[AI translation] On this Sunday I want to talk about one little two-letter word. This little word sounds like this: NEW! In both the Word that I read in today's service, in the lectionary and in the main text, this is the crucial word. It is also good to clarify the meaning and the content of this word, because it plays a very important role in all our lives. So what I would like to say is what this word means when we humans say it - and what the same word means when God says it.What the word "new" means on our lips, that is, what the human meaning of this concept is, is best illustrated by the fact that we have been in the so-called "new" year for two weeks now! You may recall, in the sermon on New Year's morning, I said that the "new" aspect of this New Year would pass very quickly. In three days' time, no one will feel this year as new, it will be just as grey, ordinary, everyday as the old one was. And hasn't it? Who today, two weeks later, will remember that 1961 is new? A new year? Yet only a few days ago, we wished everyone we met a happy and blessed New Year. We probably wrote a lot of greeting cards to people who come to mind once a year, and wished them a New Year that was better, more joyful, more successful than the old one. Perhaps we already knew, even if we hadn't consciously thought about it, that this new one meant essentially nothing. And now, two weeks later, we feel that this year is not new at all, that everything has stayed the same. At most, we have a new notebook in our pocket, a new calendar on the wall, maybe a new chapter in the diary, maybe even a new fountain pen to replace the old one, but we do not feel or see any other "new" aspects of our time. Indeed, this new year was already as worn, old and old-fashioned as the old one, because it brought with it all the worries, troubles, tensions, burdens, sins and miseries of the past years. So what had become new? What is new?
And even though we know in advance that every new year that follows is basically nothing new, we call it new again, because this little word: new, is very important for us, it gives us the illusion that something has really changed, that something new is really beginning for us, something better than the old. Because our hearts instinctively long for the new! And that is why the word 'new' seems to have a magical power.
Once, when I was visiting a guest somewhere, I noticed the youngest member of the family, a little boy, staggering around among the adults, fidgeting, squirming, visibly wanting to be noticed. And when I didn't react, he suddenly stood in front of me and said with a beaming face, "I have new shoes!" And then I had to notice and admire the beautiful new shoes! Yes, new has a big meaning... We humans always expect something new. "When I go to school, everything will be new!", thinks the little child. And a few years later, the same child sighs: "When I leave school, I'll...! Then life will begin, then everything will be new!" When two young souls fall in love, when they get engaged they feel, with an inexpressible joyful exultation, as if the whole world were suddenly new, as if they were entering into some beautiful hall of happiness, where everything is all bright and shining. They are preparing for the wedding with devout, holy feelings, because then everything will be truly new! "When I retire," one thinks to oneself, tired of years of the same work, "then everything will be new, different! Even a new dress, a new winter coat, a new calendar, a new carpet in the room, or even a rearrangement of the apartment, gives us a strange, welcome feeling, as if something in our whole, unfortunately rather spoiled life were to be renewed, as if something new were to begin... But it doesn't! Everything stays the same. This is what new means when we say. In fact, we play with the word, because nothing is really new under the sun! We cannot produce something new, renew, be new, start a new life. We are incapable of it.
Perhaps it is precisely because God uses the word "new" so often in His revelation that we long for new. The Bible is full of it. Except that when God says something is new, it really is NEW! "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." So, he who is in Jesus... In this old earth there is only one who is truly new, essentially new: Jesus himself. For it is not essentially new that, for example, our grandfathers still went from Cegléd to Kecskemét in a horse-drawn carriage, while today's man travels from Budapest to Moscow in a bumper plane in the same time. What is essentially new is what God did at Christmas! That is, a new shoot has sprung up on a withering, thinning branch of humanity, the like of which has never been seen before; a brand new man, let me put it this way: the embodiment of perfect man, perfect purity, perfect selflessness, perfect love, perfect goodness, perfect harmony! The absolute purity, the absolute selflessness, the absolute love, the absolute power that Jesus achieved was truly something entirely new on earth. It was a totally new way of life in the human world. It was so new, so different, so irritating from the old that the old could not stand this newness, it rose up against it and killed it, wiped it out! But when it was killed and buried in a new tomb, it was then that it was discovered that this new, this entirely new life on this earth was really begun by God, and that human evil and even death were powerless against Him! Something new happened again, something that had never happened before: that wonderful, new One had conquered death, had risen from it, and was living and reigning over the world as the Prince of eternal life.
