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By Kelli Joyce, January 1, 2012 For a holiday that's associated with change and new beginnings, New Year's is a holiday of tradition for me. Don't get me wrong, I've made my resolutions and I'm excited at the idea of all the new things that 2012 holds in store. But New Year's Eve and New Year's Day go the same way every year, and I like it that way. Last night we partied with my cousins in Winston, and today will be a day of black eyed peas and TV marathons. It's not really that there's anything magical about starting the year that way. I don't actually like black eyed peas very much, and as much as I do like TV, I usually wouldn't let myself watch reruns of anything all day long, even if it is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But once again I'll spend my New Year's Day this way because it's what my family does. A lot of people have opinions about families. People have opinions about how big families should be, about how parents should relate to children, about how children should relate to each other, about what kind of responsibilities come with being family, about what kinds of families count as families at all. There are so many different ideas about what it means to be family that sometimes it seems like the term doesn't have much meaning at all anymore. Too many people have been abandoned by their blood relatives and embraced by families of choice for us to reduce family to biology. On the other hand, there's a difference between being friends and being family, even if it's not easy to define. Some people's families are a joy for them, a source of strength. For other folk, their families bring conflict and stress into their lives, and drain them of their reserves rather than replenishing them. No one has the same experience with family. In today's passage, Paul tells us that God has sent the spirit of Jesus into our hearts, and that spirit tells us something about family. On the night he was arrested, Jesus prayed in a garden, and when he asked that the cup of death be taken away from him, he addressed his prayer with the words “Abba.” Not ABBA, of Mama Mia! And Dancing Queen fame. It's an Aramaic word, a form of the word for “father” that would be used by a child to address their parent. The cry of Jesus' heart in the garden is the same cry that Paul says the Holy Spirit has placed in each of our hearts. Not the formal address of someone outside the family, or who doesn't entirely belong, but words that trust in the love of a parent. We can't reduce our faith to a series of calculations, of purely logical conclusions. Our hearts call out for God not in sophisticated and mature lines of reasoning, but in the child's cry. From the frightened “Daddy!” after a nightmare to the overjoyed “Mom!” when she comes to pick you up from summer camp, it's the language of simple and deep childlike love that Paul uses to describe our relationship to God. When I think about being a child of God and what that means for me the biggest thing that comes to mind is how God loves me. I'm loved regardless of what I say or do, what grades I get, what I think about myself, not for what I have to offer God, but because I'm God's child, just as I am. The same is true for all of us. It's mind boggling, when you think about it. God is head over heels in love with every single one of us, and thinks we're more beautiful than we can even imagine. God loves our holy mischief – for example, when two youth who shall remain unnamed attacked Lin with silly string at the Christmas party. God loves all the confusing, innocent, childlike parts of us, and God loves the wounded and jaded parts of us. It still blows me away to think that the wonder and love that a parent feels when they hold their new baby is the feeling God gets looking at me and at you and at all of creation. We're a church that talks a lot about this amazing love God has for us, so it might seem like old news. But I wonder, how would we be different if we lived day-to-day like we truly understood the extent of God's love? How much more kindness would we show others? How much more kindness would we show ourselves? God's great love doesn't mean there aren't any rules. I know, I used the dreaded “R” word. When I hear about a God of rules, my first instinct is to run the other way as quickly as I can, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. But I'm coming around to the idea that love means God cares about how we treat each other. If my parents' love for me had allowed them to turn a blind eye when I managed to talk Sam into giving me all his birthday money when we were kids, how much love would they have been showing to him? When we allow injustice to go unchecked, when we're more focused on securing our own happiness than humbly serving others, when we get so convinced that we're right that we stop listening to others, it hurts God. Avoiding bringing dishonor to the family name is a staple of Hollywood drama, and I think it applies here too. We're made in God's image, and as people of faith, we claim that heritage. At College Park, we sum the idea up with the phrase “trying not to embarrass Jesus.” Paul is bringing up the idea that we're God's children for a reason. If we're children, he concludes, we must also be heirs. He's trying to prove logically that we'll inherit eternal life through Jesus. But I draw another conclusion from what he has to say. If we're all God's children, we're not just family with God, we're each other's family too. (Pause.) Isn't that a scary thought. On the other hand, it makes sense when you take a good look at us. There are people here who've been like my grandparents, like sweet baby cousins, like little sisters I never had, like crazy uncles who pick on you and hide your keys and would run through brick walls to keep you safe. Everyone here helps make College Park the family it is, wonderful and loving, occasionally dysfunctional, unfailingly real. But there's a catch. Even when we're speaking metaphorically, you don't get to pick