Todays sermon is titled Enveloped in Grace. I hope it speaks to you! Happy New Year to all!!! For many, it has always been easier to say; “Bah, humbug!” to New Year’s Day than Christmas Day. After all, Christmas is about tradition, about family, about giving and sharing. Christmas is about the birth of our Savior! Christmas is about love, about finding forgiveness within ourselves. Only the Scrooge’s of the world look down upon Christmas Day and find only negative aspects of it. On the other hand, what does New Year’s Day stand for? For those of us who look at the world with a hardness in our hearts and high scrutiny through our eyes, New Year’s Day is just another empty promise. For those of us who look at the world with a caring and loving heart, as well as eyes filled with hope and wonder, then we see New Year’s Day as the opportunity to start fresh, to see all that is possible, we see a world filled with promise. The truth is, New Year’s Day probably comes somewhere in-between! For if we are true to ourselves, sincere and honest, we all know that 2015 is going to bring some pain, some hard times, some frustration. It will also bring days filled with joy, filled with love, filled with promise. The bottom line will be that the New Year will not be fully negative, nor fully positive. There will be highs and lows, good days and bad, wonderful moments and tragic moments. So, what exactly are we celebrating on New Year’s Day? Nothing has changed but the last four digits on the calendar. Well, if we take the message I gave Christmas Eve about taking one day at a time and embracing it, can’t we also do the same for a year? We can all look at the year 2015 and say this is the year I’m going to do this, or this is the year I’m going to finish this, or this is the year I’m finally going to… and you can finish that sentence. But, you know why so many people look at New Year’s as a negative as opposed to a positive? Because it is too easy to trip up so early in the year and mark the year as a failure. “Three days into the New Year, I’ve already broken my diet.” “Two weeks into the new year and no new job, oh boy!” “One day into the New Year and a fender bender. This year is going to be awful!” “Look, the month isn’t even over and I haven’t made it to church once. So much for that!” We set ourselves up for failure, do you see that? But, Rick, I can hear your argument already, you started this with take the year and make it something special. That’s RIGHT, I said the YEAR and make it special! Who says one set back has to ruin the whole year, especially when we are just a few days in? You came off your diet get right back on it, no one responded to your resume yet hit the street harder, you had a small accident no one was hurt get the car fixed and get back with it, you didn’t make church in January means you won’t make it the rest of the year? Why? Because that is the choice YOU made. What happens today shouldn’t dictate what happens tomorrow, what happens this week should not dictate what happens next week, and what happens this month should not dictate what happens next month. Here is the first resolution you need to make immediately and by no means should you break this resolution: Be easier on yourself! Find it easy to forgive yourself because the faster one can forgive themselves the faster they can move forward. Today, we have heard two readings which should make it easier for us to forgive ourselves, because of what we have been promised. Jeremiah tells us: Hear the word of the LORD, you nations; proclaim it in distant coastlands: ‘He who scattered Israel will gather them and will watch over his flock like a shepherd.’11 For the LORD will deliver Jacob and redeem them from the hand of those stronger than they. 12 They will come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion; they will rejoice in the bounty of the LORD—the grain, the new wine and the olive oil, the young of the flocks and herds. They will be like a well-watered garden, and they will sorrow no more. 13 Then young women will dance and be glad, young men and old as well. I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow. 14 I will satisfy the priests with abundance, and my people will be filled with my bounty, “declares the LORD.” Now, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with giving yourself the ability to forgive yourself. Here is the answer: do you think for one moment that God provides to those who are not deserving? That is what is being said here that God will provide, not only will God provide but God will provide wonderful things: The Lord will redeem us, the Lord will watch over us, the Lord will provide food and drink, the Lord will provide us with many gifts to rejoice. If we embrace these gifts, embrace the notion that God has provided us all we need, then why should we put ourselves in a position of saying we don’t deserve it? God has enveloped us within his Grace, why should we fight that? The answer is: we shouldn’t! No more than us failing to forgive ourselves for our mistakes, should we fight all the gifts surrounding us! God says; “my people will be filled with my bounty.” We are God’s people. Thus, embrace the bounty at hand! Our Gospel reading from John, today, continues the good news: He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. Sometimes, we look right past what we need to see. I said earlier that for many it is easy to look at New Year’s Day with skepticism, caution, maybe even a touch of disdain. We see New Years as a promise just waiting to be broken. With that thought in mind let us listen to the first two verses I just read once more: “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” Why? Why wasn’t Jesus recognized right from the very beginning? I think it is because we all wear glasses and don’t even realize it. We all put on glasses to allow us to see what we want to see and not what is truly there. We want to see failure, we want to see disappointment we want to see frustration, because if we see all the negative right away then we can point at it and say; “See, told you so.” When Christ arrived, and even after he was crucified many pointed at him and said; “See, he couldn’t have been the Messiah.” Yet, in our heart of hearts we know he was. We make it too easy to accept failure and too hard to accept success. All the while we are enveloped in God’s grace, God’s love, God’s forgiveness. But, we don’t see the good, because the glasses we have put on prevents us from seeing it. We need to take those glasses off, and we need to see more clearly what lies before us. When we take the negative, doubtful, disappointed tinted glasses off you know what we see? Exactly what John tells us we see: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. The Word came to us in the form of Jesus Christ, who walked among us. Jesus came to us from our Father in Heaven, a Father full of grace, full of truth, full of love for His children. A Father, who wants you to embrace yet another gift, the gift of a new year, the gift to pursue your dreams, the gift to find someone to love, the gift of time to forgive, the opportunity to do something more, something different, something new, and be able to do so, knowing that if nothing else happens in the New Year, these miraculous wonderful things WILL remain the same: God loves you, forgives you, and watches out for you. Alleluia! Amen!
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 17:50:53 +0000
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