NEW YEAR'S DAY
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
THE OLD
TESTAMENT
Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
1. To everything an appointed time, and a time for every
purpose under the heavens:
2. a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to
uproot what was planted,
3. a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a
time to build,
4. a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to
dance,
5. a time shoot and a time to reload,
a time to embrace and a time
to refrain from embracing,
6. a time to find and a time to lose,
a time to keep and a time to
give away,
7. a time to cut and a time to sew,
a time to be silent and a
time to speak,
8. a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for
peace.
9How wearisome the work in
which we toil! 10I have seen
the affliction which God gave to afflict human children. 11He has made everything
appropriate in its time. He even set
eternity in their hearts, without which no one would ever find out the work
which God has done from beginning to end.
12I know that there is no good in them except to rejoice and
to do good while you live, 13and that, whenever people eat and drink
and see good in their labor, it is the gift of God.
THE PSALTER
Psalm 8
1. To the Music Director, on Strings, a Psalm of David
2. Lord our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth,
who set your majesty over the
heavens.
3. From the mouths of babies and sucklings you founded
strength
for the sake of those who
arise against you,
to make the enemy and the
vengeful stop.
4. When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon
and stars you established,
5. what are people, that you remember us; human
children, that you visit us?
6. You set us a little lower than gods, and crowned us with
glory and splendor.
7. You made us rule over the works of your hands. You set all under our feet:
8. sheep and flocks, all of them, even the cattle
of the fields,
9. birds of the heavens and fish of the sea,
taking the paths of the waters.
10. Lord our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth.
THE EPISTLE
Revelation 21:1-6a
1And I saw a new heaven
and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth has gone away and
there is no more sea. 2And I
saw the holy city Jerusalem coming down new from heaven from God, prepared as a
bride adorned for her groom. 3And
I heard a great voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the home of God is with
his people, and he will live with them, and they will be his people, and he
himself, God, will be with them, their God, 4and he will wipe every
tear from their eyes, and there will be no death, no mourning, no crying, no
pain ever again, because the first things have gone away.
5And the one seated on
the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And he said, “Write,
‘These words are faithful and true.’” 6And he said to me, “It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the
first and the last.”
THE GOSPEL
Matthew 25:31-46
31When the Son of Man comes in his
glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on
the throne of his glory; 32and there
will be gathered before him all the nations, and
he will separate them from each other, just as
the shepherds separate the sheep from the goats, 33and he will stand the sheep at his right and the goats at his
left. 34Then the king will say to those on his right, “Come, blessed of my Father,
enter the kingdom prepared for you from the founding of
the world. 35For I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36naked and you clothed me, sick
and you visited me, in prison and you came to me.”
37Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you
hungry and provide for you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38When did we see you a stranger
and welcome you, or naked and clothed you?
39When did we see you in prison and come to you?”
40Then the king will say to them, “I tell you
the solemn truth, every time you did it to one
of these, the least of my family, you did it to me.”
41Then he will say to those on his left, “Get
away from me, cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I
was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was
thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43I
was a stranger and you did not welcome me, I was
naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in
prison and you did not visit me.”
44Then they will answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty
or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and not help you?”
45Then he will answer, “I tell you the solemn
truth: whenever
you did not do it for one of the least of my family, you did not do it to me.”
46And these will depart into eternal torment, and the righteous into eternal life.
I T ’ S A B
O U T T I M E
A SERMON FOR NEW
YEAR'S DAY
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
by William F. Thomas II
Today I am 21,018 days old. 21,018 days after George Washington’s birth,
it was September 8, 1789, and he had been the first president of the new United
States of America for four months and nine days. 21,018
days after Abraham Lincoln’s birth was August 30, 1866, and President Lincoln
had been dead for nearly a year and a half.
21,018 after John F. Kennedy’s birth was December 14, 1974, and
President Kennedy had been dead for 11 years!
I was 18½ then.
One morning when I was about nine
years old, I had been at school for a short while when it struck me, the
inexorability of time, that time moves and it cannot be stopped. I realized on that morning, when I was nine
years old, in the fourth grade, that sooner or later that school day would end,
and then the school year would end, that I would finish elementary school, then
junior high, then high school, then college; that I was going to get older day
by day until my life ended, and that there was nothing that could stop it. It wasn’t a frightening realization, but it
was powerful. I have never forgotten
it. And so far, it has proven true. It’s been nearly 50 years since, and time
keeps passing on, an instant at a time, hour by hour, week by week, year by year.
