Grace for the New Year

Sermon from Sunday, January 4, 2026

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I have a love/hate relationship with starting a new year.

I actually love the energy around the new year. You get to put away the decorations and the clutter and open up the house (because we live in Florida and it’s warm enough to open the windows). I enjoy the sort of introspection that happens with the change in the calendar year, the goal setting, the feeling of a fresh start to make changes in my life. I love it.

But I don’t love the timing. It seems like a pretty cruel time of year for us to really take stock of our lives, doesn’t it? We got through the past couple weeks on a combination of cookies and prosecco and cheese. We move through the week after Christmas in a sort of weird haze or take time to travel and then all at once it’s January and the credit card bill hits and the kids have to go back to school and you get the reminder from the dentist that you have an appointment next week and you know you haven’t flossed since Thanksgiving. It’s exhausting. Moving from the haze of the last week of December to the new year starting is a big pivot. It might not be the best time to take stock of your life and really think about how you’re doing. Most of us aren’t thriving. 

I’d like to make a suggestion. Goals are good. New year, new you energy is a great thing to harness. Big new dreams are wonderful. But sometimes, as we take stock, all we see is the bad stuff. The things that aren’t what we’d like them to be, and we forget to give ourselves a little grace.

In Luke 15, Jesus tells a story:

11 “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the wealth that will belong to me.’ So he divided his assets between them. 13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant region, and there he squandered his wealth in dissolute living. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that region, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that region, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16 He would gladly have filled his stomach[b] with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to his senses he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” ’ 20 So he set off and went to his father. 

Maybe there was some prodigal energy in your life this past year. The younger son is reckless and hurtful with his relationships. He loses all of his money through a series of mistakes. He spends his time with what Luke calls dissolute living.  He finally hits rock bottom and takes stock of his life. He thinks it is too late to start fresh, but hopes he can at least work for his father.  But you know the story. Look at what his father does: 

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’[c] 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

His father doesn’t meet him with anger. He doesn’t shame him for his mistakes. He doesn’t compare him to other people who were better than he was. He meets him with grace. He gives him a fresh start, a chance to try again, a chance to do it differently. 

This is how God deals with us: Grace first, then a fresh start to do it differently. 

I’d like to suggest that perhaps this is how we start our year, in dealing with ourselves.

Give yourself some grace first.

Grace if you haven’t been as successful as you would have liked.

Grace if your marriage isn’t as strong as someone else’s.

Grace if you haven’t taken care of your health the way you meant to.

Grace is your to-do list is already way behind

Grace if you didn’t read the books on your bedside table.

Grace if you don’t have a plan. 

Grace if your faith isn’t as strong as you think it should be.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t set goals for yourself this year. But as you take stock of your life, start first with a posture of grace instead of shame, and then think about what the next steps could be to make this year different, because I’m willing to bet it’s not always been easy for you. Maybe you did what you could with what you had (perhaps not always, but you tried). 

You don’t have to have it all together. Give yourself some grace. Because grace is where God starts with us. Frederick Beuchner writes:

"A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There's nothing you have to do.

There's nothing you have to do.

There's nothing you have to do.

The grace of God means something like: "Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you."

That’s a really different story than the one we tell ourselves at this time of year, when all we can see are the ways we didn’t get it right, and what we need to improve on. So for these next few days, at least, start with a healthy dose of grace along  with the carrot you are eating wishing it was a cookie. And (and this is important) make sure to offer that same grace to the people in your life. 

Earlier this week I had a moment where I wasn’t as out together as I would like to be. I looked at my friend and said “I’ve got this.”

Do you know what she said? “

You don’t have to have this.” 

That’s what this looks like as we offer grace to one another, giving one another permission to not have it all together, and it’s okay. 

Grace is not just one small part of what we believe as Christians. It’s really one of the foundational stories of the Bible. The Bible is this long story of God having grace with people who from the very beginning needed a good dose of it because they kept messing things up or forgetting what they were supposed to be doing or literally walking in the wrong direction, but that’s not always the way I hear the Bible talked about.

There’s a lot of misunderstanding out there about what the Bible is, and about what it teaches.I find a lot gets left out in the way we hear God talked about out there, by other Christians. It’s not just grace that’s missing. There’s a lot less love and justice and compassion than what’s actually in there. The Bible is this rich and complicated book with a story unfolding over centuries and yet it’s so easy to take verses out of context, to take this amazing story about God’s unrelenting love for humanity and make it a book that serves the purposes someone might come up with, teachings that encourage shame or exclusion or hate when they are misused. This isn’t new, but it’s awfully loud right now. 

