A sermon on Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 147:12-20; Ephesians 1:3-14 & John 1: 1-18 by Jeff Wild
A video recording of the whole liturgy, including this sermon, is available here.

Help us, today, to see this moment of New Year as you see it.
We dare to believe that this is a new day,
And not a repeat of the year now gone.
Your grace gives us courage,
Your peace gives us hope.
Your presence is the promise of new life.
In Christ we can make a new beginning,
In your Spirit we can be a new creation.

(adapted from Terry Falla)

Happy New Year everybody! With fireworks, toasts, music, dance, good wishes, we welcome in the New Year. But when is New Year’s Day? For the Chinese, the Lunar New Year is in late January or early February, for Ethiopians New Year is in September, for Jews Rosh Hashanah is in mid-September, for Iran, much of Central Asia and for Baha’is around the world, it is known as Nowruz and is on 20 March. Closer to home, the Church’s new year starts with the First Sunday of Advent, while for accountants, it is 1 July. Perhaps we need a different way of looking at New Year’s Day. 

So, here we stand at the beginning of our new year, with a mixture of anxiety and anticipation. The past year has both built us up, and disturbed, even shaken us. This is a time to look back and to look forward. In fact, our first month of the year, January, is named after the two-faced Roman god, Janus; one face looked back, the other looked forward. As we look forward, how do the readings in today’s liturgy communicate Good News for us and for our world?

Sisters and brothers, all of our readings present us with a grand vision, of God’s loving design for us and for all creation. All of them are just jumping with joy and energy as they celebrate the goodness of God, and God’s grand design. We are urged, even impelled to not only accept and embrace this vision for ourselves, but to be part of it and to share it.

From this grand vision, I’ll highlight just three themes. The first theme that strikes us very strongly, is God’s lavish generosity. From Jeremiah we hear “The people will climb up Zion’s slopes shouting with joy, their faces beaming because of God’s bounty.” And “I’ll convert their weeping into laughter, lavishing comfort, invading their grief with joy.” 

Psalm 147 celebrates that the best bread is provided and that God keeps the borders at peace. Paul speaks of God’s “lavish gift-giving” and that we are not just free, but abundantly free. God has thought of everything. 

John’s Gospel repeats this over and over – generous abundance, exuberant giving and receiving, the Son is like the Father in generous giving. In fact, he describes God’s gift of life as “blazing” forth. John’s Greek captures this better perhaps than English can. The word “phos” for light, has overtones of radiance, the light of God’s presence, while the word “doxa” is more than glory, it expresses a “glorious manifestation”. In the word “pleroma” (v16), we find the abundant fullness of God’s glory. As Margie often likes to say, “Our God is not a God of scarcity, but a God of abundance. 

Even better than this generous giving, is God’s delight in it. Paul stresses this when he says, “what pleasure he took in planning this” and “letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making.” Jeremiah shows us an urgency and joy in God’s restoration of the people of Israel. There are many other examples of God’s delight in creation and in humanity, from the creation story in Genesis, to the book of Proverbs, to the prophets, such as Zephaniah, to the Letters in the Christian Scriptures. Giving creates joy in the giver and in the receiver.

God’s purpose is to gather everything together, especially to regather the broken, exiled, people and, by extension, the world. We hear the word “gather” four times in the reading from Jeremiah. Here, God especially reaches out to the vulnerable, to the blind, the hungry, to pregnant women and those who have recently given birth. God regathers Israel’s scattered exiles, in the act of rebuilding Jerusalem, as we heard in the Psalm. Paul tells us that God’s long-range plan is to bring everything, whether in heaven or on earth, together in Christ. 

Confronted with the vastness of God’s generous plan, how do we comprehend it? We are not called to understand it fully, as the Psalm (earlier) says, “we’ll never comprehend what he knows and does.” Rather, we are called to contemplate it, and by that to come closer to the source. We are invited to celebrate it, to share God’s delight in it, to commit to the plan despite our lack of understanding, and to worship God who so generously fulfils it in Christ Jesus.

