Hello Goodbye*: A Sermon for the End of the Year
An Invitation to Finish the Year Gently
This is the sermon I preached on the last Sunday of 2024. I don’t often write scripts for my sermons but I will when I have a shorter amount of time to preach and want to make sure I stay in my allotted time. As the sermon did not get recorded, I am sharing it here. (*The title “Hello Goodbye” is from Jo Saxton’s and Stephanie O’Brien’s annual year-end Examen resource which can be found here.)
This morning, we find ourselves, yet again, just days away from the end of the year, at the threshold between one year coming to a close and another year about to begin. This space comes with a mixture of emotions. Maybe you are feeling excitement: that a new year is coming that is filled with new possibilities and adventures. Or motivation: that comes with the inspiration to achieve new goals and resolutions. Perhaps you are feeling anxiety/trepidation: a new year bringing the uncertainty that is on the horizon all that much closer. Or maybe it is overwhelm: the closing of the year is a reminder of all the things you have not yet achieved. Or dread: that the world is changing rapidly and things are so much more uncertain and scary.
It doesn't help that productivity and self-improvement pundits seem to tell us that unless we have "finished the year strong" and that the coming year will be "our best year yet," we're somehow failing. If they haven't already, your email newsletter and social media feeds will be filled with posts on how to achieve the "better" you: one that is skinnier, fitter, smarter, richer, happier, better looking, more disciplined and successful. Over and over and over again, these messages tell us that we are not enough, that life is the pursuit of achieving success, a never-ending upward journey.
Add to that all the pressure and expectations we typically feel. I mean, just fill in the blank: I need to be a better ________. Better parent, better daughter/son, better spouse/partner, better student/employee, better Christian, better pastor/preacher... We often don't say these things out loud, but they live as a constant hum in the background music of our hearts, adding to our weariness and exhaustion. Even in Christian circles, this pattern repeats itself, and we are faced with the pressure of needing to: pray more, read our Bible more, experience greater intimacy with God; why does everyone else seem to have it all together and I don't???
What this ends up doing is it creates heavy burdens that we are crushed under: shame, fear, a lack of self-worth, a sense that we are not enough. To keep up with these heavy burdens, we work tirelessly and relentlessly try harder, or we numb the voice of shame by burying ourselves in our addictions, whether they be work, substances, relationships, or our devices.
But as we close off this year, I want to shift our focus. According to Scripture, the journey of life is not one of an upward trajectory. Instead, life is meant to be a journey toward God and that often involves downward mobility. In Christ, we actually progress when we follow him on his descending path.
As your pastor, I want to give you permission: to stop trying harder, to let go of trying to do everything on your own strength. You don't need to finish the year strong or make a whole bunch of resolutions for 2025. Instead, I want to give you permission to finish the year gently and listen for the invitation of God instead.
Today’s Scripture is from Matthew 11:28–30 (NLT):
Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”
There are four invitations from Jesus here that I would like to briefly unpack for us today:
“Come to me”
“Take my yoke upon you”
“Let me teach you”
“Find rest for your souls”
Invitation #1: “Come to me”
Our response: Confessing our weakness
To come to Jesus requires us to confess our weakness and our need for him. The act of coming to him is itself our confession. This is particularly difficult for our generation. I am a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps," "life is what you make of it" kind of gal. I was raised to believe that maturity is marked by independence and self-sufficiency, to not have need for anyone else. But as I've gotten older, I’ve come to realize that maturity in Christ is actually marked by growing in dependence on God and letting go of our self-reliance. Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 preach themselves:
Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
If I am honest, this passage offends my self-reliant sensibilities. You’re kidding, aren’t you, Paul? I want to be strong, I don’t want to have to be weak. But it seems like Paul is saying the path to strength in Christ is through unashamedly embracing our weakness.
For some of us, our Christmas decorations have already come down and we are moving on from Christmas but according to the liturgical calendar, we are still in the season of Christmastide. What can get lost in all the celebrations is the miracle of Christ’s coming—that he comes to us as an infant formed in the womb of a virgin, the weakest and most vulnerable form a human being can take. And he invites us to come to him in our need, because he first comes to us. As I have said before, we are not a gathering of the strong and mighty; we are a gathering of the weak and needy, of those who know and confess our need for Christ.
Invitation #2: “Take my yoke upon you”
Our response: Letting go of the things we hold on to
You see, we can't just take on Jesus's yoke on put it on top of everything else we are already carrying. We have to first unburden ourselves. The journey toward God is the journey of letting go: letting go of the need for certainty, for controlling outcomes, perfectionism, of trying harder, of trying to find the fix, of our masks, our put-together-selves, and fake strength. Letting go means embracing our weakness, vulnerability, imperfection, discomfort, risk; it means exhaling all of that air we are holding in, releasing the tightness in our shoulders, and unclenching our jaws and our fists.
What might the Lord be inviting you to let go of today?
Invitation #3: “Let me teach you”
Our response: Learning to be childlike
Earlier in the same chapter of Matthew, Jesus prays this prayer:
“O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding these things from those who think themselves wise and clever, and for revealing them to the childlike. Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way!” Matthew 11:25–26 (NLT)
This Christmas, I’ve had the gift of having my sister, her husband and their 4-year-old come stay with us. My kids are older now and so I’ve forgotten what having a 4-year-old is like. While it’s been a lot, it has also been a gift to challenge myself to see the world through his eyes.
