The personal blog of Anderson T. Graves II. Education, Religion, Politics, Family, and TRUTH------ but not necessarily the truth you want to hear.
I still love ya' though.
We return to our series in the book of
Romans with a message for the end of one season and the beginning of another. The title is:
DON’T GIVE UP ON OLD OR NEW.
---Anderson
T. Graves II is a pastor, writer, community organizer, and
consultant
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
He writes the popular blog: A Word to the Wise at
www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com
The increments by which we measure hours, days, weeks, months, and
years are invented things which we alter according to need and import. In the world before fast-moving trains, international
shipping lanes, and global communication forced standardization with Western
time-keeping, a major cultural change, like a new king, a new religion, or a
natural disaster was frequently commemorated by changing the calendar. God participated
in that tradition, marking the emancipation
of the Old Testament Hebrews by changing the count of time.
Freedom is revolutionary, so God cleverly ordained that the Jews
should equate their national liberation as a new year, a new “revolution”
around the sun.
This month shall be your
beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you (Exodus 12:2).
But, at the beginning of Exodus chapter 12, freedom for Israel did not
feel imminent. Pharaoh had resisted Moses, Moses’ God, and their radical
progressive agenda of liberation and ethnic self-determination. Through 10 rounds of negotiation, Pharaoh
had refused to let God’s people go. When last Moses had approached Pharaoh, the
king ended talks by threatening to have the prophet executed.
Then Pharaoh said to him,
“Get away from me! Take heed to yourself and see my face no more! For in the
day you see my face you shall die!” (Exodus 10:28)
Yet, God promised that within 2 weeks of the beginning of their new,
new year Pharaoh Pharaoh will let you go
from here. When he lets you go, he will surely drive you out of here altogether
(Exodus 11:1).
Pharaoh had grown more and more hard-hearted with each cataclysm God sent
upon Egypt. Why would he change his mind
now? How could the times change THAT
quickly?
Why did the United States of America abolish slavery after a century
of protecting the wicked institution? It wasn’t because the leaders of the
United States suddenly felt morally convicted by the abolitionist sermons
they’d ignored all their lives.
America freed its slaves because the Civil War killed or wounded more
than 5% of the population (1.5 million
reported casualties, not counting civilians, of an 1860 population of 31
million people). The Civil War was the great
plague necessary to force the liberation of God’s Black people in America.
Some times only change because the times are made so brutally hard
that the powers at the time are forced to change.
At midnight on the 14th
day of the first month of their changed time, God would send a final plague
upon the Egyptian slaveholders. A deliberate,
intelligent spirit, an angel from God, would kill every man, woman, child, and
domesticated animal in Egypt that was the firstborn of its family. The
casualties would be so high that Egypt, like 1860’s America, would let God’s
people go.
Some times only change because the times are made so brutally hard
that the powers at the time are forced to change.
Without the great plague that was the Civil War, American abolition
would have been delayed indefinitely.
Without the horrors of the first Passover, Pharaoh would not have let God’s
people go.
PASSOVER is the celebration, the sanctification of blood shed in the
revolution of liberation. On the
10th of their new, new year’s month, the descendants of Israel held in Goshen were to gather as families and eat
their LAST SUPPER as slaves.
Speak to all the
congregation of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month every man shall
take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a
household. . . Your lamb shall be
without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or
from the goats (Exodus
12: 3 - 5).
PASSOVER was offered to every member of God’s community. No one, no matter their socioeconomic
condition was to be excluded from the table.
And if the household is
too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it
according to the number of the persons; according to each man’s need you shall
make your count for the lamb (Exodus 12:4).
The enslaved community came together, pooling their resources around
the Lord’s table as a united community.
A community union. A COMMUNION.
PASSOVER, COMMUNION, THE LAST SUPPER of a people in bondage took place
under THE BLOOD.
And they shall take some
of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses
where they eat it
(Exodus 12:7).
People who prefer their steaks and chops rare claim that the meat is
“juicy.” That’s not juice, though. That’s blood.
In our “civilized” era, most people are far removed from the bloody process
of taking an animal and turning it into meat.
Ancient people couldn’t delude themselves about the ugliness required to
provide for their families. Israel’s new
ritual required them to take a sheep (representing innocence) or a goat (representing
mean guilt) slit its throat, drain the blood into a basin, take that blood, and put it on the two doorposts and on the
lintel of the houses where they eat it (Exodus 12: 8).
Up-and-down and then across, every Hebrew home was marked with THE
BLOOD. The blood of the innocent who
took upon Him the guilt of a people.
Up-and-down and then across, the people of God marked the change in the
revolutionary change in their times by coming under THE BLOOD of the Innocent
who was killed like the guilty are killed; who gave body and blood to His
people to set the people free. On a night of wrath, and death, and
revolution, the blood of the lamb purchased mercy for those in a believing
household.
Redemption is freedom from sin and the condemnation of eternal death. All freedom is revolutionary, and every
revolution is an ugly, brutal thing. The
Civil War, the death of the firstborn in Egypt, the Cross.
Jesus, as God manifest, transcends time. He is “I am.” He is present, future, and past;
so His death as the innocent lamb of God was the revolutionary sacrifice that liberates
believers across time from the slave wages of sin. The judgment of God passes over us who are
under the blood of Christ. It is a new
birth. A new life. A new beginning that extends into all time.
