The sermon for December 31 was based on Luke 2:33-40.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

We're down to the last few hours of this calendar year. The time has come for countdowns and kisses and resolutions. People all over the world are, even as we speak, resolving to be the people they dream of being. They're going to learn Portuguese, lose weight, quit smoking, and whole host of other things ranging from noble to despicable. Ugh, resolutions!

We, on the other hand, do something different, similar but significantly different. Did you pay attention to the collect this morning? On behalf of us all, Pastor Trouten asked God for the following: Direct our actions according to Your good pleasure, that in the name of Your beloved Son we may be made to abound in good works. This is another way of praying, Thy will be done.

We're not good at submitting ourselves to the will of God. In fact, if it weren't in the Lord's Prayer and if it weren't for the fact that the Church makes us pray for such a things as often as she can, I'm not sure how often any of would ever ask God to work His will in our lives. We love and cling to the illusion that we are free people, able to decide for ourselves what is good and bad and then follow up on our decisions with the right kind of action. But if that were truly the case we wouldn't have this annual shame-fest in which we resolve to be better people.

The truth of the matter is that we are not free, at least not when it comes matters regarding our souls. We cannot love God unless He makes us love Him. We cannot be what we are created to be unless He makes us what we are created to be. We cannot even live unless He gives us life and sustains it. Today we encounter Jesus as an infant in the temple, being blessed and spoken of by those who have spent their whole lives waiting to see Him with their own eyes. Christ became and infant because we too are children. Jesus says that only the childlike can enter the kingdom and we read in Hebrews that in both the Old and New Testaments God treats us as His children.

In the Old Testament God treated us as if we were very little children. If you take the time to read the Old Testament books you will discover that God told His people what to wear, what to eat, what not to eat, where to sleep, when to move, how to and who they were to marry and basically took control of every facet of Israel's life. He punished them severely for disobedience and rewarded the greatly for obeying His commandments. What God the Father never, ever did was let Israel choose for himself what was good or evil, or imagine that he was free from God.

The New Testament is somewhat different. When Christ came in person to grapple with His people and conquer the devil He changed the way we relate to God. God no longer treats us like babies, dictating what we should wear and where we should sleep and with whom. Instead He makes plain what His will is and asks us to comply with it out of love for all He has done for us. He withhold punishment until the end of our lives. If we turn our backs on God our Father He will put us in hell where our suffering will never end. He, likewise, delays our gratification. If we are conformed to His will we may not receive the desired peace and bliss until we're called home.

In Moses' day if you were deviating from the will of God you'd know it because the ground would open up and swallow you and your family and all of your livestock. In our day you must be asked and prompted to examine your life over and over. So how are you who are supposed to be mature heirs of God's kingdom doing at conforming your lives to His will? Are you spending your days listening to a lot of secular counselors telling you that the most important things in life are asserting your will and finding your self-worth or are you asking God to direct your life according to His will? Are you confessing Christ faithfully or trying to avoid conflict? Do you study His Word with your fellow Christians or do you run from it as if it didn't matter?

God has graciously chosen to treat us like grown men, to tell us His will and trust us to comply with His wishes. He has every reason to expect that we will. He has been nothing but good to us in spite of our manifest unworthiness. He has made His will perfectly clear in Holy Scripture. He has saved us from death and promised to be with us always. If every anyone deserved to have His wishes complied with it God our good and gracious Father in heaven. Yet we daily and viciously turn against Him and His benevolent will for us. We can't help ourselves.

We can't help ourselves. Even when we want to do His will we find ourselves unable. Like the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, our spirits are sometimes willing but our flesh is too weak. Very often though, our spirits aren't even willing. So what are we to do? There is nothing we can do. God must come and rescue us from ourselves. He must cause us to do what we ought to do. He must take up residence in us and move us according to His purposes. We must become possessed by His Holy Ghost. This is what it means to pray: Thy will be done.

In Holy Baptism God takes our lives into His hands. He fills us with His Holy Spirit. He makes us His children, His Sons and promises to guide our lives toward life everlasting. We are nourished along the way with the Body and Blood of Jesus given for the forgiveness of our sins. We are directed along the path of righteousness by Holy Scripture which is the very Word of God without error, given for our salvation. We are encouraged at every step by the absolution of our Pastors which has both the authority and power of God Himself to make us innocent and pure.

If I were going to make a resolution this year that would improve my life in ways that I could appreciate and that would also be of real benefit to the other people in my life, I would resolve to being receiving Pastoral confession and absolution. I would resolve to make use of every gift God has given beginning with the one I've most neglected. This is what God wants you to do and He promises to work through it. You can spin your wheels trying to bolster your ego by learning a foreign language that you'll never actually use or you can let God keep His promises to you. If you must resolve to change do what Anna and Simeon did, resolve to let God be God.

It is much more difficult that it seems. We are not suited to lives of faithfulness and obedience. No one outside the Church can help us be the people we need to become and too many people inside the Church are unwilling to help us. We hear the will of God and we feel His mighty arm at work in our lives and we get claustrophobic. We are like angry willful little children struggle to escape the embrace of our infinitely powerful and wonderfully patient Father. We think He's trying to imprison us, to reduce us to nothing. He isn't. He's loving us. That's all.

We would trade the loving hugs of God our Father for the imaginary autonomy proffered by the devil and the world around us. We are just that sad. But God won't have it. He sets us in Churches and causes us to pray for His will to be done and then He grants our request. He makes us love Him by loving us first. God is good in ways we can't even begin to imagine.

That goodness is nowhere more astounding than on the cross of Christ. There we see how Good He really is, how helpless we really are and how powerful His love is. Jesus dies to forgive our sins and restore us to God our Father. We don't cooperate in that at all. We don't share in the effort. He forgives our sins by appeasing God's righteous wrath. He rises from the dead to lead the way to life eternal. He does for us what we do not deserve and could not achieve. You are not free from God's will because of the cross. You are not free from God's law because of the cross. You are not free from God's control because of the cross. You are free from the will of the tyranny of your own will. You are free from the guilt of having broken the law. You are free from the death's control over you life. You are free in the way a child living in a terrible and impoverished orphanage is free when he has been adopted by a wealthy and loving couple. You are not autonomous you are loved and included. You have a place at the table. Come eat. Amen.

The peace of God, which passes . . .

Last Updated: 7/15/2008