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| Big Ben Celebration - Robert Lyn Nelson |
A Homily given during Evensong at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Sunday 29th December 2024 at 6.30pm based on the text of Isaiah 61 and 'New Years Day 1945' by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
For some, reflecting on the passing of another year might be an occasion for joy and anticipation for what is to come. For others, an occasion for despair and trepidation in light of events past. For many, perhaps, a mixture of both?
The passage we heard from the prophet Isaiah seems to embody the latter sentiment. The Lord’s Messiah, it is said, will proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God.
The acceptable year is a reference to an ancient Israelite practice – the year of Jubilee. Occurring every half century, the jubilee is thought to have symbolised a complete reset between humanity and the rest of God’s creation. In the Jubilee year, debts were to be cancelled, land would lie fallow and pass back to its original owners. The year of Jubilee would have enforced wealth redistribution and prevented intergenerational poverty.
Humanity, its systems and structures, would be reset. God’s people freed. All that is except for those who had benefitted from oppressive or unjust practices arising from inequalities between people. For them, the jubilee would be a day of vengeance.
Luke’s gospel tells us that this passage from Isaiah was read by Jesus before the crowds gathered in the synagogue at the start of his public ministry, when he declared the scriptures had been fulfilled in their hearing. The Messiah had arrived proclaiming the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of God’s vengeance.
What has become known as “New Year 1945” was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer for his mother and fiancée while captive in the main Gestapo prison in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin in the last months of 1944. Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s friend and biographer, describes the text as the last “theological witness from Bonhoeffer’s hand” and gives it the title “Powers of Good”.
Surrounded by the screams of other inmates being tortured and doubtless enduring his own physical discomfort - Bonhoeffer’s poem does not seek to hide the horrors of the world or withdraw from its brutality. Its realism speaks to all those for whom “the old year still torments our hearts.”
Bonhoeffer does not offer cheap platitudes or the illusion of false hope. All he offers – like the prophet Isaiah - is all that any of us can truly offer - the possibility of faith in the enduring grace of God.
“While all the powers of Good aid and attend us,
boldly we’ll face the future, be it what may.
At even, and at morn, God will befriend us,
and oh, most surely each new year’s day!”
The recent release of The Revised English Hymnal has introduced into Anglican churches a hymn based on the text of Bonhoeffer’s poem which has long formed part of Lutheran hymnals and is often sung at this time of year. We just heard our choir perform it.
The English translation by the Methodist hymn writer Fred Pratt Green was commissioned by the World Council of Churches and sung to a melody by Parry.
As we stand on the verge of another year, the hymn reminds us that the full joy of that promised jubilee is yet to be realised – but that it is within reach. And it assures us that while the years change, we may find rest in God’s changelessness.
The text reads:
By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered,
and confidently waiting, come what may,
we know that God is with us night and morning,
and never fails to greet us each new day.
Yet is this heart by its old foe tormented,
still evil days bring burdens hard to bear;
oh, give our frightened souls the sure salvation
for which, O Lord, you taught us to prepare.
And when this cup you give is filled to brimming
with bitter suffering, hard to understand,
we take it thankfully and without trembling,
out of so good and so beloved a hand.
Yet when again in this same world you give us
the joy we had, the brightness of your sun,
we shall remember all the days we lived through,
and our whole life shall then be yours alone.
By gracious powers so faithfully protected,
so quietly, so wonderfully near,
I’ll live each day in hope, with you beside me,
and go with you through every coming year.
Image : Big Ben Celebration - Robert Lyn Nelson
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