Faith Works 12-30-17

Faith Works 12-30-17

Jeff Gill

 

The year of Our Lord, Two-thousand and seventeen

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Anno Domini. A.D. "The year of Our Lord…" as you can still read in old wills and legal documents.

 

Today historians and scholars in general prefer the more neutral CE, for "Common Era" (and BCE, "Before Common Era," versus B.C. for "Before Christ" and no, I don't know why the jump from Latin back to English on those older labels).

 

Turns out it's unlikely that Jesus was born in what's now 1 A.D. (or A.D. 1, in Latin usage – there is no "Year Zero"), with some students of Scripture reading Matthew 2 & Luke 2 to point more towards 4 B.C., meaning that Jesus would then be born four years before Christ, which does seem a bit odd.

 

"The year of the Lord," though, does ground a year in a benchmark date or era, and gives us a healthy sense of time past, and time passing. Ancient Rome dated years "A.U.C." for "ab urbe condita" or "since the founding of the city" and you shouldn't ask an ancient Roman which city they're referring to. Romulus and Remus in 753 B.C. hold the traditional honors for establishing Rome.

 

The Hebrew calendar puts us in A.M. 5778, "anno Mundi" or "the year of the World," adapted from the Hebrew for "to the year of Creation," measuring from a point determined a few thousand years ago by Biblical genealogies; the Orthodox Christians of the east sometimes use a Byzantine calendar which does the same sort of math differently, and states that we are in the year 7526 "from the creation of the world."

 

Inclusivity and diversity aside (and trust me, there are many more systems of numbering I could tell you about) we're likely to use our current Gregorian calendar for some time to come. There are other points in the year different cultures use for the turn of the year and the change of the annual number, but even in the west, even in our own country in pre-colonial days, January has not always been the day you change the calendar or almanac. To the early 1700s, March 1 or March 25 or Easter were used as the date for a new year to begin; since the advent of the Gregorian calendar generally, after 1750 (later in Russia and elsewhere, though), January 1 has been the big day.

 

What I think many of us can agree on is that we're ready to give the year 2017 back to our Lord. Take it, Almighty God, and store it where you will, and bless us with a truly new year. This may be purely personal pique, but 2017 has just been ugly and unpleasant and pestiferous and impudent and . . . Hallmark Channel will stop showing Christmas movies in the next day or so.

 

We need a new year.

 

And that's the hope, the blessing, whatever your faith perspective. Can we find a fresh start, a way forward, a possibility of being born anew? Or are we condemned to a steadily declining spiral of repeated futility down into the cosmic drain?

 

For me as a Christian and minister of that faith, this is where my beliefs keep me right through "New Year" to celebrating Christmas, as most Christians do through Epiphany, the celebration of the Magi arriving to honor the newborn King, on January 6 or twelve days after Christmas Day itself. You know, "on the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me . . ."

 

New Year 2018 and the season of Christmastide is a time for reflection, of remembering (even if in a chastened and rueful fashion) and of anticipating the year past and the one to come. They work together very nicely, I think, to remind us that as we take down the old calendar, we can put more behind us than we think. In putting up the new calendar, in switching our references and annotations to a new year, we have a fresher start than everyday life would lead us to believe.

 

We can begin anew. 2018 can be different. It may not be, but that's largely our choice; we are called to commit ourselves through prayer and faith and service to give the new year a chance to be the season of renewal God desires for all of us.

 

May your New Year celebrations bring you to a new appreciation of what's past, and a restored hope it what can yet be, in the year of Our Lord Two-thousand and eighteen.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your year past and planned at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.