Not sure you’re aware, but today is our New Year’s Eve. I suppose if you spent the rest of your day wishing others a Happy New Year, there’s a good chance they’d think you’ve lost your mind. We who follow Jesus have a funny way of telling time. We live according to an increasingly foreign standard: by the movements of God and of His Christ.
Last week we talked about how full our calendars are. We wondered whether our calendars help us take control of our lives or if it’s the other way around. Our schedules impose upon us. They’re loaded, and we’re overloaded. Are you over occupied? But there’s another way.
Each morning, we ask ourselves what we need to accomplish before our heads hit the pillow at the end of the day, and everything in between becomes another restless pursuit of what’s next. A larger, less cumbersome life; one built upon God’s effort in us. And if we knew why each day becomes overfilled, we’d do something about it. Until then, we’ll keep ourselves occupied.
Imagine a scenario where you and your family decided it was time to walk away from a life that made unending demands upon you, and traded it in for one inhabited by, and lived in response to, the One who gave you the day to begin with.
There is another way to tell time. And there’s a more faithful way to meet each moment.
Today we come to the end of the Christian year. It’s our New Year’s Eve, and on it, we proclaim Christ as our King and the Lord of our lives—a Lord who is ahead of us, before us, and larger than us. On this day, we proclaim that 2,000 years ago there was One born among us who we still chose to live our lives in response to. Since Christ is King, He alone, to the exclusion of everything else, deserves our exclusive allegiance and our devoted attention. Jesus wants to be our basis, our only controlling story.
Jesus is a peculiar sort of king. He was born in a rickety stable and He died upon a rugged cross. These are the places Jesus occupies. And, still, we will find Him in the places we’re not used to looking.
Prophets are those among us who are occupied with listening for God’s truth when God has truth to give and bringing it to the people. The prophet Isaiah wants us to get used to this.
“In the future God will honor Galilee of the nations.”
No one in Isaiah’s time knew a thing about Galilee. It wasn’t on their maps. No GPS will get them there. Galilee is in the hollers. So, Isaiah had to provide directions.
“You get to Galilee by Way of the Sea.”
Well, people knew where that was. The Way of the Sea was an ancient trade route that ran along the Mediterranean cost, west of Israel. But Isaiah’s directions are lacking. Isaiah says,
“If you want to get to Galilee, you have to take a sharp turn somewhere along that cluttered highway. You’ll have to slow yourselves down as you make your way from there. Galilee is up ahead a stretch. Somewhere around there and sometime in the future, that where you’ll find Him.”
Prophets are those among us who are occupied with listening for God’s truth when God has truth to give and bringing it to the people. Prophets like Isaiah are direction-givers, but they’re the sort of direction-givers that most can’t trust. They’re not the ones to trust if you already know where you’re going. The only people who care to listen to the direction of the prophets are those willing to go where God can be found. Who are willing to clear their schedules and ditch their readymade itineraries, and pull off the cluttered highway that everyone else is stuck on because they trust that God’s direction will get them to a better place.
Prophets like Isaiah spoke God’s Word to an unfinished people living in an unfinished world with words from a God who is still, to this day, acting to bring the world to completion. The ones who listened to Isaiah the Direction-Giver believed that their people would one day be given a Messiah King, born in the fullness of time, whose arrival would occupy all of creation.
With this Messiah King’s arrival, heaven and earth would be filled with His glory, the world would be renewed. That moment would be so astounding that all would reset their calendars by it.
Isaiah declares that because of this Messiah, no longer would time be counted according to the drumbeat of war and war’s marching soldiers. Time would set its rhythm to this Messiah, who Himself would be the beat of God’s heart. And by Him, because of Him, this incomplete and preoccupied world will one day know completion and will one day be completely occupied by Him. That’s what we confess, celebrate, and hope for this Christ the King Sunday. At the end of this year, we reset ourselves in anticipation of Advent.
On this day we profess Christ as the Center of all history and the central expression of God’s salvation. We also confess that we are a people too often occupied by lesser loyalties. There is much that contends for and controls our time and attention.
Pastor Bobby Gross, in his book Living the Christian Year1, shares a few reasons why living according to the Christian Calendar is important to him. He writes,
“First, I want the Gospel story to shape everything I do, even how I reckon time. I want it to be truer and more essential to me than school calendars, or Hallmark calendars, or the calendar set by the IRS. I want the rhythms of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost to be more basic to my life than the days on which my quarterly taxes are due.
“And more important than that, trying to live inside church time has formed me in the Christian story—in Jesus’s story. Jesus drew my attention to Himself, and the church calendar has kept it fixed there—on Him.”
Jesus wants to be our basis, our only controlling story. He wants the rhythms of our lives to be constantly measured against his—by the patterns of His birth, life, death, and resurrection. This is much larger life than the one we’re used to, and it’s already been offered to us.
Do you know that we live in a Christ-soaked world? Do you know that our best lives will be lived when we become a Christ-soaked people? Christ occupies all of time and creation so that we who live within them may become a Christ-occupied people.
Happy New Year’s Eve.
All praises to the One who made it all and finds it beautiful! Alleluia! Amen.
Living the Christian Year. Bobby Gross. InterVarsity Press. 2009.