Unless something happens to stop it,
every one of you will be 21,018 days old, two week past 57½. You will have finished school, probably; you
will have married, almost certainly; you will, in all likelihood, have
children; maybe grandchildren. You will
have known pleasure and pain, gain and loss, joy and mourning. You will have held new babies, and you will
have attended funerals for people you have loved. If you could know the pains you will endure,
you probably wouldn’t have the courage to fact them. If you could know the joys you will have, you
would give anything to get to them, and to keep them.
Life is hard. Life is wonderful. Life is worth all that is costs. And it all takes place in time.
And time is inexorable.
What is inexorable?
I think of a steamroller. It moves down the street, slowly, steadily,
unstoppably. That is “inexorable”. That is time.
You beautiful young women will learn
that your nose and your ears never quit growing. And you will discover that women have a
double layer of fat—it will almost certainly be harder for you to stay thin
than it will be for you young men.
You strong, energetic young men will
find your strength slowly growing weaker.
After age 30 things don’t work as well as they used to. After 40, you will begin to notice some alarming
symptoms. After 50, the word “old” will
begin to apply to you in places.
Twenty-five years ago on Christmas
Day, I preached the sermon in my church, hopped in my car, and drove down here to put a diamond ring on Rev. Winnie Elton’s finger. We began to plan a
wedding, and then, on June 10, 1988, it was our turn to be
newlyweds.
Twenty-three
years ago today I was driving to what was then called Clayton General Hospital,
to see my newborn daughter. She was in
Intensive Care, and we didn’t get to bring her home until New Years Eve. She had a bacteria that could have killed her
if they hadn’t caught it and put her on a 10-day round of antibiotics. When we got her home, we would lay her on the
couch and watch her sleeping, and be amazed that we could feel such an
overwhelming love. And we realized our
parents must have felt like that when they looked at us as newborns. It was our turn to be new parents.
The
day we had the funeral for my daddy, 11½ years ago, I got up, showered, and
shaved. As I stood shaving, looking at
myself in the mirror, I said, “Well, it’s my turn today, my turn to bury my
daddy.”
It
was my turn to be a child, it was my turn to be a teenager, it was my turn to
graduate from high school, then from college, then from graduate school; it was
my turn to be a young adult, it was my turn to be middle aged.
Now
it is my turn to be 57. There are
moments I would like to relive. There
are moments I would love to go back and fix.
There are mistakes I would undo.
There are things I was afraid to try I would go back and dare now. But it is time for me to be 57, it is my turn
to be 21,018 days. And I thank God! God has given me a finer wife and a finer
daughter than any man ever deserved. He
has given me today, and the privilege of being here with you.
Inexorable
time will come, and you will remember, I hope, that I used to teach your Sunday School
class. I don’t know how you will
remember it, but I will forever praise God for this blessing!
Now
it is your turn to be young and beautiful and handsome and strong. Now it is your turn to have your whole life
ahead of you, and to have very little acquaintance with the word
“impossible”. Now if you pick up your
Bible and try to read Ecclesiastes, you will probably find it as boring as a
math textbook. Because it is written by
an old man who had lived and loved and lost, and now he faces death, not sure
whether there is anything beyond that, afraid there is nothing. I think he is angry with God. I think he thinks God unfair and arbitrary. He rages that God would “set eternity into
their hearts” (Ecclesiastes 3:12), yet not allow them to reach it. It’s as if we are ants in a glass jar, who
can see a much bigger world out there, we know it’s there, but there is no way
we can reach it.
Yet
in this pessimistic, bitter mindset, he finds wisdom and true beauty:
1. To everything an appointed time, and a time for every
purpose under the heavens:
2. a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to
uproot what was planted,
3. a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a
time to build,
4. a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to
dance,
5. a time shoot and a time to reload,
a time to embrace and a time
to refrain from embracing,
6. a time to find and a time to lose,
a time to keep and a time to
give away,
7. a time to cut and a time to sew,
a time to be silent and a
time to speak,
8. a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for
peace.