Someone might say to this, with a good pestilence: so what? All this was a long time ago, and many would even add: perhaps it was not true! But you know what is interesting, what is great? What the apostle says: "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" - is still true today! I can't explain it, I can't make it logically clear how it is - but it is true that whoever is in Christ today, here among us, so let me say, in a relationship of faith with him, begins to experience something new in himself, something that was not in him before. It is true that the human life that is connected with Jesus Christ is a whole new, happy, holy, pure life... I knew a man, a corrupt, debauched, wicked man, but once he came into contact with Jesus, and literally what Paul speaks of happened: a new creation was made, the old things were gone, everything was made new! And when he once tried to bear witness to this truly new life among his former cronies, they refused to believe him - they thought he was just showing off. And he said: "Ask my wife and children at home. You know how hell our family life was. Now I can only say that everything has simply been renewed. We are inexpressibly happy! I myself am the most amazed, and those at home can tell you what the grace of God has done in me!" So he said word for word. That's really: NEW! A whole new life! And we all find in Jesus and in communion with Jesus the newness that we instinctively long for. When it is not the new dress, or the new furniture, or the new woman, the new adventure, the new year that gives us the illusion of the new we desire, but God creating something new: a new heart in me. A new heart, full of new, brand new joys, new hope, new love, new, brand new feelings, a whole new, hitherto unknown content, a new charge, a new strength! A truly new life!
Yes, this newness is created in us by God. Paul says that God creates it! He calls such renewed life a new creation. And Jesus calls it new birth! Whatever we call it, the point is that no one can force this newness out of themselves, because it is God's work in us and through us. This creation of the new heart, this new birth of the whole life, can only be done by God. Does this mean that we can do nothing for him? No, because in our Word we read, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation." He who is in Christ is made new, he who is made partaker of God's work of making new, is made new. It is a strange expression. It's as if Christ were some kind of medium - like water, say - into which one can immerse oneself. Well, yes: one must indeed immerse oneself in Christ, in the redeeming love of God manifested in Christ, as in a cleansing, healing water, a bath, because it is the only one - the redeeming love of Christ, of God manifested in Jesus - that washes away from you and in you the old, the sin that has corrupted, defiled, disfigured you. So, yes, whoever is in Christ, that is, whoever by faith and prayer immerses himself in Christ: he is cleansed, what our Word says really happens to him: the old things are gone, he is washed away, the past is cleansed from him, he is no longer bound by old vices, he is freed! "The old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new!"
But even more than that is "to be in Christ". You see, when one is truly in Christ, when one is immersed in Christ by faith and prayer, he is amazed to find that Christ is in him. Somewhat like when a flower is put into water, the water is absorbed into the flower and the plant is given new life.
If I am in Christ, Christ is in me. For Luther, this mystery was such a vivid reality that he spoke of believers in Christ as Christs. He does not say that a believer should be a Christian, but that he should be Christ! Of course, Luther was in no way trying to remove the distinction, the boundary between God and man, between Jesus and his follower. But the apostle Peter also speaks of the fact that through Jesus those who believe in him become "partakers of the divine nature". So it is really a question of the fact that whoever is in Christ, whoever really immerses himself in Christ by faith and prayer, has divine powers flowing into his life, and then everything, everything becomes truly new! And whenever people sense something of the absolute purity, the absolute goodness, the absolute love, the absolute selflessness of Christ in your words and deeds: your children, your spouse, or your friends, or your enemies, you always bring into this world something absolutely new, something that all people desire most!
This is how God understands "new". This is the new according to God! And that is what we are called to do. Would that this already not new year were truly new in the sense that many, many precious human lives would be born anew in Christ!
Amen!
Date: 15 January 1961.
Lesson
Jn 3,1-8