Series: Growing Up Into Christ
#1: Life’s Spiritual Journey
New Year’s Covenant Renewal Service
Luke 2:21-22,39-40 and Ephesians 4:7,13-15 (NRSV)
By John Gill ~ January 1, 2023
Luke 2:21-22,39-40 (NRSV)
After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child, and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord… …When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him.
Ephesians 4:7,13-15 (NRSV)
…Each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift… …until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.
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The holiday season this year has been a little different than most. Most years, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day do not fall on a Sunday. It’s been a challenge to decide how many bulletins to print, since so many people have other plans or commitments for these Sundays. Thankfully, you have made worship on this New Year’s Day a priority. That means that either you are very devoted to God, or – that you didn’t get an invitation to any wild parties where you could raise a glass or two to welcome in the New Year. In either case, I’m glad you are here.
Terri and I have never gotten too excited about New Year’s Eve. Every year we stay up to “watch the ball drop” in Time’s Square, but as we do, we wonder why we bother. It’s just the passing of the calendar, an arbitrary yard stick measuring the constant passing of time – one moment is about the same as the next.
Every year it seems more and more challenging for us to stay up ‘til the stroke of midnight. Bill Vaughan has been quoted as saying, “Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to.”1 (end quote) If that’s so, I’d add that “Old age is when you’re wise enough just to go on to bed.”
If New Year’s has any redeeming aspect making it worthy of bothering with, I suppose it is the custom of making New Year’s Resolutions.
We’ve all done it at some point in our lives. We’ve made a resolution to better ourselves in the coming year, and sealed our pledge by clinking glasses and kissing our beloved at the stroke of midnight –
knowing we probably will fail to follow through – or even forget what it was that we had resolved on December 31st.
Knowing that tendency (at least within myself), my New Year’s Resolutions are usually pretty trivial. I take my New Year’s Resolutions about as seriously as the vow I take in Lent to “give something up.” I always resolve during Lent that I will give up lima beans. And I always manage to keep that vow.
New Year’s Resolutions are simply positive versions of our negative Lenten sacrifices – and often just as trivial. In 2023 maybe I’ll try lima beans – if I have to.
So many of our resolutions are pretty trivial and meaningless. But many of us may also make worthwhile resolutions that, if we actually kept them, would improve our lives.
Last year on the website “The Healthy”, Susannah Bradley2 listed the fifteen most popular New Years Resolutions: Get in shape … Lose weight ... Enjoy life to the fullest ... Spend less, save more ... Spend more time with family and friends ... Get organized ... Learn something new ... Travel more ... Break my smartphone addiction … Eat at home more … Drink less … Stop smoking … Reduce stress … Get more sleep … Floss regularly …
All worthy goals. In fact, they are so worthwhile, we make them anew every year – because more often than not, we gave up on them sometime around March.
How do we do at making/keeping them? According to the website “Insightout Mastery:”3 38.5% of adults in the United States set New Year’s resolutions every year. 23% of those who do, quit in the first week, and only 36% make it past the first month. Only 9% successfully keep their New Year’s resolutions.
There is nothing wrong with these resolutions – they are all good to pursue and our lives would be enhanced if we followed them. But most of us do not.
So, some resolutions are trivial, others are worthwhile, even though they are seldom kept. But there is a category of resolutions we should all make – and keep! These are the resolutions that are not trivial at all, ones we dare not fail at, because to do so has negative eternal consequences. I’m speaking of resolutions related to our faith in Christ.
That is what we are here today to do – to resolve that in 2023 we will be intentional about growing in our spiritual life so that this time next year, we will be more spiritually mature – more like Christ than we are today. We can do this, but only if we resolve to make it so.
That’s why our service on this New Year’s Day is a form of John Wesley’s New Year’s Covenant Renewal Service. In 1747, the founder of our Methodist movement strongly urged Methodists to renew their covenant with God. At the conclusion of this message, you and I will have the opportunity to do just that.
It’s also why, beginning this morning, I will be preaching an eight week sermon series on our life’s spiritual journey, I’m calling “Growing Up Into Christ.” The title comes from our scripture from Ephesians this morning, “…until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to
maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ…we must grow up in every way into Him… into Christ.” Come every Sunday to find out how it is that we grow into fully-devoted followers of Jesus.
