1/2/66

Scripture: Revelation 21: 1-7.

We have joyfully celebrated another holiday season. Christmas came, with all of its assurance and charm, and with a recurrence of the spirit of goodwill that we desire to see continued through the coming year. The old year has passed and we now enter upon a new year. A new year means a great deal to the people of many parts of the world. In some countries of the orient, it is a time for the payment of all debts and a new beginning. In many places, it is a time for noisy demonstration. Probably few are very much noisier than some of our own American communities, notably downtown New York City!

How we love what is new! Our advertising capitalizes upon it, constantly tempting the customer with what is new in food, clothing, transportation, entertainment, housing. Indeed we seem to demand what is new as though it were an urgent need. There does seem to be a lift to our spirits when we don a new suit or coat. We hold our head a little higher when we drive down the road in a new car. The new television set or game table excite the whole household. One trouble is that one new thing calls for another. New suit or dress calls for new hat, gloves, shoes to match. New car calls for better garage. Before we know it the newness enslaves us. What has recently become new, becomes too quickly old, and, in our bondage, we are again chafing for something different. Perhaps our attraction for the new needs a bit of critical analysis. What do we mean by the new?

For one thing we speak of something new to distinguish it from what is old. And old can have several meanings. Sometimes it means something that lasts through all times. It is not subject to the change of time. Then, of course, there is another meaning involved when we say something is old meaning that it passes away --- the destiny of everything created --- whether it be a shoe, green grass, a machine, an animal; or even a nation or a civilization --- or an individual. We think of something as old when it is old in time; or when it has already been known or experienced; or when it has been superseded or outgrown.

Now turn back to the word new. When we speak of Christ making all things new, we do not think of Jesus as just another new thing. He is not just another person on the horizon of history. But he is the one eternally new. There is that about his spirit which belongs not just to “the old days” of nineteen hundred and sixty-odd years ago. It belongs to every recurring age. Or perhaps we might better say each new age rightly belongs with his spirit, for He is not only lastingly old, but is everlastingly new.

When one becomes, as we have sometimes said, “a new person in Christ,” it is not just because the experience is young, but because there is a newness of quality. Jesus, whether he be “suffering servant” or “risen Christ,” is the essence of reality. His is transforming power. He is vitally fresh and continually new. So when we say that “Jesus makes all things new,” we are perhaps saying that eternal reality is experienced, in time, through Christ. Because of this experience, existence in time takes on a different quality and perspective.

Let us see some of the ways in which he makes newness of life. A California pastor, Charles Boss, helps us at this point.

1) Christ makes religion new.

As one looks through the Scripture, one sees how often the prophets and spokesmen for God are in conflict with the established religious notions of their day. The Old Testament prophets were often at odds with the religious practices that had grown old and errant. They felt a terrific urge to proclaim what was new in the sense of being vital and right.

Certainly Jesus found his chief opponents to be the religious men --- at least some religious leaders --- of his day. When religious forms and motions get to be as old and outworn in the aging sense as they were in the practice of Jesus’ opponents, then they do need to be replaced by the new --- not just something different, but the lasting newness of Christ. I suppose that, by referring to Scripture alone, one could make a good case for the argument that religion can be God’s greatest enemy --- if it be religion that has grown old in the decadent sense.

Mankind has a great desire to be religious. Anthropologists find no tribes or peoples who have not had some kind of religious devotion. In some cases, it may have been quite crude, often narrow, sometimes cruel; or sometimes highly ethical; but some form of religion there is. When the religion is a highly ethical one, making great demands on people and their way of life, it often becomes uncomfortable and inconvenient. If man finds this to be his case, he sometimes invents his own religion to ease his conscience and maintain his respectability. And he can come out with some humdingers like the book of Mormon or some other special revelation. I suppose that, if truth be known, we have an urge to create our own gods to be worshipped in a kind of idolatry, feeling that there must be an appropriate god for every religious notion. But the evil, the wrong, in being religious in this way is that it crowds us out from being Christian. For the newness of Christ is the eternal truth or rightness of God’s created realm.