your family. There are TV Christians and street corner preachers and the guys who give sound bites to the media who I kind of wish I didn't have to claim. And there are plenty of folks who won't claim us, for one reason or another. You hear it a lot, said about Christians of every stripe. “They're not true Christians.” Whether it's because they're too Catholic, too protestant, too political, not political enough, conservative, liberal, contemporary, or traditional, there's always someone ready to declare that people who believe or do stuff they don't like aren't part of the family at all. It's easy for me to do this too, to fall into the habit of dividing every issue into two sides, then trying to make sure I end up on the “right” side. But I don't think that's the answer. Jesus prayed that his followers would all be one. If that's our goal, part of being family means looking for common ground instead of focusing on what divides us. Diversity is a strength, not a weakness, even when it's not always easy to see. Loving folk who are different from us like family doesn't mean we have to believe exactly what they do, just that we always ought to work to see everyone like God sees them, and to love them like God does. Really, when you think about it, the same thing applies within our church. We're very real here, very human, treasure stored in earthen vessels. But part of what that means is that we have a beautiful tendency to royally screw things up from time to time, like members of all families do. We also run the risk that someone else is going to do something that hurts us. And it may not be in a “they forgot to wish me a happy birthday on Facebook” way or a “they didn't wave at me in the parking lot” way, but in a way that hurts to the core of you. It happens. I'm not going to give any kind of trite forgive-them-and-move-on speech, because real life is harder than that, and relationships are messier than that. But we've just finished Advent, a season when we celebrate God's grace given to all of us. That's the example we're working with. So if you're of the mind to make New Year's resolutions, here's one I'd suggest: Do a small act of grace for someone you have a strained relationship with. Not because it's fair, but because it isn't fair. That's the beauty of grace. I've got a couple more suggestions for New Year's resolutions relating to the family of God, if you'll bear with me. I guess I should mention that I came up with both of these by thinking of the things I wish I'd done more of in 2011. First on my list would be to pray for each other. Before the youth left for San Francisco this past summer, we gave out prayer cards with the names of the students and chaperones who'd be going on the trip. I know there's no way that whoever got my name could have known the details of what we were experiencing in San Francisco, but that wasn't the point. Knowing that members of my church family were praying for me made a difference within me. I can't tell you exactly how prayer works, or what it does, or even who it's really for. But I've learned that it's essential that I do it. Being prayed for changes me; praying for others changes me even more. And when we pray with each other, the cry of our heart isn't ours alone anymore. Joy multiplies when shared, and heartbreak isn't quite so unbearable. That's why one of my resolutions this year is to be intentional about praying for and with others more often. My other suggestion for a resolution is to give more. That might not be what you want to hear after we've just made our pledges for the capital campaign, after all the giving and busy-ness that comes along with Christmas, in the middle of an economic slump that keeps dragging on and on and on. But the more I live, the more I come to realize that giving of myself to others is one of the only truly fulfilling things in my life. You wouldn't be able to tell it from how I live day-to-day, though. You'd think that Starbucks was probably the most fulfilling thing in my life, or at least in the top three. I'm not saying I'm not ever going to Starbucks again, but I have been seriously reconsidering my priorities lately. Not just in spending, either, but in time management. So here's my suggestion: in 2012, work with Habitat. Or Greensboro Urban Ministries. Or volunteer at a local school. Give to three nickels, or to Doctors Without Borders, or to the Red Cross. It's not really about the details of the “what.” It's about getting outside ourselves and our lives enough to truly see and love others. If all God's children are part of our family, I figure we ought to help them out when they need it. I'd want someone to do the same for me. Nancy Cravey invited me to go see the Miracle on 34th Street for the first time with her and Isaac a few days before Christmas. My favorite line was toward the end, after the film's young protagonist has been told to believe in the magic of Christmas. She sits in a chair, half-pouting, repeating to herself over and over, “I believe, I believe... It's silly, but I believe.” I feel that way sometimes about my faith, especially because so many of my friends at school aren't interested in religion or any kind of spirituality. Maybe some of it is silly. Maybe it's silly to believe that people from across the world with radically different backgrounds and experiences, with different beliefs and hopes, with different needs and expectations, with different gifts and different weakness, could ever be a family. Maybe it's silly to believe that prayer matters and that forgiveness can happen and that giving away what you feel like you can't do without leaves you better off than you were when you had it. My friends might call it idealistic, maybe even naive. But, hey. It's New Year's. It's the time for believing in what could become, for working to make the future better than what's come before it. New Year's is a time for hope. So, yes, maybe it's silly. But I believe.

College Park Baptist Church 1601 Walker Avenue, Greensboro, NC 27403 cpbcgbo@bellsouth.net 336.273.1779