Intro
Veiled underneath the noise and rancor of the new-year celebrations, a low thrumming makes itself known. It is a thrumming undercurrent of sad acceptance pervading the new-year festivities, a presence of wistfulness and nostalgia--and yes, even of muted sorrow.
The year has fled and gone, gone with it sorrows and its joys. The year is gone, gone with the glorious sheen of its many dreams, gone to join its brethren in the shadowed regions of the past.
Main Body
And there are those with whom we walked this past year, who walk with us no more. They are those whom we have loved, whose absence we so miss that now only a dead silence sulks where joy once burst forth in buoyant song. The stream of time has carried them away, beyond the bend in the road of time and the slope of hill to lands not passable.
And we this evening, those of us gathered here in the ark of God’s Church know how swiftly the stream of time bears us all away. It is a powerful, unforgiving stream, taking away all who are born within the confines of time, those born of fallen flesh.
This New Year’s Eve reminds us that our years are few. We live and move inside the bounds the Lord God has appointed for us. We live, encircled by time. Yet, we also see our time, our passing years, and our fleeting moments in the light of the Lord whose kingdom has no end.
But where does this stream take us? To what distant land or far shore? The older we grow, the more seriously we ponder that. It is no accident that we all have the same sensation. When I was but a child, a year sauntered along as if it were a century; now it flashes by in but a day. The older we grow, the faster the stream of time seems to carry us away.
Yes, we landlocked creatures must give way to the coursing, river’s current of time. We are born; we age; we die. It has been so since the Fall into sin, when Adam and Eve tasted of the forbidden fruit, making themselves into their own gods. Yes, “time, like an ever-rolling stream, soon bears us all away; we fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day.” (LSB 733)
But this evening, the enlivening truth from Jesus brings joy to those inside God’s ark of the Church. For what we know, that which comes after our death, shapes and changes the lives we live. Those who die a blessed death, live a blessed life.
Jesus says: “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lighted. . . . How fortunate are those servants whom the master finds watching for him when he returns! I assure you: he will prepare himself for the task, sit them down at the table, and come and wait on them. Even if their master comes in the middle of the night, or even near dawn, and finds them alert, how fortunate they will be!” (Luke 12:35-38)
The undercurrent coursing in this evening’s Gospel is not the fear of being unprepared. That isn’t what calls us forth from our slumber and sleep to be prepared for our Lord’s coming. The undercurrent is that the One whom we love--our Lord Jesus Christ--He’s coming back to bring us home. And who wouldn’t want to be ready and waiting for Him when He comes?
For the One for whom we wait shows Himself in His actions. Did you hear the strange words from the master in the Gospel reading? The One who comes back won’t demand that His servants slave about and bustle to serve Him. No, He comes to serve us, His servants, to sit us at the table to dine and drink as He prepares for us the food of the feast.
That’s the God we have. He’s the God who serves and saves those who cannot save themselves. He is a God who saves the likes of you and me, giving faith to us fallen beings. How like the One who says, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life--a ransom for the many” (Matthew 20:28).
From manger to cross to empty tomb, Jesus is the One who serves. He serves us all by being our sin on the cross, answering for it fully in the courtroom of God. Jesus serves us by living the perfect-and-holy life that a perfect-and-holy God demands of us, that which we could not do or live. He serves us in the waters of Baptism, washing our sins clean away, giving to us a share in His eternal life. He is the same who bids us to dine at His feast, a foretaste of what is yet to come.
Jesus tells what awaits us when the stream of time has run its course. It is a gift--a gift beyond all the imagining of our mortal minds! It’s a royal feast, unlike even the most flamboyant feasts of this fallen world! And we who have spent our lives watching, waiting, and eagerly expecting our Lord’s return, we are the honored guests at His heavenly feast. And the Lord Himself, He is the One serving us.
That’s why we can’t live our lives like those of this world, like those who don’t know the Lord Jesus. We can’t live our lives like those who don’t know the gift that He promises at life’s end, on the distant shore. That’s why we are to be watchful.
But we aren’t simply watching the clock tick away the final seconds of the old year. No, we have the watchfulness of faith. And what is this watchfulness to which our Lord calls us? It is a watchfulness for Him as He comes to us in His return on the Last Day. And it is a watchfulness for Him even now, in time, in His Word and in His Supper.
That’s why we’re here, on this New Year’s Eve, in the Ark of His Church, even as the river of time rolls on. Tonight, we gather in the Lord’s name and around the gifts He wants to give us. For we are His, and we want to be where He promises to come to us.
For we live as those who know where we are going. For we do know. Yes, the stream of time still carries us away--but it is God’s stream, running in His courses. We know where we go, for God has unraveled such mysteries to us in His Word. He has unraveled such mysteries proclaimed from this pulpit.
But not all know where the stream of time will take them. For some, the place to where it bears them is grief-stricken and forsaken, where there is only weeping and the gnashing of teeth. Many, even many who are on the membership rolls of this church, have no time for the gift that the Lord Jesus died to win--and lives to give. The world and its ways have charmed them with its siren call, maybe even more so as they see the world wisping away, knowing they are too weak to master it.
“This world . . . is passing away” (1 Corinthians 7:31) the Apostle Paul tells us. Yet, we know where we are going. Our Lord Himself has told us. “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places . . . I am going away to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2).
And in that house, on that distant shore, stands the King’s table. That’s where we’re going, to that banqueting hall. At that table are places reserved for you and me, all who believe in Him. All in the true faith have a place reserved especially for them, from even before the foundations of this world were set.
And, in Christ, we live as those who long to be there. This world and all that is in it can never satisfy the longing heart and the hungering soul. The longer a Christian lives in this world of sorrow and sin, the more he is moved to cry out with St. Paul: “I yearn to depart and be with Christ” (Philippians 1:23).
That cry expresses the longing of the Christian as he grows older, when many friends, family, and neighbors have already been carried downstream, already at the King’s table. They are home; we are on the way. They are not gone, but gone ahead of us, where we, too, soon will be.
We live as those who watch for the coming of the Lord. For although death may come at a moment’s notice and carry us to life eternal, we know the greatest joy of all. We know that when the stream of time at last ends for us, it ends at the throne of the Father. And so we live, always lifting up our heads, having the upward glance.
We dare never forget that the stream of time is not infinite. It runs out. It runs out at the feet of the crucified and risen Lord.
Yes, we live as those who keep our lamps lighted--our lamp of faith, fueled by the Holy Spirit whom God the Father has sent through His Son. We stay close to the Master’s pantry. And we eat of the food that He has provided: His body and His blood, giving us a glimpse, a shadow, of what awaits us in eternity. We eat and drink what He has given of Himself, His body given into death for our sins, His blood spilled to be the life-giving draft from which springs life eternal.
With what Jesus gives us, we belong to Him forever. Even death does not have the power to tear us from His love. As we wait, the blessed food of the altar strengthens us to make it to that far, distant shore, while we tarry in the ark of His Church.
Conclusion
What a glorious day it will be, when it will not be by faith, but with your eyes that you will see Him. On that day, you will join the saints who have gone before you. On that day, you will be in God’s eternal presence. You will give unending praise and honor to Christ, and to His Father, and to His Spirit--the holy, blessed Trinity--to whom will be praise and honor unto the ages of ages!
Grant us this, O Lord, unto us all! Amen.
