Interesting eve this is. . .

In our spiritual but not religious idea of Christianity, many admire Jesus and some want to follow Him but it would seem that they are more enamored of a noble man than God in flesh.  Augustine faced the same issue.  They would warm to a religion “to claim that Christ’s grace consists in his example and not in the gift of his person”  (Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum, II, 146).  Everyone from Mormonism to those who would never set foot in any church likes the idea of a good example.  Jesus is certainly that but not primarily.  There is nothing Christian about looking to the Son of God in flesh as mere prototype of what we could be or should be if we simply worked a little harder at it.  In fact, there is nothing particularly religious about a God who is our example only and not the prime actor for our salvation.

On one hand it focuses only on the present as if today was the most important day of all.  The Son of God was incarnated of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit not to help us better ourselves or fix the problems we face in the moment but to pay the cost of our redemption not by example but by blood and to present us to the Father wearing the righteousness He earned as our clothing for everlasting life.  A little grace to guide us now is not a bad thing but God did not need to wear our flesh or die our death for sin in order to give us a good example.  We have had good examples throughout time and they have been easily forgotten or admired without salutary effect in our daily lives.  Why would God send us His Son to be numbered among the many whose good ideas for a better life have been overlooked by a people who like the idea of righteousness without wanting to actually work for it?  No, the gift of God in time and for eternity is His Son in our flesh to be our Savior and Redeemer, doing what we could not do and would not if we could and facing what we would deny so that we might behold eternity.

On this night, the world waits for one year to end and another to begin.  For the Christian, however, we have not invested in the passage of time but in the One whose entrance into time provides the opportunity for eternity for those who love His appearing.  Christ is teacher, to be sure, but not first and not primarily.  He is Savior and Redeemer.  We would love the idea of a tear of a calendar which would erase the past we would rather forget and provide the promise of a better future but that is not what we get in Jesus.  He does not erase the sins we commit but cleanses them by His blood.  The stubborn stains of our failings and the unraveling of life in the face of death cannot be wished away.  Tonight belongs to One whose birth in flesh we just celebrated and because it is His, it can also be ours.  No one knows the future but Him who is its end and consummation.  We put our faith not in the hope of better day to come but in the Day of the Lord in which salvation is ours because He paid our cost.  That is what rescues New Year's Eve from the inevitable disappointment of a yesterday which can never quite be left behind and a tomorrow as filled with foreboding as with hope.  Christ is the key!

O Lord, You have been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth or ever You had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God. You turn man to destruction and bid us return, you children of men.  A thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.  The days of our years pass before you as we are born and die.  Do not judge us, O God, nor deliver us to the pain of eternal death but forgive us, O merciful Savior, all our innumerable sins and shortcomings.  Impress in us, we pray You, the constant thought of the vanity of the world, the certainty of death, and the judgment to come, not to deprive us of hope but so that we might mortify more and more the lust of the flesh, the desire of the eye, and the pride of life -- that we may be prepared at all times for the coming of the Son of Man.  Keep us mindful that we are strangers and pilgrims on earth and give us grace to look for the city above, on high, where our citizenship is eternal in Christ, that we might follow those who have kept faith with Him and through faithfulness and patience have overcome the world and inherited the promises once made in our baptism.  Help us to life in holiness and to die in peace through our Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly bodies and fashion them like His own glorious body, never to die but only to live in blessedness forever.  Amen.