Homily for New Year's Eve (2007)

[Isaiah 30:15-17 / Romans 8:31b-39 / Luke 12:35-40]

If it is in quietness and trust that we find our strength as the first reading tonight had it, then we can do no better on this last evening of 2007 than take to heart the words of tonight's Epistle. If you've got God on your side, "for you," then what is it that you have to fear? If God has loved you so much that He did not spare His only Son but gave Him up for you, then how will He not give you all things graciously with Him? If God is the One who has declared you "not guilty" in His Son, then who is it that will be able to bring any charge whatsoever against you? There is only One who could - and that is Jesus Christ Himself - but since He has died for you, was raised for you, sits at the right hand of His Father and ceaselessly intercedes on your behalf, He's not a likely candidate to bring any charge against you, is He?

And so St. Paul comes at last to his greatest question of all: who shall separate you from the love of Christ?

Tribulation? Distress? Persecution? Famine? Nakedness? Danger? Sword?

Make no mistake about it, my friends, any of those things can befall us in the New Year. We'd be utter fools to imagine that our God was some sort of talisman that we kept about us to ward off trouble. That's not how our God works - not the God who came among us as a little child so that He could bleed and suffer, agonize and die for us. We don't gather this night to plead with God to keep trouble out of our way in the new year or to thank Him merely for keeping trouble out of our way in the year that is ending. Who in this room didn't have tribulation and distress in their lives this year? Who wasn't confronted at one time or another with danger? No, thinking that way only lands you in fretting and fear. Trouble will come to you this year. You can bank on it. "For Your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." "And another one bites the dust." Yup. That's the way life is in this fallen age - an age where sin festers until it is made visible in death.

But, the Apostle doesn't end there. It's true that troubles will abound. It's true that this year may very well bring you things harder to bear than any you've had to face in your life yet. It's true that your final struggle with death itself may await you in 2008. But there's a bigger truth than that, a greater truth and truth that allows us to face it all with hope and a joy that no trouble of this world can destroy.

"No," shouts the Apostle! "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." That would be He who loved us so much as to take on our flesh and be born of the immaculate Virgin and laid in the manger. That would be He who loved us so much as to shed His infant blood, to be placed under the Law so that He might fulfil it wholly for us. That would be He who loved us so much as to shoulder the burden of our sins and carry them to death on Golgotha's tree. In Him and in Him alone we are and can be more than conquerors of the troubles and trials that face us. More than conquerors, how? Why?

Listen! "For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, NOR THINGS TO COME, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation - ANYTHING ELSE in ALL creation - will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Do you get that? In your Jesus, God has loved you with a love that cannot be shaken or destroyed. It's a love that is stronger than anything you will have to go through this year. It's a love that is more powerful than the worst ravages of sin and death. And it's all yours in your Lord, in your Jesus.

And tonight, as you watch for Him, He comes to you. Knocking at the door, so that you can throw it wide open and bid Him come in. And then He does His shocking thing - He dresses Himself for service and has you recline at table as He serves up to you His Supper, His body and blood, for the forgiveness of all of your sin. This is the service He renders to you. As though He whispered: "Child, I have loved you all the way to my cross. Your sins are covered in my blood. Your death destroyed in my risen body. And as the promise, the guarantee that I am with you and for you and on your side and your dearest Friend forever, I reach you now that same body and blood. That's how you can know that I am for you, and that nothing - and I mean absolutely nothing - can separate you from my love."

As we open the door of our hearts at his knocking, as we come to Him at His table and let Him serve us, we experience exactly what Isaiah said: "In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength." Grant it to us, dear Lord, tonight and in the year to come, that we might meet whatever awaits us in the days ahead in the certainty and joy of Your unshakeable love, to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be all honor and glory, now and ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen!