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Do It Anyway                        John 1: 1-18                   January 4, 2009

Do you have a particular New Year's Eve tradition? For years, Kris and I have gathered with six good friends - eight of us in all - for dinner, good conversation and an attempt - not always successful, I might add - at staying awake until the New Year arrives.

This year, everyone managed to avoid sleep and we all watched the midnight fireworks from the warm vantage point of our friends' 21st floor apartment in downtown Philadelphia. It was, once again, a wonderful evening.

Whatever your tradition might be, whether it's gathering with family or friends or going out on the town or even if i t's just sitting in your living room watching the ball drop in Times Square while you wonder why anyone would want to stand out in the cold, cheek to jowl with a crowd of half a million strangers; whatever your particular tradition, New Year's Eve prompts us to think back and relive the events of the past year, and make some plans - some resolutions - for the year ahead. To look back and to look forward.

It's a good thing to do, I think. Particularly if we do it again this morning, with the words of our Gospel Lesson for today still fresh in our minds.

Our text, the prologue to John's Gospel, invites us, at the beginning of 2009, to look back and to look forward.

Looking back, the Evangelist reminds us that God, the Creator, the one who made every thing that was made, stepped into our world, became flesh, and revealed God's Self to us in dramatic fashion. That in this man, Jesus, we see the face of God.

John reminds us that an event like that had never happened before and has never needed to happen in that way again.

And looking forward, he reminds us that we, who have encountered this one called Jesus, have the power to become children of God. We have the power to be like him.

This is very good news, at the end of one year and the beginning of another. And it is a good reason to resolve, this year, to be more like the one who, in John's words, was "the light of all people . . . The light that shines in the darkness. . . the light that the darkness could not overcome."

The challenge, of course, is to translate that wonderful, poetic language into practical action. To translate a resolve to be more like Jesus in 2009 into something you and I can actually do. This is one of those passages that is easy to read - but difficult to follow.

Recently, on one of my regular trips to my favorite bookstore, I ran across a little "self-help" book, tucked in the religion section, titled Do it Anyway, Finding Personal Meaning and Deep Happiness by Living the Paradoxical Commandments. I'm not usually fond of self-help books, but this one, much to my surprise, has helped with that translation from words into action.

The "Paradoxical Commandments," I discovered, have been around since the Sixties. Kent Keith, their author, and the author of the little self-help book, originally wrote them in a poem when he was a 19 year-old college student. Since then, they have been set to music, been featured in advice columns by Ann Landers, and even attributed to Mother Theresa. Evidently, a version of the commandments is posted on the wall of her mission in Calcutta.

Though Mr. Keith is a Christian and a popular lay preacher, his commandments aren't particularly preachy, and don't specifically make reference to God. They are practical, reasonable suggestions that enable people to, in his words, "find meaning in a crazy world."

So, as we stand here this morning, at the end of one of the more memorable years in our lifetime - one where we saw some things happen that we never thought could happen, and saw some things we thought could never collapse come crashing down - as we stand at the end of one year and at the beginning of another that is even harder to forecast than usual; at a time when New Year's resolutions are the order of the day, let me suggest Keith's Paradoxical Commandments as a springboard for a New Year's resolution that might just make life more tolerable, whatever direction 2009 ends up taking.

Some of you may have heard these commandments before. If so, my guess is you'll not mind my refreshing your memory of them. Others, perhaps, are hearing them for the first time. Either way, here they are:

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest ideas.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

And finally, give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

The overriding theme of these ten Paradoxical Commandments is the simple, three-word phrase, "Do it anyway." It is a suggestion that the way to face even the worst of what the world serves up is to do what we know is best, no matter what the outcome may be. Without regard to the downside of our action.

Or to put it in more Christian terms, the way to deal with the adversity that inevitably occurs in our everyday life is to strive to do what is God's will for us. To strive to exercise the power John talks about in his Gospel. The power we have been given to become children of God.

"We can't control the external world," Keith writes. "We can't control the weather or natural disasters. . . or when terrorists may strike. We can't control which companies will acquire which companies, or which jobs will be eliminated or which jobs will open up. . . are lots of things in our external world that we just cannot control."

"What we can control," he continues, "is our inner lives. We can decide who we are going to be and how we are going to live. We can decide to love people. . . be honest and frank. . . fight for the underdog, and we can decide to help people."

In other words, we can decide to live our faith, no matter what.

Every year at this time folks in the media conduct surveys to determine the most popular New Year's resolutions. And every year, in America anyway, the same three items show up at or near the top of the list: Lose weight and get in shape, stop smoking, and get out of debt.

Obviously, the reason these three well-intended promises remain at the top of the survey lists each year is because they are rarely kept. Most of them get broken by Groundhog Day.

Well, this year, I've decided that I am not going to make any of those resolutions - or any resolutions that even resemble them. Instead, I am going to resolve, this year, to "Do it Anyway." To follow God's lead, wherever it may take me. No matter what. And I invite you to join me in that resolve.

C. S. Lewis once made a suggestion. "Try as hard as you can to be as good as you can for six weeks," he wrote. "Try to be perfect. Practice every virtue. Try really hard. You can almost deceive yourself for one week but not for six. Only then will you discover how truly bad you are."

He's right, of course. None of us can be perfect, or even good, on our own. It is only through God's grace, lavishly and freely given, that we can be the children of God that we were created to be.

But with God's help, we can, I pray, make 2009 the year we stop thinking about the downside and "Do it Anyway."

                                                                             AMEN

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