A New Year Sermon

Pressing On: A New Year Sermon on Mercy, Release, and the Call Forward

Brothers and sisters, we come to this day carrying two things at once. We carry the weight of everything the past year has placed upon us, and we carry, whether we feel it or not, the quiet, persistent mercy of God. The question this morning is not simply how we feel about the year that has ended or the one that has begun. The question is what we will do with what we have been given. And the Church, in her wisdom, gathers us around the Word precisely at this threshold, because we need more than a resolution. We need a reorientation.

Paul writes to the church at Philippi from prison. That detail matters. He is not writing from a comfortable study or a season of uninterrupted blessing. He is writing from confinement, from circumstances he did not choose, from a place where the future is genuinely uncertain. And yet what he sets down in Philippians chapter three is among the most forward-leaning, hope-saturated passages in all of Scripture. He says, in verse twelve, "Not that I have already reached the goal or am already perfect, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus." And then, a few verses on, "Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God's heavenly call in Christ Jesus."

Here is the central claim of this homily, and I want you to hold it through everything that follows. We are able to release the past and press toward the future not because we are strong enough to do so, but because Christ has already taken hold of us. That is the foundation. Everything else rests on it.

Now let us stay with Paul for a moment before we move to Lamentations, because Paul is doing something very precise here that we can miss if we rush past it. He says he has not already reached the goal. He is not pretending the journey is finished. He is not performing a kind of spiritual cheerfulness that papers over real struggle. He says, plainly, I have not arrived. And then he says something remarkable. He says he makes every effort to take hold of something, and the reason he can make that effort is that Christ has already taken hold of him.

This is the order that matters for a new year sermon, for any honest reckoning with time. The effort is real. The straining forward is real. But it is grounded in something prior to our effort, something that does not depend on our consistency or our resolve. Christ has taken hold of us. The grip is his before it is ours.

And then Paul names the practice that makes the pressing forward possible. He calls it forgetting what is behind. Now, Paul is not recommending spiritual amnesia. He is not saying that grief is illegitimate, that loss should be minimized, or that the painful chapters of our lives simply did not happen. The man who wrote this letter also wrote with tears about those who were enemies of the cross. He knew sorrow. He knew the weight of his own past, including the violence he had done before his encounter with the risen Christ. He was not a man who had nothing to forget.

What he is describing is something more like a deliberate release. A runner in a race does not stop to dwell on the miles already covered. Not because those miles did not cost something, but because the finish line requires the runner's full attention. The past is real. The past has shaped us. But the past does not get to define the direction. That belongs to the call of God in Christ Jesus.

This is where Lamentations meets us, and it meets us honestly. The book of Lamentations is not a book of easy comfort. It is a book written in the wreckage of catastrophe, in the aftermath of Jerusalem's destruction, when the people of God were sitting in the ruins of everything they had known. The poet does not pretend that the suffering is small. He says, in chapter three, "I remember my affliction and my homelessness, the wormwood and the poison. I continually think about this and have become depressed." That is not a verse we put on greeting cards. But it is Scripture, and it is honest, and it matters that it is in the canon.

And then, in the middle of that devastation, something shifts. Verse twenty-one: "Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope." What does he call to mind? Not his own strength. Not a promise that the circumstances will immediately improve. He calls to mind the character of God. "Because of the Lord's faithful love we do not perish, for his mercies never end. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."

New every morning. The poet is writing in the ruins, and he is saying that the mercy of God is not exhausted by what has already happened. It arrives again. It is not rationed by the severity of what we have been through. It is not withheld because the previous year was hard. It is new. It is present. It is here on the first morning of a new year just as surely as it was on every morning before.

This is the theological ground on which a new year stands. Not optimism, which is simply a temperament. Not resolution, which is simply willpower. But the mercy of God, which is a reality independent of our feelings about it. The poet in Lamentations does not feel his way into hope. He calls something to mind. He makes a deliberate act of remembrance. He says, I will think about this. I will set my mind on the character of the God who has not abandoned us even here.

And that act of remembrance is what makes release possible. We do not release the past by pretending it was not painful. We release it because we have something more certain to hold onto. We release it into the hands of a God whose mercies are new this morning, who has not finished with us, who holds us in Christ even when we cannot feel the grip.

So what does this mean for us, gathered here at the beginning of a new year, carrying whatever we are carrying?

It means, first, that we are permitted to be honest. If the year that has ended was marked by grief, by failure, by disappointment, by illness, by broken relationships, by prayers that seemed to go unanswered, we do not need to perform a cheerfulness we do not feel. The poet of Lamentations did not. Paul, writing from prison, did not pretend his chains were comfortable. Honesty before God is not a failure of faith. It is the beginning of it.

It means, second, that we are invited to remember mercy. Not to manufacture positive feelings, but to make the deliberate act that the poet made: to call to mind what is true about God. His mercies have not ended. They are new this morning. Whatever the calendar year has held, that has not changed. The faithfulness of God is not a function of our circumstances. It is a function of his character, and his character does not shift with the seasons.

It means, third, that we are called to release. This is the harder work, and it is work. Paul says he makes every effort. The releasing of what is behind is not passive. It requires the same kind of deliberate attention that the poet gave to calling mercy to mind. It means choosing, again and again, not to let last year's failures be the lens through which we see this year's possibilities. It means choosing not to let old wounds have the final word. It means entrusting what we cannot change to the God who can redeem what we cannot.

And it means, fourth, that we are empowered to press on. Not in our own strength. Not by sheer determination. But because, as Paul says, Christ has taken hold of us. The pressing forward is a response to a prior grace. We pursue the goal because we have already been claimed. We reach toward what is ahead because the one who calls us is faithful, and his call does not depend on our performance in the year behind us.

This is the good news that the Church proclaims at the turning of the year. Not that everything will be easy. Not that the coming months will be free of difficulty. Scripture does not promise that, and we would be doing one another a disservice to suggest otherwise. What Scripture promises is the presence and faithfulness of the God who holds us, the mercy that is new every morning, and the call of Christ that is always forward, always toward the fullness of what he has prepared.

In a few moments, we will come to this Table. And the Eucharist is itself a new-year sermon in miniature. We come as we are, carrying what we carry, and we receive the body and blood of Christ, which is the mercy of God made tangible, made present, made ours. We do not earn a place at this Table by the quality of the year behind us. We come because we have been invited. We come because Christ has taken hold of us. And we leave, as we always leave, sent forward into the world with the bread of heaven still on our lips and the call of God still in our ears.

So as this year begins, hear the word of the apostle and the word of the poet together. Call to mind the mercy that does not end. Release what is behind into the hands of the God who redeems. And press on, not because you are sufficient for the journey, but because the one who calls you is, and he has already taken hold of you.

Great is his faithfulness. New is his mercy. Forward is his call.

Go in peace, and press on.

Sources Consulted

The Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible. Holman Bible Publishers, 2017. Philippians 3:12-14; Lamentations 3:21-24.

The Book of Common Prayer. Church Publishing, 1979. Eucharistic prayers and collects for the New Year.

F. B. Meyer. The Epistle to the Philippians: A Devotional Commentary. Religious Tract Society, 1906.

Walter Brueggemann. Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. Fortress Press, 1997. Discussion of Lamentations and the theology of divine faithfulness.

Gordon D. Fee. Paul's Letter to the Philippians. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1995.

Diogenes Allen. Spiritual Theology: The Theology of Yesterday for Spiritual Help Today. Cowley Publications, 1997.