1st Sunday After Epiphany 2001
Hands up anyone who has made a New Year’s resolution.  
I am not going to ask you what it was, only to commend your fortitude in making it. 
A new year does, of course, imply a new chapter in our lives and it’s only natural that we should think in terms of  resolutions  –  so easily made as we get stuck into the hot toddy a New Year’s Eve party: so easily broken in the cold light of the following days and weeks.  
That said, I certainly think that, as Christians, it’s right to make resolutions and we get some help in doing so from our Book of Common Prayer.   For example, our Collect for to-day can be read as a prayer asking God to help us frame and  keep some New Year Resolutions  
True, it’s not quite as precise as that.  Nonetheless, after asking God to receive the prayers of His people, the collect goes on in its second part 
“ and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and may also have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same.”
Faithfully to fulfil the same. The difficulty, it seems to me, judging by my own past record ,
 is to find resolutions, and not too many of them, that are capable of being kept by frail human being like you and me. Not to aim to high or too low. The one makes us look pompous and the other banal.  
As an illustration of that,  I recall the cautionary tale of the British ambassador in Washington not long after the war who was asked by a local radio station (who were polling a number ambassadors) what he would like for Christmas. Hoping not to sound too extravagant, since austerity was still very much in force back home, he mentioned a modest luxury that he would not normally buy for himself. .  
On Christmas Day after lunch  Washington’s chattering classes turned on the radio to hear what the various VIPs had requested.  The Russian Ambassador (and in those days the Russians did not have the Atom Bomb) said he hoped for nuclear disarmament; the French Ambassador said he wanted peace on earth, goodwill toward men; the Chinese spoke of a world free of the scourge of cholera - and the British ambassador wanted a box of crystallised fruits.
It’s vital to know what context your resolutions will be cast in. 
So finding the right level for our New Year resolutions is also crucial.  Going back to our Collect : “ To perceive and know what things we ought to do”.  They must above all be achievable.  
I looked for inspiration to couple of diarists of years gone by.  Pepys  I found a little coy about what exactly he resolves. Here he is on the first Sunday of the New Year 1664.
“  I dined with my wife in her chamber, she in bed. Then down again and till eleven at night ……..and to bed in great content, but could not make an end of writing over my vows as I purposed.  But I am agreed in everything how to order myself for the year to come which I trust in God will be much for my good. “
He obviously had some qualms about non-fulfilment for he was up till midnight the next day  at it again:   “making my solemn vows for the next year, which I trust in the Lord I shall keep. But I fear I have a little too severely bound myself in some things and in too many “ 
 
A pretty self centred fellow  –  but that is much of his charm - I am afraid that he did not exactly resolve to work for world peace or disarmament.  For a day or two later he discloses, at what we might call the “ crystallised fruit level “,  that 
“This morning I begun a practice that I find, by the ease I do it with,  I shall continue 
 - it saving me time and money –  that is to trim myself with a razor, which pleases me mightily.”
I could not find that gastronome clerical diarist Parson Woodeford , 110 years later in 1774,  talking about any resolutions at all.  He seemed to spend many of his New Year holidays  back at his old alma mater Oxford University, noting carefully, as always, how much his good time was costing him,  and being a little censorious:  
 “For wine this afternoon paid 1 shilling. For fruit 3d – gave the fruit boy 3d.  Went to chapel this evening and after prayers sent for the Sexton Mr Parsons and gave him a lecture for behaving indecently in Chapel and not waiting at High Table as I had ordered him. He seems to be rather saucy”.    
 
These brief and inconclusive researches, however, have persuaded me that it is best to get back to basics in the Bible for our 21st century resolutions.   St. Paul in the Epistle for to day gives us a good one to start with:  “for I say through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think…”   
So that’s humility – a good start.   I don’t know about you, but at least I can use rather more of that virtue when behind  the wheel of my car.  So, sticking my neck out,  I will not make running commentaries on the deficiencies, as I see them, of the driver in front of me and I shall be more courteous as I travel. 
And from humility springs contrition for our weakness, irresolution, pig headedness, greed.   One of the most memorable and telling resolutions  in the Bible is in St. 
Luke’s Gospel and, being prominent in our Prayer Book, we can remind ourselves of it every Sunday
”I will arise and go to my father and will say unto him: Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to be called thy son”  
From humility and contrition comes forgiveness:  As the psalmist said:   “ The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”  
So if we are in the right frame of mind before God and our fellows, we ought to be better placed to follow another Resolution which comes regularly into the Communion Service when we ask God to help us  “do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in”.  
It would  be good to be able at the end of  2001 to think of, say,  half a dozen actions, some perhaps spontaneous, that have helped  our neighbour, helped our church, helped the wider cause of Christianity in this parish or beyond.   That may entail doing something  inconvenient, time consuming, even distasteful or embarrassing to us.    
Fulfilling other resolutions may be fun:  for example going that extra mile for some local cause or in my own case,  at the “crystallised fruit level”,   perhaps helping to create  a new postcard of  this lovely church  (the present  card is somewhat historic in technique and looks as though it was taken by Henry Fox-Talbot around 1850).  
In Hollowell we want to press ahead with the development of our Pocket Park , holding that out as an example of  the conservation  of God’s creation for the enjoyment of all.  
  “Oh Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees.  
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray 
 For the glory of the garden that it may not pass away.”
Each one of then can no doubt think of many good resolutions, based on our Christian faith,  a challenge to carry out  this year for the glory of God and the love of our neighbours.  The important thing, it seems to me, is to keep our resolutions in mind  make them important in our lives;  in short,  to do something new and different. 
We don’t have to move in the corridors of  power.  We can all make a difference.
After all, amateurs built the Ark; professionals built the Titanic” 
MSBB
7 January 2001
 
