Dear friends and members,
Do you come into the new year of 2026 with resolutions, things you wish to change or improve upon? This practice of making new year’s resolutions is not some marketing gimmick invented in the twentieth century to sell you gym memberships or post-Christmas weight loss programs. It is a very old tradition that can be found in cultures all over the world; even the Babylonians and ancient Romans did it. This near-universality suggests something wonderful about our spiritual DNA, it seems, in how we can reach for the better angels of our nature, as Abraham Lincoln put it—a belief that humans can, and should, grow interiorly and change within.
Who do we want to become in 2026? Where can we find a good blueprint for that future self we aim to build? The really hard new year’s resolutions are not the epic ambitions for our bodies – getting stronger, faster, eating more healthily—but the ones for our souls, for changing our patterns of thought and action. Bookstores in the West, particularly in America, have whole sections of titles designated as “self help” which are meant to aid us in this. It’s a whole literary genre and cottage industry. On television, we are given secular visions of miraculous transformations of selves, and new lives unfolding—this is the appeal of shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, or the make-overs enabled by folks like Oprah Winfrey or Ellen Degeneres. A make-over, a new-self: we crave to believe that we are not set in our ways, that a different, better way of being lurks within us.
Sometimes stopping a harmful habit or hurtful way of thinking and being is easier said than done, however! How many of us find ourselves making resolutions for 2026 that we had already made in prior years? What happened with those? Thankfully, our biblical tradition brings with it some guidelines for orienting ourselves and our wish to live better lives. The ancient Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, still have applicability in our lives, if we look beyond their literal words about manservants, maidservants, coveting cattle and cows. Jesus said that the whole of these commandments hung on the first two, the most important:
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Hear the profound love in these words: love to the Lord, love to the neighbor. As you think about your resolutions for yourselves for the new year, put them in light of these two things – love for the Lord, love to your neighbor. They suggest that to really become genuinely better, more spiritual people, we can’t just focus on ourselves—we become better by turning outwards and upwards, to the source of love and life above us, and to the people we live with around us.
See you Sunday,
Rev. Dr. Devin Zuber