My sermon series is loosely based on the book, The Critical Journey 4 by Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich. While I certainly will be developing my own series of messages, they will gain their inspiration from each of the stages of our spiritual journey, which are: Our Recognition of God; The Life of Discipleship; The Productive Life; The Journey Inward; The Wall; The Journey Outward; and finally, The Life of Love. As the Apostle Paul expressed it: we are to come… “to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ…[as we] grow up in every way into Him… into Christ.” Or what Methodism’s founder called “Going on to perfection” in love. In one of his addresses on Christian Perfection, Wesley said, “Perfection is only another term for holiness, or the image of God in man.” In other words, “growing up into the full-stature of Christ” is the goal of our spiritual journey.
Whether we progress steadily through these stages from Spiritual immaturity to Spiritual maturity – or stall-out at one of the stages and never fully grow into Christ-likeness, is up to each of us. That’s what the series is designed to do, to help us identify at which stage we may be in our spiritual journey to maturity, and what it will take to move to the next stage, so we can go on to the perfection-of-love that God desires for each of us.
It makes sense that our spiritual growth into Christ would be a maturing process. Scripture tells us that even Jesus himself went through a process of growth and maturing, both physically and spiritually. Our first lesson tells us as much – Luke writes that after the new-born Jesus was presented at the temple, the Holy Family “returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him.” And again, after their visit to Jerusalem when Jesus was twelve, we read, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” If our Lord and Savior had to grow and mature both physically and spiritually, so must we.
Our physical maturing is relentless, isn’t it. When I was a young man, I didn’t really think much about the aging process – I was just busy living my life. Then, one day I realized that I was the age my father was when I was born – and then again, when I passed the midway point of the average life expectancy of men. With each milestone, I became increasingly aware that time was accelerating. It seemed like only moments as our children were growing up, off to college, and into their own relationships making new lives for themselves. Suddenly, I am the patriarch of our family. I have lived through two battles with cancer (“praise God,” I am doing fine now) but I am feeling my age more and more. My bald spot is growing, and what hair I have left is turning more and more silver. And if that wasn’t enough evidence of my aging, I just turned 64 so, every time I look at my Facebook feed, I am reminded in multiple posts that very soon I will be enrolling in Medicare. Yes, our physical aging is relentless, indeed!
Of course, none of this is news to any of you. We all are already well-acquainted with the stages of our physical growth – we are all moving through them with the constant ticking of the clock and the flipping of the calendar: from conception, to birth, to childhood, to adolescence. On to young adulthood, marriage and children, and through middle-age “the prime of life.” Then, before you know it, you turn a corner and its retirement, decline in health, becoming “elderly,” and inevitably our death. Yes, our physical “maturing process” is actually a bell-curve – moving from birth to a peak of physical vitality and productiveness, then a steady downward trend leading to the “golden years” – and beyond.
That’s because the aging process is programed into the very DNA of our bodies. No matter how hard we may try to slow the process or to disguise the evidence of our mortal decay, there is no escaping it – physical maturing and aging are inevitable. As is written in Second Samuel (14:14), “We will surely die and are like water spilled on the ground which cannot be gathered up again.” Yes, our physical life’s journey has an expiration date.
But our Spiritual life’s journey is not inevitable, nor for this life only. While reaching the Life of Love is the goal to which we aspire, to get there, we must pass through all the stages that come before. We can become stuck - by choice or neglect, and not progress to the spiritual maturity God desires for us. It’s just as Paul writes in his Letter to the Philippians (2:12): “Therefore, my beloved.. work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”
The Critical Journey of our Spiritual life is not a “bell curve,” starting with conception and ending with death. No, our spiritual journey actually is a circle. It is the process of our spirit springing from the very heart of God, then moving through the stages of our life’s journey, until we come full-circle and make our eternal home once more – in the very heart of God. That is the destination toward which we move by faith – a movement that starts and ends with God.
T.S. Eliot wrote beautifully about our life’s spiritual journey this way:
We shall not cease from exploration;
and the end of all our exploring will be
to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time. 5
That, I believe, is the “critical journey” I believe Paul is describing when he writes that we must “come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ… [as we] grow up in every way into him…”
To that end, in a moment you will be invited to renew your Covenant with God in 2023. It doesn’t matter where you are in the stages of your spiritual journey – you are where you are. But you must not be content to stay where you are! You are on a journey, the destination of which is the very heart of God! Therefore, make a New Year’s resolution that really counts – that in 2023, you will be intent on “growing up” more and more “into Christ” – as you go on to Perfection - in Love.