9How wearisome the work in
which we toil! 10I have seen
the affliction which God gave to afflict human children. 11He has made everything
appropriate in its time. He even set
eternity in their hearts, without which no one would ever find out the work
which God has done from beginning to end.
12I know that there is no good in them except to rejoice and
to do good while you live, 13and that, whenever people eat and drink
and see good in their labor, it is the gift of God.
What do
you think? Is it true? Has God truly made EVERYTHING appropriate in
its time? Is there a time to kill and a
time to heal, a time for war and a time for peace, a time to shoot and a time
to reload, a time to hug and a time to refrain from hugging?
Who
knows how many keys there are on a piano?
That’s right, 88. Now, tell me,
which of those 88 keys is always the right key?
Which
one is never the right key?
Every
key is the right key, when it’s its turn to be the right key. Every key is the wrong key when it’s its turn
to be the wrong key.
Everything
in life is correct at the right time and place, and wrong at another time and
place.
What is
the time for hate?
Last
night a Facebook buddy told me her cousin’s six-month-old daughter is almost
certainly going to be dead of cancer in the next few hours. I hate cancer. And that is right. I have another friend, closer to my age,
whose grown son has a condition called trigeminal neuralgia. He is in almost constant pain, his nerves are
super-sensitive to everything. They have
tried everything any doctor has advised and they are always traveling, looking
for relief for him. They call it “the
suicide disease”, because many who have it reach a point where they can’t stand
it any more, and they end their lives. I
hate TGN. And that is right.
I hate
child abuse, I hate slavery, I hate racism and sexism and ageism and prejudice,
I hate many, many things. I hate them
because I am a Christian.
God
hates. The fifteenth chapter of I
Corinthians says God hates death, that death is God’s last enemy. I am glad God hates death.
There is a time for hate, and a time for love. There is a time for war and a time for peace. There is a time to dance and a time to mourn, a time to laugh and a time to cry.
God has made everything right for the right time.
There is a time for hate, and a time for love. There is a time for war and a time for peace. There is a time to dance and a time to mourn, a time to laugh and a time to cry.
God has made everything right for the right time.
Your
lives are yours. The choice is
yours. I’m not saying it will be yours
when you’re grown. It’s yours now. You, right now, are making decisions which
will affect the rest of your lives and the rest of lots of people’s lives. People you have never met will have their
lives changed by decisions you are making right now. Eternity changes, at least a little, with
every decision you make.
There is
a time to love, and a time to hate.
Which is it today? Your choice.
There is
a time to shoot and a time to reload.
Your call.
There is
a time to build and a time to tear, a time to sew and a time to cut, a time to
hug and a time to refrain from hugging.
A time
for war and a time for peace.
All of
this is your decision.
But
you’re not alone.
“In the
fullness of time, God sent forth his son, born a human being, born from human
mother…” (Galatians 4:4).
And in
the fullness of time, God will make everything right.
1And I saw a new heaven and a
new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth has gone away and there is
no more sea. 2And I saw the
holy city Jerusalem coming down new from heaven from God, prepared as a bride
adorned for her groom. 3And I
heard a great voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the home of God is with
his people, and he will live with them, and they will be his people, and he
himself, God, will be with them, their God, 4and he will wipe every
tear from their eyes, and there will be no death, no mourning, no crying, no
pain ever again, because the first things have gone away.
Yes,
inexorable time will bring that about too.
We will see the most beautiful face of all, the face of Jesus. We will feel the greatest sensation of all,
his arms hugging us in welcome. We will
hear the most beautiful music of all, his voice saying to us, “Well
done, good and faithful servant.”
When?
Who
knows?
Already
I have outlived so many great men. I’m a
year and a half older than Abraham Lincoln was when he died, eleven years older
than John F, Kennedy, about 25 years older than Jesus! If I live past April 4, 2024, I will have
outlived George Washington. And if I
live past February 20, 2034, I will have outlived my greatest hero, my daddy.
Or Jesus could take us all home today. I’m not
ready, not completely. I’d like to have done more for
him before then, more for my family, more for you, more for the world.
But
nothing, NOTHING life has to offer is anything like so wonderful as to be with
him. On my worst days, when I am so
discouraged and so frustrated and so afraid, I can’t wait. And on my best days, when I feel him closest
and love him best and have done all I knew to serve him, I can’t wait.
It’s all
about time.
It’s
about time.