A good preacher might be called to the streets

New year’s resolutions take on a greater sense of urgency as you approach your 70^th birthday. Whimsical is replaced with awareness. One needs to figure out what to accomplish while there is time.

Resolving to have a fatter bank account or a thinner body is no longer seen as achievable or to matter all that much. In the past when I resolved to do these things, I got them backwards anyway.

In the past, I have provided plenty of paving stones for the road to hell with my good intentions to change. Changing who we are is hard for everyone. For older folks, it seems unworthy of our remaining days. A Tolstoy quote from “Anna Karenina” comes to mind. Konstantin Levin, Tolstoy wrote of one of the book’s characters, was overcome with doubt about “the possibility of setting up a new life.” His old life pulled him back, announcing, “No, you won’t escape us and live differently.”

It was a long list of doubts, eternal dissatisfactions, and vain attempts to improve that made change impossible for Levin. Tolstoy was telling us that at a certain point in your life, you are what you are. The time to reinvent oneself is over.

Perhaps then, New year resolutions ought to be about how we might make that work for us. We’ve put a lot of years and effort into becoming who we are. What have we done well in the years leading to this New Year that can give us a different perspective on New Year resolutions?

There is no time left for doubts, eternal dissatisfactions, or vain attempts to improve. It’s time to take what you have, be who you are, and make it work even better for you.

Still, in 2018, I resolve to eat a little less and pray a little more. Both, the well-being of the planet and my cardio vascular system, could use a little less red meat and carbs. The same can be said for adding more prayer time to my life.

I resolve to advocate harder but use softer words. I am going to end each day earlier and start the next one sooner. Occasionally, I will set aside my Bible, which I have read many times over many years, and pick up someone else’s holy book and make an attempt to understand how others come to understand the God we both serve.

I still have time to become a better preacher. It is a blessing in the winter of life to have a pulpit in a church filled with people you love. Today, there is so much to say and so little time to say it that a good preacher might feel called to the streets where he can deliver a message beyond the church doors.

The prophets of the Bible were street preachers, not the brand of street preachers who thump their Bibles and threaten fire and brimstone. What about the example set by Isaiah, Amos and Micah and the others? Each took to the streets because that was where the action was. That’s where the dismaying injustices of their community were on display. 

That’s where they found and confronted kings and merchants and exploiters of every kind to challenge their authority. 

Today one matter is especially dismaying. America’s unjust immigration system. I resolve to work harder to protect good people from deportation and to prevent our government from ripping apart families. I will join a bright, energetic group of Wyoming’s best young people and work side by side with them to stop the construction of an immigrant prison in Evanston.

I’ve never been arrested. I regret that. Jesus was arrested for challenging the Empire. So was John the Baptist, Martin Luther King and Gandhi. You cannot preach the Gospel with integrity without a righteous arrest record. Violating unjust laws measures your commitment to the Gospel. Arrest follows. Given what is happening in America, 2018 would be a good time for a New Year’s resolution to repair this shortcoming.