As we listen to our reading from Ephesians, I wonder, “What is the depth of contemplation and experience of God, that has led Paul to write like this? We are caught up in his exuberance, as he repeats over and over, what a blessing we have in God. We lack nothing, we have every spiritual blessing that we need. God’s gracious plan exists and has always existed. 

The Greek word that is translated here as “plan” is “oikonomia”.  This word is made up of “oikos” which translates as “household” and “nemein”, which refers to management or rule or distribution of goods in a practical way. Paul uses it to mean God’s plan for the wellbeing of the whole of the household that God has created, the whole cosmos. However, as glorious as this sounds, it is not without cost. Our abundant freedom is only because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, who gave his blood on the Cross. God’s glorious plan is worked out through sacrifice because such self-giving is at the heart of God’s nature. It is through sacrifice that God gathers together the scattered, broken parts of creation. 

Such sacrificial love comes through in John’s Gospel as well. We hear that the coming divine Life-Light was rejected by the world. The word “glory” that we have in verse 15: “We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, generous inside and out,” has interesting overtones later in John’s Gospel. In chapter 12, we find that God’s glory is linked to and manifested in Jesus’ death on the Cross. How does God respond to rejection? God chooses the solidarity of the Incarnation and the vulnerability of the Cross. This is how the scattered people are brought together. Let us be witnesses, like John the Baptist, to such life-outpouring glory, shining with the fullness, the pleroma of God!

We have seen God’s quest, rejoiced in God’s lavish blessings, given at such cost. How does this impact us at the beginning of our New Year? God’s work of bringing people together is now the mission of the Church, inspired and empowered by the Holy Spirit. It is a mission of the whole Church, with an ecumenical vision. Let’s ponder that word “ecumenical”. It is also from the Greek, “oikos” for household. Originally it referred to the whole civilised world, as it was then known. It evolved to signify the Roman Empire. Christians use it to express the desire for the unity of the various parts of Christianity. But the Church does not exist just for its own sake. For decades, the World Council of Churches and others have seen ecumenism as bringing together the whole of the world, the fulfilment of the mission of regathering, bringing all together into God’s household.

A World Council of Churches document from 2007 puts it very well: God’s economy is an economy of life that promotes sharing, a globalised solidarity. It is an economy for the whole “oikoumene”, the whole earth community. This is based on the gracious economy of God that offers and sustains abundance for all. So the ecumenical movement is a quest for the completion of God’s economy, God’s gracious plan. 

The WCC’s concern for the whole world is expressed in a recent declaration. Following COP 30 in Brazil, it launched an Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action.

We are filled with God’s lavish spiritual blessings, freed from sin and its consequences; we have seen God’s glory revealed. What is our mission? I’d suggest a few basic ways of living this out. 

Basically, it is in seeking out and connecting with people who are already doing God’s work. These may be found amongst those of a professed faith and those of none. Interfaith and intercultural dialogue is more important than ever now, in the wake of the terrible events at Bondi, and ongoing attacks on Jewish and Muslim communities. Many municipalities have Interfaith Networks. Perhaps we could connect with them. Perhaps deeper work in this area could have prevented the disturbance to social cohesion in Australia that we have seen especially since the Hamas atrocities and the invasion of Gaza in October 2023.

The WCC’s Decade of Climate Justice Action will provide resources and opportunities for connections and actions to deal with a crisis that affects all of us. At the same time, we need to keep in mind that making connections and showing solidarity, requires the same vulnerability that Jesus showed. 

To come to know other cultures we could start with finding out more about their traditions of celebrating the New Year. Why do they choose that particular time? How do they celebrate it? What are the values behind what they are doing? 

So, if New Year’s Day is celebrated at various times of the year, what does that mean for us? New Year’s Day is today! Today is the day that we, as a community, rejoice in God’s abundant blessings. Today is the day that we embrace God’s vulnerability and solidarity by sharing in the Eucharist. Today is the day that we commit to God’s mission of regathering the broken world. Today and every day is New Year’s Day, as we look forward to the fulfilment of God’s gracious plan. Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus!