[AI translation] Dear brothers and sisters, I would like to proclaim this word of God that we are reading in the hope that in these last hours of the year we may understand its meaning better than at other times. These words, yesterday, today, tomorrow, and forever, have a heavier impact on us at this time than at any other. For another year has passed. We are forced to conclude, with a bitter, sad, helpless feeling, that every hour this evening is a monotonous song of transience. Many, many tomorrows have run over many, many tomorrows to yesterday, and plunged into the past. But what is yesterday and today and tomorrow? What is the past, present and future with which we measure time? Is it something so mysterious that we can hardly call it time? A very old, great Christian thinker, Augustine, once said: 'If I am not asked what time is, I know what it is. But if I were asked, I could not tell you what it is. Well, it's kind of true. We couldn't tell you what it is. We don't know what it is at all. We just feel that it is. We feel it in ourselves, because it passes, because it lasts, and because its drift is irresistible.We cannot stop it for a single moment. But sometimes it would be nice! But we can't hurry it even for a moment, even though sometimes we wish we could. It is part of our essence. Because our whole existence is a temporary existence. Even if we can't grasp its essence, we can never tear ourselves away from it. Every moment, every event, every happening of our lives is in reality permeated by the mystery of time. Time is our destiny. Time is sometimes our hope, and time is sometimes our despair. A frightening reality whose secret we cannot unravel. We come from a past that is no more, and we go towards a future that is not yet - so then only the present is ours. The past is ours only insofar as our memory still holds it. And the future is ours only insofar as our hope awaits. Of the whole time complex, only the present is ours as actual reality. But what is the present? If we wanted to be very precise, if we wanted to be very precise, we would have to say that the present is that point without extension in which the future becomes the past, in which tomorrow becomes yesterday. Because look, if I say that this is the present, this moment is already absorbed by the past. The present also disappears immediately, the moment we want to grasp it. We can't hold on to it, because it too has always been gone, it too has always been submerged in the past.
"Another year has passed, a time of God's choosing for transience", as our beautiful hymn says, and as we sang just now. It is at such times that we realise how our own lives are caught up in the drift of time with frightening rapidity, how very short this earthly life is. Psalm 90, which we just sang, was composed by Moses. It is perhaps the only one of our 150 psalms that comes from Moses. We know from the accounts of him that he lived a very long life, humanly speaking, 120 years, and yet he laments, almost with the melancholy of modern pessimistic writers, how short the journey is from our birth to our death. "A watch in the night," he says. So it's roughly a third of a night, which in his day was divided into three watches. "Like a dream," he says. At birth we awaken to this world from an endless dream. We are awake for a third of a night. That's the whole of life, no more. Soon others will come after us, take our place, and we are again plunged into an endless dream. He says: "Like the grass that buds and blossoms in the morning and withers and dries in the evening". That is how short human life is, even if it may sometimes seem long. "The days of our years," says Moses, "are seventy years, or, if we go up, eighty years, and that too shall pass away quickly, as if we were flying". Oh, so many people do not even reach this age, the seventy years, and the eighty years, which seems so unattainable in youth, so improbable, which a man feels so far away from himself in his youth, and which he who has reached it feels that it was so short, so brief, so fleeting, so that he can no longer be caught or overtaken. Indeed: our whole existence is like that. It vanishes quickly, as if we were flying. Soon everything becomes yesterday. The last day will come, and there will be no more tomorrows. We digest our years like a speech.
Brothers and sisters, this is what we understand better in this last hour of a passing year, the mystery of yesterday, today and tomorrow. But all that I have said so far is only to make that one who is the same yesterday and today and forever, Jesus, shines out all the more powerfully from this gloomy, dark background. The only solid point in this rushing, drifting passage of time. Forever the same, says the Word. "Forever" - that strange word is not the opposite of time, but the other way round: the great creative unity of all times and ages, of all pasts and all futures. "Forever" - it means a permanent present, a moment that never passes, an eternal "now": this is the existence of God. There is no yesterday and no tomorrow in God's life. There is no past and no future in God's life. There is no passing of time. God lives in an eternal, great now. Therefore, He can be Lord of both our yesterday and our tomorrow. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. The same Jesus who, at the dawn of creation, brought the universe into being as God's word "be". The same Jesus who, in the far and distant past, walked in Judea and Galilee and had mercy on so many wretched people. The one crucified in Jerusalem, the one whom Augustine and John Calvin and Gabor Bethlen and Francis of Assisi and Zsuzsanna Lorántffy and so many others in the past have known as their saviour in their time. In whom our dead fathers also believed. The one I first met 33 years ago, on a quiet, happy evening. The same Jesus is here, present among us now in his soul-healing reality. In His hands is our yesterday, which is now past. In His presence flows our today, which we are living now, and under His rule is our tomorrow, which will dawn upon us. And that if no more tomorrows dawn upon us, even then, beyond death, the same Jesus who was here will be Lord. The same Jesus you have known here will be waiting. The same Jesus who loved you here and whom you loved here will welcome you, because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. So in him, in the drift of passing time, stands the eternal Christ.
