+ New Year’s Eve – December 31st, 2021 +
Isaiah 30:15-17; Romans 8:31-39; Luke 12:35-40
Beautiful Savior Lutheran
Milton, WA
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” - CS Lewis
Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they find their rest in Thee.” – Augustine
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. Ecclesiastes 3:11.
C.S. Lewis paraphrases Augustine. Augustine paraphrases Solomon’s God-given wisdom in Ecclesiastes. The common thread in those quotes is a sense of longing, a hope, a void that cannot be filled, except by the life and joy and peace that comes to us in Christ born for us and crucified for us. All true meaning and joy and peace come to us in Christ alone.
There’s something about New Year’s eve that stirs that sense of hope and longing in us again. There seems to be more than a need to celebrate the arrival of a new year, at least in some way. Whether you watch the ball drop or blast off fireworks, there’s an unspoken, yet universal instinct of longing.
Why? Because in one way or another humans are all hoping that this new year will be better than the last. Our finances will rise. Our work lives improve. Our waistlines decrease. You know the list. It’s full of resolutions.
Now, some will say, “Oh that’s just wishful thinking, a fairy tale, or a fool’s hope. Why bother.”
Yet, hidden beneath all these wishes and desires is the unceasing, longing of our weary souls. We want life to be better. More love, less hate. More unity, less strife. More compassion and mercy, less finger-pointing and so on.
In other words, we yearn for the advent of a better world, where peace is the rule, where the rulers are just, and where just and caring people surround us. Solomon was right in Ecclesiastes when he revealed God’s wisdom: we hunger for a world made right again. We long for the new heavens and new earth.
This is what Paul is getting at earlier in Romans 8 when he says that all creation – and we ourselves along with it – groan as we eagerly await the adoption and redemption of our bodies. Groaning. Yearning. Waiting. Longing.
On this New Year’s eve, what is it that we find ourselves longing for? For less death and illness in our families? An end to a seemingly endless pandemic? An end to one government overreach after another? An end of evils like the murder of the unborn? For despair and mental illness to be gone? For aches and pains to be a little less achy? For food on our table and in our cupboards?
What is it that you hope for? For reconciliation with friends or loved ones? For broken families to be reunited? For those pesky, recurring sins to just go away? To wake up one morning and all our griefs and sorrows and sins to be no more?
Whatever it is, these aren’t bad things to long for, and pray for. Though at times, it feels a lot like an itch that we simply cannot scratch away. One way or another, we find ourselves looking for that Silver Bullet that will finally make the itch stop. But it won’t.
Groaning. Yearning. Waiting. Longing. Those aren’t unique to Christians. Indeed, everyone from every walk of life has that in common. What is unique, however, is the answer God reveals in the Scriptures. What he sends for us in a manger in Bethlehem. What is unique, and found nowhere and in no one else, is the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ himself.
So Paul addresses our longing with a view of Jesus’ manger and cross born for you.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.
Notice that Paul doesn’t make a long list of what he means by “all these things.” He paints with a broad brush so that we see in that little phrase all the things that plague us – whatever troubles, trials, griefs, burdens, and sins we have born in 2021 – and whatever will come our way in the 2022. What then shall we say to these things? Shall we fear Delta or Omicron or anything else in all creation? No. For you are safely kept and redeemed and loved in Christ the Alpha and the Omega.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
No…for in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As we stare back at this year’s failures and losses and fears, we hope, we pray, we yearn…there has to be, there must be, something better. We peer forward to this coming year’s resolutions and goals and plans, and we know there just has to be, there must be, something better. And there is.
Only we won’t find it within ourselves. We won’t find it in the empty promises or resolutions of men. We won’t find it anywhere else in all creation except here, in our Lord’s word, water, body and blood. We find it in the God-man, Jesus Christ. Jesus alone, is the answer to the unceasing, longing of our weary souls. Christ alone is the One who swallows the bitter disappointments of last year and pours us the wine of hope for this year. Christ alone feeds and fills constant hunger for a world made right again. Take, eat. This is my body, given for you. Take, drink. This is the blood of the new testament shed for you. Here all is well.
In Christ, all our past disappointments are answered by his all-encompassing mercy. All our present worries are answered by his all-abiding presence and protection. All our future wants and desires for a world made right are assured. Fear not. Christ is coming again, soon. And along with him, a new heavens and new earth.
As we leave 2021 and enter 2022, Let your waist be girded and your lamps burning. And let us give thanks to the Father for the Son who, in the Spirit, has promised never to leave us nor forsake us.
Lo, I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.
A blessed 7th day of Christmas…and a blessed coming new year…
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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