Jesus tells stories of many people who are religious, but who refuse to take up their cross and follow him. And this describes a lot of our world, and a lot of us people, doesn’t it? The big battle that Jesus fought was with phony religion. The curse, and the weakness, of his church, is the number of folk in it whose claim to being religious does not include Christ in any living vitally personal way. But, while Christian church folk need to be continually concerned for the vital newness of Christ, lest their own religion be phony, let us not make the mistake of assuming that phony religion is found only within the church. It is rampant without, as well. Some of the most pious bigots imaginable are those outside the church who brag of their own self-righteousness and about how good they can be without bothering with the church.

The self-righteousness of the “do-gooder” citizen who stands to poke holes in the religious institutions of the community is particularly nauseating. I am seldom impressed with the assertion of someone who takes the trouble to maintain that he can be “just as good a Christian” without going to church. Besides, who ever spread the notion that we go to church because we are “good?” Rather, we go to church, do we not, because we need strength from God --- because we see our own phony tendencies and need to be made new in Christ.

Christ makes religion new because he makes people new. When men and women, young and old, come in open minded search, in repentance for wrong, in acceptance of Christ, in dedication to what he reveals as right, the eternally new pervades their being and renews their spirit. It is no longer just a matter of “being good” most of the time in the accepted sense, but of being related to God in Christ. And he becomes the new source of good news.

When our religious expression stems from our Christian commitment, then the bondage is gone. And we serve in his spirit because we love him and want to please him. If we live with him daily, there are new avenues of understanding about his goodness and love --- new insights into what he means to us and what it is to live for him. There is new power to face troubled times. Christ is not a drag upon our joy; a millstone around our necks. He does not hedge us in to make us miserable. He is the one who releases us into new freedom, into new insight, which can help us develop our potential in creative directions. Christ makes religion new!

(2) Further, Christ makes our relationships new. If we be new creatures in Christ, we can see people about us in a different way. The people we see are no longer competitors whom we must conquer; they are sons of God whom we can love, and they can be introduced to Christ’s spirit. This does not occur automatically. It takes a kind of discipline.

The newness we speak of in Christ is a new possibility which we must make real by our constant relationship to God, and our obedience to His spirit. It takes some effort to bring the Christian spirit into our relationship with those around us. But it is possible when the eternal newness of Christ is in us and we are looking through that perspective.

A great area where Christ makes things new is in our marriage and family relationships. When we take Christian objectivity, humility, honesty, patience and concern for the other person into our families --- this can make a tremendous difference! There is a new quality in our homes when the vitality of Christ is present. A lot of us could use the power and presence which the risen Christ brings to this area. We are often pretty stormy at home! One man found some of that presence and power in an interesting way. He was a man whose vocation kept him in constant contact with people -- some of whom led stormy lives. He himself was a fellow with some inner conflicts which he had to live with. He knew that his wife had resources of spirit he wished he might share. He noted that she regularly had a quiet time each morning with her Bible and books. On a particularly desperate day, he asked her to lead him, too, “beside the still waters.” And she did. Actually, in their case, it meant praying together. And it opened new vistas of serene understanding!

Another man was commenting to an acquaintance on his bumper-to-bumper experience driving during a freeway traffic jam. He said: “There we were, driving temper to temper.” This too often happens in our families, when we relate to each other only “temper to temper.”

It makes a terrific difference in a home when parents give Christ first place in their hearts and help children to do the same. When this is the case, we can discuss, with honesty and openness and in the spirit of concern, the tensions that tear us apart. Your home life can be vastly finer, when you let Christ come into it through your own commitment and through your encouragement of the others to share the same experience. For He makes all things new -- and this is no extravagant claim. You can walk out of the service today, if you will, a new creature in Christ. Christ can make your business and social relationships new, too. We can be freed of a lot of the phony relationships, to which we feel bound, if we become open and honest in Christ’s spirit.

(3) Still further, life’s dead ends can be opened up by Christ’s spirit. He makes our circumstances appear differently. His spirit can obliterate the limitations that cramp us. We become aware that, even though we have our limitations to which we have to become adjusted, there is a fulfillment possible; and we are released not just in some future life, but in the here and now.