So in the spirit of the new year, we’re going to start a project, together, here as a church.

Not today, because your pastors need some grace too as we come back after Christmas. But as we ease into this new year, we invite you to take on this new project with us. 

We are going to move through the entire Bible, start to finish, in our sermons. You won’t have to read anything at home, unless you want to. We’ll tackle it here. We’ll take some time with it, so we won’t push to finish the whole Bible in a year, or set an exact timetable. Sometimes we’ll move more quickly and sometimes we’ll slow down to unpack a complicated passage for a couple of weeks, or really dig into a rich story that we need to chew on for a while. We’ll start from the beginning, in Genesis, but we’ll be studying as those who already have the whole story. We’ll bring in New Testament teachings right from the beginning. As we move through the Bible, we’ll talk about things like science and the LGTBQ clobber passages and gender roles and race and hope and atonement and resurrection and how to change things up in your life and yes, grace, and a million other things. We’ll ask questions together and look for ways each week that this ancient book can speak something new to us. 

Dave will talk more about this project next week, but I’d like to do one more thing before we stop today. 

With the new year, there’s a lot of lists in front of us, things like five ways to build exercise in, or three new books you should read. So I’ll share one of our lists that we’ve shared before, but it’s good to get in front of us as we start this big project together. If you need a new year’s list, we’ve got one for you.

6 tips to reading the Bible well as we start this project together

1. Understand its purpose.

The Bible isn’t one book, it’s actually a collection of 66 books written down during a period of about 1500 years. These books were originally written in Hebrew and Greek and then hand copied one letter at a time. (This is hard in Greek but in Hebrew the vowels are just little tiny dots!) Eventually it was compiled into one book, the Bible, by early Christians who decided which writings made it in and which ones didn’t. Then the Bibles we have here were translated into English - and we have lots of different English translations because decisions have to be made when you translate on the nuances of different words and grammatical constructs. When we bring it all together we have one big story in the Bible about what God is doing in the world. The Bible is not a science textbook. It’s not even a history book. It was written to tell you who God is, what God has done, and who you are. Second,

2. Look at the whole Bible 

In other words, let the Bible interpret the Bible. The Bible is a lot of different books, but it is one big story about who God is. So instead of plucking one verse out and letting it stand alone, take the specific verse you are reading and put it back where it belongs, in the whole context of the Bible. How does it compare with the rest of what the Bible says? Think about what the whole of Scripture teaches and then read the verse through that lens. Then, apply

3. The Jesus principle

The final appeal in how we read any part of the Bible is Jesus. What did Jesus say, what did he teach, what did he do? It is critical to give the life and teachings of Jesus more weight than any other passage you read, because only Jesus is the Son of God - not Moses, not Isaiah, not Paul. If you ever have a question, always hold it up against Jesus to find what is true. But:

4. Don't go it alone

We were never meant to read the Bible in a vacuum. When we read and interpret the Bible, we are not only listening for what it says to us. We are listening for what it says to humanity. This includes people in our church. It includes people in the historical church who we hear in creeds and confessions. It includes Bible scholars who write our commentaries. It includes people different from us whose life experience brings a different understanding to the text. Yes, you should read your Bible alone and listen for what it teaches. But we interpret it best when we do that work together. And we’d love to do that with you this year. Next, 

5. Love wins

This big story of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is a powerful, undeniable story of God’s love for all people. If you are reading a Bible passage to say that God doesn’t love a certain group of people, you are reading it wrong. If you see more judgement than grace, you aren’t reading the whole story. If the message you find is one of hate or division or hierarchy, you are looking for something that isn’t there. Speaking of the whole story: 

6. Context matters

This one is so important. You read a poem in Psalms different from a story in Matthew different than a prophecy in Isaiah. And you read all of these differently than you read the newspaper. All of the Bible was recorded by real people who lived in a real time that is very different from our own. Some passages are describing what was happening at the time. Others are prescribing something God intends to be the case for all time. Some passages are written to address a specific situation. Others are written more broadly. This doesn’t mean we don’t take the Bible seriously or dismiss it as outdated. It actually means we take it so seriously that we want to understand everything about a passage - its history, the original language, the type of writing it was - so we can get the clearest picture possible of what it can teach us about God. 

That’s where we’ll stop for today. Dave will talk more about this next week, then we’ll get started right in the beginning, with Genesis, the following week. There is a lot to dig into right from Genesis 1, so we’re excited to get started.

But for today, as you think about your goals for this year, 

have some grace with yourself,

have grace with the other people in your life,

consider reading through the Bible story with us. 

And maybe eat a vegetable. It’s good for you.