Perhaps now, at the end of a year, we will feel more than ever that there is indeed no other support, no other hold on our lives, but him, for time is all consuming. What can we ever count on as permanent, as constant, as something that will not let us down? Money, perhaps? Oh, we have seen that from one moment to the next, from one hour to the next, it can become almost nothing. Even gold can melt more than snow in the grip of a hand. And anyway, what are we to do with it when the last of tomorrow is gone? Or perhaps we could rely on health? - We have no more transient good than that. Perhaps a peaceful, strong family life? A great gift if there is one, but very time-bound. With such tragic suddenness it can end at once. It is indeed understandable, brothers and sisters, that one who does not know the Eternal in transience should flee into the intoxication of alcohol on this night, for it is indeed so difficult to face transience. But perhaps now we can truly rejoice in Jesus who is the same yesterday and today and forever. Because look: everything is passing away. He is the only one who remains, who keeps us in this great current of transience, who keeps us.
He has kept you and he has kept me every day of the past year. For that you did not crumble under the burden; that you endured this year; that you escaped from troubles, temptations, perils, which you perhaps did not know quite definitely how great they were; that you were yet comforted in pain you felt comforted in - all this was possible only because Someone protected, helped, kept you with His majestic calm and secure immutability. Perhaps people have been left by your side throughout the year - He has always stayed by your side. Maybe you were unfaithful to Him - He remained faithful to you. Perhaps you have been like Peter, who so shamefully denied and betrayed his Master. The apostle of the rock, there in the strange surroundings, in the courtyard of the high priest, from one hour to the next, oh, how he could change! And even when his eyes met Jesus', those sad, forgiving, loving eyes still told him that Jesus had not changed, He remained the same. He still loves, He still loves in spite of everything. You may have moved away, turned your back on Him, and suddenly you noticed - but if you hadn't noticed, you should notice now, at this moment - that He is just as close to you now as He was when you were still on good terms. Perhaps you have grown older - you have certainly grown older - perhaps you have grown weaker, perhaps your love for Him has faded: yet He is as near you as when you first loved Him, when you first met. You may have let go of His hand, He may never have let go of yours. You may have given Him up, He has not given you up. You may have forsaken Him and wandered far away, but He never renounced the covenant with you, the seal of which you bear on yourself by the water of the cross. You have always turned again from His way, and He has always led you back again. Oh, with how much patience and how much tenderness He has led you back! Was it not so? Yes, it was.
Jesus is the one who is the same yesterday and today and forever. And now, dear brothers and sisters, when this year also bids us farewell, and with this year another part of our life becomes a thing of the past; and when the passing of time takes with it dear faces, dear memories, sounds, colours, tears, laughter, a piece of life - He remains the eternal, the unshakeable rock: Jesus. It is now that we truly feel what we would be without Jesus. If ever, it is on this night that we really need Jesus. On the night when old wounds start to bleed again. When old sins speak. When the voice of conscience begins to accuse again. Who among us can make up for what we have done wrong? Who can undo what should never have happened? Who can cleanse what he has defiled, make right what he has broken, make up for what he has failed to do, pay the debt he owes to man, to God? Truly only he who is the same yesterday and today and forever. And behold, He stands here among us now in His invisible reality, just as He did when He first said, with His two arms stretched out wide to men, "Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest". You too, then, may come. I can come too. Come to him. We can bring our yesterdays, we can bring our sorrows, our worries, our sins, our secrets, all the burdens of our souls, our unresolved questions, and we can lay them all before him.
I have realised many times, brothers and sisters, that the only burden that does not weigh is the one I have given to Jesus. Only the pain that I have discussed with Jesus does not paralyze me. Only the sin I confessed to Jesus is not deadly. Only the omission I have made amends with Jesus is not bitter. From His hand we can also look forward to tomorrow, for only the tomorrow over which we acknowledge Him as Lord, the one we see under His lordship, is not troubling. Come, then, let us all come to Him, and cling to that precious hand of salvation kindled towards us, which alone can keep us in the passing drift of time to eternity! Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. So let us say to him with confidence, with joy:
Jesus, my refuge!
My faithful protection
You alone!
My soul from the storm,
Out of sin, out of all trouble
I flee to you.
Though the earth is all ruined,
And if the horde of hell vomits daggers:
Jesus himself stands guard!
(Canto 294, verse 2)
Amen.
Date: 31 December 1965.