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For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part ... For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. . .And now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (I Cor. 13:9,12,13) So here we are in 2012, another New Year’s day like most others we’ve experienced before, complete for some perhaps (though surely not among you!) with the usual post-party-hang-over, or more likely the expectation of yet another festive meal to come. A few of you may be anticipating taking down the tree or simply relaxing and watching a little football. The more serious among us may set about making a list of resolutions. Do people actually still make these lists? Maybe you have already made such and even broken one or two by this late in the morning! The same reasons to celebrate or worry that we carried with us into last evening are still with us. For most of us, relationships haven’t changed. Financial turmoil, climate change and accompanying natural calamities, political unrest, wars and rumours of wars still mark our world today as they did yesterday. As much as nothing ever actually remains the same, for most of us at any rate nothing has substantially changed overnight. In other words, it’s just another New Year’s Day. Except, of course, this is 2012! If you Google that number especially with the word predictions after it, you’ll find much that seeks to convince you, that this is not just another New Year’s Day, but quite to the contrary the start of a year that will be unlike any other in human history. But the predictions are as contradictory as they are numerous. One prediction site I visited offered 20 of a potential 24,700 short videos on the subject. They pretty much ran the gamut from the most terrifying of doomsday scenarios full of fire, carnage, natural catastrophes and general chaos to the dawning of a new and gentler spiritual age, to, quite literally, stand up comedy (“The Future According to Rhett”). The once in every 3,600 years intrusion into our solar system of Planet X or Nibiru as the ancient Sumerian and Babylonian astrologers called it, is another bit of evidence. The rogue planet will, claim the doomsayers, disrupt the orbits of Jupiter, Uranus, Venus and Earth causing the gases of Jupiter to ignite, which in combination with the peaking cycle of our own sun’s solar flares will cause massive damage to the Earth. These things in conjunction with the expected once-in-every-26,000-years-realignment of our Milky Way Galaxy and accompanying shifts in the magnetic poles, are pointed to as clear indications of impending cosmic catastrophe. Images of earth colliding with a giant asteroid are also common. Extraordinary volcanic activity or massive global earthquakes and tsunamis are predicted, all bringing to an end the world as we know it. These alarming predictions are, as one might expect, closely linked by some biblical fundamentalists at any rate, to all the apocalyptic passages in the Bible from the Book of Daniel, the Gospels or the Book of Revelation which describe terrible cosmic events. The name of medieval French apothecary and astrologer, Nostradamus, comes up frequently. His famous quatrains and drawings from the middle of the sixteenth century prophesying all manner of natural and man-made disasters such as plagues, earthquakes, floods, droughts, invasions, battles and wars are frequently cited by the media in reference to what we might expect in 2012. On the other hand, Mayan elders who are specialists in the Mayan calendars say predictions of cosmic catastrophe totally misrepresent the complexities of the Mayan culture and Mayan calendar systems, and want to underline that there is absolutely nothing to fear. To quote one source, “For the Mayans each of their calendars is connected to a belief of time and energy as an infinite measurement, which really has no beginning and no end. . .” (“The Mayan Calendar and the Year 2012 as relayed to me,” by Mayan Shamans Carlos Alvarado and Eustolia Zaragoza.) Scientists also tell us there is no data to suggest any major cosmic calamity in the foreseeable future. The climax of the Sun’s 26,000 year cycle doesn’t in fact occur in 2012 but actually began to occur about four years ago, and there are no asteroids or planets in sight that appear to be any immediate threat. As for Nostradamus, his predictions are either closely connected to historical events of his own time or are otherwise so general that they may be applied, as indeed they have been, to almost any catastrophe, natural or human made, that has come along in history. Various New Age interpretations postulate that 2012 will mark the start of time in which the earth and all of its inhabitants will undergo a positive spiritual transformation ushering in a new era. In this regard Lee Carroll of Kryon fame who claims to be a conduit or live channel for the spirit realm, declares there is no reason to anticipate any great negative change in 2012 at all. If anything there is to be the beginning of an intensification of compassion in the world. In an internet article entitled, “The Doom Factory” subtitled “Get our your lawn chairs…they are at it again” written back in January of 2009, he wrote, “It’s almost four years away, yet the media is gearing up to scare you to death. . . “The fear and drama mongers are cobbling together the best doom cycle they can.” Carroll goes on to declare, “Spirit would never bring you to this place of high vibration, Lightworker, just to plough you under like so much dirt. You are actively involved in creating an energy on this planet that will eventually create healing and peace that you have never seen before.” Now if all of this feels like a little much on the coattails, as it were, of last night’s festivities perhaps all that needs to be acknowledged is that on this side of the great divide between life and death, as the Apostle Paul tells us, “we see in a mirror dimly” (A mirror of that time was made of polished metal and not silver-backed glass as we know it, hence the metaphor.) “we see in a mirror dimly,” and thus we know and consequently prophesy only in part. All of which is to say that none of us can claim either to understand fully what is or what is to come. The various manifstations of the so-called Arab Spring, claims of clairvoyants and spiritualists, new discoveries about the earth and the universe disclosed on the Discovery or History Channels, or CBC’s “Quirks and Quarks” or Suzuki’s “The Nature of Things,” new findings of modern medicine, or the latest technological wizardry of Apple or RIM (Well perhaps not RIM!) all remind us that none of us knows or understands with absolute clarity either the present or future. The cover article of the Dec. 5, 2011 issue of Maclean’s, for example, entitled “This Tiny Thing Will Rock the Universe” subtitled, “How a miniscule particle is proving Einstein wrong and opening the door to time travel and whole new dimensions,” seeks to explain how a neutrino has remarkably been shown to move faster than the speed of light, albeit not much faster. Over the distance of 730 km, “the neutrinos arrived a shocking 60 billionths of a second or so faster than a beam of light.”( p. 52) Indeed we do know only in part! But in the meantime, says Paul, on the basis of what God has shown of Godself in Jesus we may count on this: that amidst all the confusion and turmoil of these times-- environmentally, politically, economically, socially, scientifically and religiously speaking--faith, hope and love abide. We may still trust that as our Creed puts it, “We are not alone. We live in God’s world. We believe in God who has created and is creating, who has come in Jesus the Word made flesh, to reconcile and make new, who works in us and others by the Spirit.” The story is still with us, the clarifying revelation has been given. Haven’t we just celebrated a very important part of it? “Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day . . . a Saviour who is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:10) We just need to trust that. And when we do trust it, we discover that it brings hope. Our Moffat family has its origins in a Scottish clan. From all that we have learned of our history, those early Moffats were not always the most admirable lot. Indeed in their beginnings they seemed more a bunch of warring rogues and pillagers than anything else. But over the centuries they have handed down to us a beautiful family crest that carries as its motto the Latin words, Spero Meliora – “Hope for better things.” Hope born of faith can produce big dreams out of which a better world will come. And, finally, says Paul, love abides. And love is the greatest because as the Apostle John tells us, “God is love.” (1 John 4:8). And that means that as we enter this year of 2012 and all those yet to come we need not fear for we can count on this: that love will have the last word to say about the universe, about the world, about us, beyond the end of time to all eternity. There’s a hymn in the old United Church Hymnary that we always sang in our church on New Year’s Eve when I was growing up. It gives expression to the promise of God in which we enter this new year and thus offers an appropriate note on which to close: Standing at the portal ‘I, the Lord, am with thee, Onward, then, and fear not, Frances Ridley Havergal, 1836-1879 Thanks be to God. Amen. |