Katy Smith, an early childhood educator, teaches a workshop on leadership lessons learned from toddlers. She says:
Toddlers own a room and assume that they are welcome. They’re driven by intense curiosity and go for it without over-thinking. Toddlers insist that you shut out all other distractions to be with them, present and purposeful. They feed themselves—their bodies, minds, and souls—without apology. They take care of their needs. Toddlers understand how powerful words are and are not afraid to say the hard things or the joyful things. They will tell you when they are hurting and will look for support. They wear band-aids proudly to remind us all that they are recovering from something that hurt them. Toddlers will let you know when they need to be carried. They ask for grace when they need to be understood and accepted. Toddlers embrace the need to melt down and do not see their emotions as a weakness but as an effective tool to communicate with the people who care for them. Toddlers comfort themselves when they are uncertain, scared, or lonely. They are not ashamed to need comfort to get through hard times.1
Toddlers have no problems bringing their full selves. They are keenly aware of what they are feeling in their bodies, minds, and emotions, and are not afraid to communicate them to those around them. Author Mandy Smith, who recounts the words above, writes: “This is what it means to be human, and I want to be more like this (again). This is not a new skill. We’ve been this before.”2
As we grow, however, we learn to cut off parts of ourselves—not necessarily because we are maturing, but because the people and environment around us have taught us that the world is not at all a safe place we bring our full selves, and many of us learn this much sooner than we should, and carry it with us throughout our lives.
And so we come to that last invitation:
Invitation #4: “Find rest for your souls”
Our response: Becoming wholehearted
To be wholehearted is to live from our full selves.
Poet David Whyte, tells the story of talking to his friend, a monk and spiritual director, Brother David Steindl-Rast, about his exhaustion in his work for a non-profit:
Whyte: “Brother David, speak to me of exhaustion. Tell me about exhaustion."
Brother David: “You know that the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest?”
Whyte: “The antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest? What is it, then?”
Brother David: “The antidote to exhaustion is whole-heartedness.”3
We’ve absorbed the voices that convince us:
I’m not doing enough.
I need to do more.
I am not enough.
Then we run to the quick fixes to try to take care of our shame: I just need to work out more, I just need a day off, another vacation, I just need to make more money, etc etc. We work tirelessly to quiet those voices, but we end up divided and fragmented, exhausted and weary.
But wholeheartedness takes a lifetime. There are no quick fixes or 3-step programs. The healing and transformation required to grow in wholeheartedness is, in the words of Eugene Peterson, a “long obedience in the same direction.”
Researcher Brene Brown, in her quest to uncover the secrets of human connection, discovers the universality of shame as the “fear of disconnection.”4 It is this sense that there will be something about me that will cause others to think I am not worthy of connection. What underpins it is: “I’m not good enough.” Because of sin and the ways we’ve been wounded, we’ve forgotten that we are loved and are worthy of love.
Inherent in our text today is the Gospel: That Jesus looks at us in our “forgottenness” and because he has never forgotten who we are, that we are loved and worthy of love, he came to us and invites us to come to him. In our total weakness and vulnerability, he came and instead of despising our weakness and vulnerability, he entered into it, took it on himself and became human. He showed us what it looks like to be fully human, to be whole-heartedly human, to live from his whole self, fully dependent on the Father.
We can respond to Jesus’s invitation by confessing our weakness, letting go, learning to be childlike, and growing to become wholehearted. As we close out this year, take a moment to reflect on what God’s invitation to you might be for this year.
What are you saying “goodbye” to? What might the Lord be inviting you to let go of?
What are you saying “hello” to? What are you welcoming in 2025?
(During our service, we had people write their hellos and goodbyes on sticky notes and then come up to the front and say: “Hi, my name is _____. I am saying goodbye to ____ and I am saying hello to _____.” The bravery and vulnerability was beautiful to witness.)
There is a space between hello and goodbye. That’s liminal space, the space of transformation. The things we want to say goodbye to, we often want to pick up, kick to the curb and throw out. But that’s not usually the way God works. The things we want to say goodbye to are often the very place God wants to meet us with grace and compassion and it’s where he does his best work. Spiritual formation writer Dallas Willard has famously said, “God’s address is at the end of your rope.” Where you want to say goodbye, God is looking on with tenderness to say, “I am meeting you right here. Let me have that and show you what I can do with it.” You might find yourself in the space between hello and goodbye, having left behind who you once were but not quite yet arriving at who are want to be. As we cross the threshold into the new year, may you allow yourself to rest in the in-between space, entrusting yourself to the hands of the One who is humble and gentle at heart and who is working to make you new. As we close, I bless you with these words from the poet John O’Donohue5:
For the Interim Time (by John O’Donohue)
When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,
No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.
In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.
You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.
The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.
“The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born.”
You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.
Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.
As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.
What is being transfigured here in your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.
Mandy Smith, Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith beyond the Baggage of Western Culture, 22-23.
Mandy Smith, Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith beyond the Baggage of Western Culture, 23.
Chuck DeGroat, Wholeheartedness: Busyness, Exhaustion, and Healing the Divided Self, 9.
Brené Brown, The Power of Vulnerability, https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_the_power_of_vulnerability.
John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, 119-120.