Ego Te Resolvo

January 9, 2008 by djackson.

Still trying to get back on schedule after the two-day trip followed by that bout of illness. One thing it has done is made me late with my New Year’s Resolutions. I don’t invariably make such resolutions, but I don’t invariably shun them either. I hadn’t really thought much about it this time around until my pastor Abba Grover preached a sermon on the last Sunday of the year using Luke 2.52. Veterans of Sunday School will know the one - “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.”

Grover went on, in his deceptively simple style, to talk about what these four areas signify and how we need to seek Jesus daily in order to reflect his advancement in each. He pointed out that the Greek verb translated increase has the image of flailing the arms as one thrashes through thick brush. This encouraged me. New Year’s Resolutions intimidate us because the very word “resolution,” with its militant adjective “resolute” and its dashing verb “resolve,” conjures up the image of triumphant, uninterrupted progress. Most days, I don’t think I can “resolve” to any noticeable extent. I can usually flail, though. So here are some New Year’s Thrashings I’ll share with everyone. I may not hack my way out of the thicket of my own weaknesses, neuroses, and sinfulness. Come December I may schlump toward Bethlehem knee-deep in the same old morass. But I figure as long as I keep swatting at the vines I’ll chalk it up in the win column. So.

WISDOM: I resolve to read less, and especially to spend less time preparing for my classes and sermons. I over-prepare, like a cook who can’t stop adding a dash of this and a pinch of that until tangy becomes funky. I leave so little white space that my students have no chance to contribute. I think I will be wiser if I know less.

STATURE: I resolve to eat at least one dessert a week. I have this real Puritanical streak in me. You know, it was David Hume, the atheist, who said Puritans objected to bear bating not because it brought pain to the bear but because it brought pleasure to the spectator. Like that. Oh, it isn’t a works salvation thing; I don’t think God likes me better because I bake two buttermilk pies and never so much as lick the batter off my finger. I think it may hark back to my days as an aspiring athlete. I figured out quickly that I would never be the strongest or the fastest or the most graceful, but discovered that I could be the most stubborn. So far so good, but somewhere along the line I made endurance a pleasure in itself. At least one dessert a week, with people around.

FAVOR WITH GOD: Well, “favor” here translates the Greek word for grace, and that, the Apostle Paul says is “not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” So I resolve to quit slashing through the thicket that separates me from my Lord, to turn in my pith helmet and Indiana Jones snarl and instead sit down and wail like a lost five-year-old until God comes and gets me. Still, I believe with Richard Foster that spiritual disciplines are the gifts by which God lets us participate in our own growth. Grace is a gift, not a crap-shoot. So I get to do something. Therefore, I resolve to preach less. No more than two Sundays a month unless the Lord starts sending whales to swallow me up and spit me out in various pulpits. I preached about three times a week for nearly twenty-five years but I don’t despair. I have great hopes that God will forgive me for my preaching ministry. Perhaps there is a sufficient Ash Wednesday left before the Second Coming for the word to be found, for the word to resound even here, for there can yet be enough silence.

AND MAN: I resolve not to get to work before 8:30; well, okay, 8:15 but that’s it. I don’t have to show up any earlier, you know. Our office opens at 8:30 but I have fallen into the habit of showing up at 7:30 or even 7:00. That requires me to wake up no later than 5. This means that I often leave the apartment before either my wife or son are up, and that I tend to nod off around nine o’clock or so in the evening. So I miss the start-of-the-day and end-of-the-day interchanges, the secularly sacred Lauds and Compline of the family opus dei. No more, but understand: this really is a sacrifice, not an indulgence. Early morning is when I do a lot of my writing, before life fizzes around my day like a pack of pirrhana on a pot roast, the tiny teeth of a thousand individual tasks tearing off chunky seconds of time and fleshy morsels of creativity. But last night my seventeen year old invited me to hang out at Barnes & Noble with him to browse books and talk politics and movies - and I had sufficient energy to take him up on it.

“And Jesus thrashed around in the general direction of wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” Back in the days when I still believed in penance and thus played golf, I spent a good deal of time learning that, in the high grass, a machete is no match for a really hacked off teenager with a golf club. By God’s grace I’ll seven-iron my way around in the general direction of the four greens whose flags I have just posted in their respective holes. The pin placement is tricky, the doglegs are wicked and I have a howling slice. I don’t think I’ll shoot par, probably won’t break a hundred, most likely will not beat my handicap. But the fresh air and exercise will do me good, and I might even make progress, and if I swear very quietly maybe God won’t hear me.

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