New Year’s Eve Texts 2007
Ecclesiastes 3:1-3
Psalm 8
Revelation 21:1-6a
Matthew 25:31-46
Here we are, the last day of 2006. New Year’s Eve day. Have you made any resolutions yet? How many of you actually make resolutions for the new year? How many of you actually keep the resolutions you make for the new year?
Thought so. I save myself a step and I don’t make New Year’s resolutions in the first place. I might have some goals to work on, some things I would like to accomplish this year. But at this time of year, I am mostly thankful that I made it through December, what with Christmas activities and the birthdays of all three of our children…
We can all be thankful that we made it through the past year…with it’s ups and downs, it’s joys and sorrows. It’s fun and it’s stresses.
And it’s despair.
There is a lot of that in the air, with the ongoing war in
The future is elusive, unpredictable…what will happen in
2007 ? Will we be able to do something
positive about the situation in
The writer of the book of Ecclesiasties is living a world very similar to ours. There is a mood of despair present in a changing, out of control world. The Egyptians are controlling the land now, bringing with them a new competitive economy, one where you can get rich quick but loose it all even more quickly.
The Israelites remember their glorious past, their good old days. They don’t know what the future will hold…and see no alternative to the present.
The Ecclesiastical poet is full of despair…vanity of vanity, all is vanity. What he wants, like all of us, is answers.
What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? What does it mean that someone suffers and dies while someone else prospers and lives?
Why do we keep fighting? Keep trying to enlarge our boundaries? Why do we keep wanting more at the expense of others?
These are not new questions. They haven’t been answered to our satisfaction yet.
It has been almost 9 years since one of my colleagues died
of cancer. She and I would see each
other at synod events and talk about raising children while being in the
parish. She and her pastor husband had
adopted a little boy about the same age as
So we had a lot in common. But then the cancer came and moved very quickly and she was dead. That funeral was very hard for me. Why, God? Why Barbara?
As I came back to my office at a church in
We have such human questions, human concerns. We expect everything, even death itself to live by our schedule, our whims, our rules.
But God comes to us with answers even bigger than our questions. Arms open wide, God comes to dwell with us and walk with us. Not so that we can understand it all, our human reason can’t comprehend the mind of God.
So that we live it all fully. We are given the ability to experience the whole range of human emotion…joy, sorrow, excitement, despair. (For us Norwegians, that cycles a little closer than for some of you, say, Irish!).
God holds it all. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”
No necessarily our time, our season. But God holds it all, each turn of the calendar, each twist of life.
And if we understood it, if we could wrap our minds around it all…we wouldn’t need God. We wouldn’t need faith. We wouldn’t know mystery or longing or surprise.
Sometimes, sometimes at those hard, difficult, painful moments all we can do is trust in God. Throw ourselves crying into God’s arms.
And trust that God is still, ultimately in control.
Now, as you know, that doesn’t get us off the hook. We trust in God and God’s mercy. And then we live that trust out in how we deal with the world, our neighbors, and our enemies.
We live that trust out in how we risk loving and who we risk loving.
Matthew gives us a list…the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the imprisoned...
And God gives us the push…go and do likewise…
It is okay to struggle with the questions, the whys of life and faith…
We can do that together here. It is okay to struggles with doubt and direction. Let’s do that together also…
But just remember, even as we ask the questions, God is holding us with bigger answers for questions we don’t even know how to formulate and we don’t even dare ask.
That is faith. Trust. And hope.
This gift of live we have been given by God is pretty amazing in all of its color and emotion and largeness.
God lives it with us. “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them…”
Yesterday, today and tomorrow….
So maybe I’ll resolve to trust God more in 2007!!!
Hold me to that? Okay?
And by trusting God more I’ll be able to risk more, do more, love more.
By the grace of our amazing God. Amen.