This is not to suggest that, when we give over our lives to Christ’s spirit, he becomes our errand boy, fixing all the circumstances so that they will give no pain. The outward circumstances and limitations often remain the same; but the way we see them becomes different. Life is transformed by changing the way we look at it.

A little girl was having serious difficulty with her eyes. Her teachers and her parents could not understand why her school work was so poor, for she appeared to have ability to do better work. Finally she was taken to a clinic, where it was discovered that her eyes were out of focus. And she was fitted with glasses. As she walked home, wearing the new glasses, she was heard to say, over and over: “My, I didn’t know the world was so beautiful! I didn’t know that everything is so beautiful!” The only difference was that a pair of properly fitted lenses brought things into focus for her.

That is how Christ can make things new for us -- to help see things in proper focus; in meaningful perspective. The effect of circumstances in our lives is determined very much by our attitude toward them.

Here is the story, reported in a popular magazine, of a young fellow who fell victim to Hansen’s disease, popularly called leprosy. He was isolated by that circumstance from family and friends, and became terribly disfigured before doctors discovered the sulfone drugs that now cure the ravages of the disease. His illness was thus arrested, but a return to normal living appeared to him impossible because no one would admit him to a job or associate with him. In a moment of desperation, he sought an interview with a well-known Christian leader in a church not his own. It was not easy to give him a notion that Christ and a few Christians cared. But, little by little, it happened. One introduced him to plastic surgeons who gave of their time and skill to improve his disfigured face. Someone else invited him to dinner at recurrent times. Still others brought him into constructive employment. He began to feel alive again.

He knows that life will never be “normal” for him in the sense that it appeared to be before onset of the disease that crippled him. But he has found strength to live and meet life’s problems. His friendships are as precious as rubies because they have been offered in the spirit that Christ came to earth to make possible.

Sometimes it is just a matter of a new look at living that makes the big difference. Someone has found this gem in a Nebraska newspaper: “The rains that nourish the optimist’s flowers make the pessimist’s weeds grow; and the drought that does what the pessimist predicted for the flowers, does what the optimist hoped for the weeds.” It is a Biblical observation that the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. But the benefits of the rain become plain in one’s point of view.

But the relationship of Christ to the circumstances of our life is not purely a matter of optimism or pessimism; it is a matter of confidence that Christ controls the right in history. Ultimately, he is in charge whatever the circumstance may be. Sometimes we can change the circumstance by using the resources which Christ makes available to us. We need not lie down and submit to all of the reverses that appear. Christian faith encourages us to rise up and follow our Lord, and to help to make right the circumstances about us. Even when a given circumstance can not be changed, Christ’s spirit can give us a new focus upon it. God has a way for the person who does the best he can, putting forth the energy and commitment of which he is capable. There is a way to meaning and purpose through the dead ends of living. For Christ has a way for us -- either out of our difficulty, or a way of victory in the difficulty.

You and I can walk out of this service today with a new heart. For, indeed, Christ makes all things new. We can find him and his way by opening our lives freely to him, in confession and penitence, in acceptance of his forgiveness for our shortcomings, in readiness to receive his presence and his guiding, in dedication to what he reveals as his will for our lives.

New life is possible to all of us in this new year now beginning. Life can be new in your home. Let Christ’s spirit of understanding and concern be the key to new relationships with those whom you love. New life is possible at work. Let the job be illuminated by Christian consideration, especially among the people involved in the job. New life is possible in our nation --- and desperately needed here. Our country needs a new, or renewed, moral culture -- a new way to getting on with each other as citizens, and of getting on with the people of other nations.

Life should be new in our church. We enter 1966 with a new house for a church home. It is not completely finished, but it can be used well now, and better soon. Let us build the home within its walls that shall be Christian in spirit and in truth, where we and many others shall gladly come to worship, to study, to work together in renewed dedication and in programs made new.

Personally, we can invite Christ into our hearts simply and willingly. Let us, just as surely, invite his presence and his leading into our Christian fellowship. We can offer our service in his spirit, who makes all things new, and who can make this year new, not only in time, but in lasting truth.

Amen.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, January 2, 1966.

Also at Waioli Hui’ia Church, January 6, 1974.