Times change, but more importantly, Christ changes ---- everything.
---Anderson T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME
Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He writes the popular blog: A Word
to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com
The impatient anticipation of Christmas gives way to the impatient anticipation of the new year. We resolve to make this the year----- the year that we achieve and attain all the things that we’ve been waiting for. We can’t wait to see the results that a new year promises.
In the Biblical timeline of the first Christmas, sandwiched in between the shepherds and the wise men, there is a story of two people and 6 week old baby named Jesus. Their story teaches powerful lessons about resolutions, waiting, and the way to actually experience the fulfillment of the greatest promises of God.
As we transition into a new year, learn the powerful lessons of Simeon and Anna in a message titled: FROM RESOLUTION TO REJOICING: A MOMENT WORTH WAITING FOR
Listen well.
---Anderson T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer, and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church and the executive director of SAYNO (Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization) in Montgomery, Alabama.
It
won’t be 2012 much longer.In a couple
of days 2012 will end and the year 2013 will begin.In every time zonepeople will gather in homes, and clubs, and
churches, and public spaces to countdown to midnight.And then they will shout and sing and celebrate
the moment of transition out of one year and into another.
Why
is that?
Our
modern Western calendar marks 365 days in a year.This is about how long it takes planet Earth
to complete a single orbit around the sun, but even the 365 isn’t exactly right.
So, we have leap year to try to make up the miscalculation.
The
billions of people who follow the Chinese, Hindu, Muslim, or Eastern Orthodox
calendars mark New Year at an entirely different time.
To
us it’ll be a new month and a new year.But to a whole lot of people,it’ll just be Tuesday.
Even
the Bible makes it clear that the date we choose for New Year’s Day has no real
significance in itself.In fact the
Bible has 2 different dates for New Years’ Day.
The
ancient Hebrews counted years by themovement of the moon, not by the movements of the Earth and sun.So the Biblical calendar was not 365 days.
But
even then, New Year’s Day was marked and remembered.
We
know that because Noah marked the New Year.
Genesis
8:13 And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the
month, that the waters were dried up from the earth; and Noahremoved the covering of the ark and
looked, and indeed the surface of the ground was dry.
But
that was New Year’s Day on the old Hebrew calendar.
In
Exodus chapter 12, when God sent the 10th plague on Egypt, killing
the firstborn and freeing the Jews from slavery, the Lord also changed the
calendar.
The
1st Passover took place in the Hebrew month of Nisan (Abib in Caananite),
the8th month of the Hebrew
year.On the day of the 1st
Passover, God said inExodus
12:2 “This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first
month of the year to you.
So,
from then what had been the 8th month became the 1st month.
The freed Jews had a new New Year’s Day.
Like
the Christian church today, the Jews have 2 calendars, a religious or
“liturgical” calendar and the original secular calendar.
I
have a friend in Camden, Alabama who greets everyone with “Happy New Year.”
Doesn’t matter what day or what time.Whether you see him in a store, or call him on the phone, he says,
“Well, Happy New Year.”
Why
is that?
“Because,”
he says, “Every day, every moment is a chance to start fresh.Every moment is the beginning of the rest of
your life.Everyday is the start of the
next year of your life.So---- Happy New
Year.”
Nothing
is wrong with joining with friends and family in the celebration of the coming
New Year, but you have to understand that there is nothing magical about this
date. That 10 second countdown between what we call December 31st
and what we refer to as January 1st is not in and of itself anything
special.
What
makes the New Year new and hopeful is you.
You
determine that this moment is the moment at which you begin to do the things
you have not done.
You
determine that this is the date from which you will calculate the deadlines for
completing the projects that will change the trajectory of your life.
You
determine that this is where you start counting down through the milestones and
obstacles you must pass to fulfill your purpose.
The
newness of the New Year is not a function of our shifting and arbitrary
calendar markings.
The
newness of the New Year comes from you.
Therefore,
you don’t have to wait for the December 31st countdown to reach your
local time zone.You can begin your New
Year right now.
In
fact, what you really should be asking yourself is: Why you are waiting for
Monday night to become Tuesday morning?
Are
you going to be any different Tuesday at 12: 01 A.M. than you are right now?
Is
the champagne and music of that New Year’s party going to give you any power
that you don’t now possess to choose the path you have been called to?
Are
you holding out for a Word in “Watch Night” worship to confirm the calling and
anointing that the Holy Spirit has already confirmed a thousand times?
No,
you’re not.Not really.
You
know that the real change from old to new year doesn’t come from flipping a
page on a calendar; it comes from shifting the mentalitythat has held back your spirit.
Right
now is the first moment of the next year of your life.
Resolve
to be different from this moment forward.
Resolve
to be better starting now.
Resolve
to do what you should have been doing and seal your resolve by doing, not by
drinking.
Do
some push-ups---- now.
Read
your Bible ---- now.
Pray----
now.
Call,
text, email, write, get up and go into the next room and tell the people you
love how much you love them------ right now.
Throughout
history and across cultures we’ve made New Year’s Day to be whatever day we
wanted it to be.
Make NOW your New Year.
Happy
New Year.
---Anderson
T. Graves II is a pastor, writer, community organizer
and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
