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, led Covenant Renewal services in London at the New Year. The heart of these services would be a covenant prayer, where people would re-commit themselves to God. These services would often be three hours or longer, including many Scripture readings and hymns to sing. The covenant prayer is one that can be a little overwhelming:
“Lord, make me what you will. I put myself fully into your hands: put me to doing, put me to suffering, let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you, let me be full, let me be empty, let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and with a willing heart give it all to your pleasure and disposal.”
Admittedly, a three-hour service (likely ending around midnight) isn’t the way that most of us here spend New Year’s Eve. It’s much more common in the Korean and the African American churches. But there’s something about re-committing ourselves that seems right for this time of year. So after the celebrating — after the football games and the chicken wings — take some time and consider whether you are ready to re-commit yourself to God in 2020. I pray that you will.
— Reflections appears regularly on the religion page. The column features a variety of local writers, coordinated through the Monroe Area Clergy Group. Kelly Jahn is pastor of the Juda Zion and Oakley Union United Methodist Churches.
