Happy New Year!  It's wonderful to be gathered in the Lord's name with each of you this morning.  I trust that your celebrations last night and this morning were delightful.

When I think about all the gathering and celebrating with food, champagne and song, I think that the reason we love the coming of a new year is the greatness of the promise that the new year brings.

Who knows what wonderful things this year might hold?

Jesus could return.  The situation in Iraq could greatly improve.  The economy could pick up.  There may be births and marriages that delight us, gorgeous spring days, boating trips, maybe the Lions will be great in 2006... who knows?

We are already full of wonderful ideas about what 2006 might be.  And partly what makes a new year so wonderful are the wonderful ideas we have about what we ourselves might be this year.

"This could be the year I finally... "  And it could!

This fullness of promise that the new year brings is what leads to our making resolutions...  We want to make that which is possible a reality, so we resolve ourselves that it will be so.

 

The only problem is that it usually doesn't work so well.

You could dig up ruins from Alexander the Great and find written there, "I will stop invading foreign peoples."  Paul, himself, wrote with trademark complexity, "but that which I mean not to do, I do.  And that which I mean to do, I do not do."

We can look all the way back to the story of Adam and Eve and find the same truth.  All these two had to do was control themselves, but they could not.  Even they, idealized people in a perfect world, could not by the force of their will--by their own power--find self-control.

The truth is that if we could simply will something to be true and have it be so, then we would have no need for God, because we would be gods.  We would be perfect.  But of course we are not perfect, and we cannot simply will anything and have it be so.  Not even about our own selves.

 

For twelve days we celebrate Christmas, and in this season of Incarnation we celebrate that God has come to us in our weakness and make us strong--by his own strength.  He saved our lives by his own life.  He made us perfect through his Son, with whom we are united spiritually by baptism and confession of faith.  This is the glory of the Christian faith and the glory of the Christmas season:  that what we could not do, God in his love and mercy has made us able to do, by his spirit that dwells in us.

And here is where we come back full circle to resolutions.  If we look closely we find that resolutions fail when we undertake them by our own will and by our own power, finding in the end that our own will and power are not nearly as strong as they might seem.  They fail as we fail--as we are bound to fail when we undertake anything apart from the direction and strength that comes from God alone.

 

This year as you consider all the possibility ahead, as you compose resolutions, go not to the mirror or the scale or the neighbors.

Go, rather, to God for direction about what needs to change in your life.

For the truth about our salvation in Christ is that it is not only eternal, but it is also growing and transforming us and the world here and now, where we are, leading us in every circumstance in which we find ourselves.  And that to which the Holy Spirit of God directs us, the mighty Spirit of God gives us strength us to carry out.

It is the way of things, the most glorious part being that we then become co-creators with God.  And only slightly less wonderful is how, in seeking his will and direction, we develop in our understanding of how to truly live our lives for Christ.

 

Amen.