1 Samuel 3:1-20; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 6:11b-20; John 1:43-51

 The other day, someone said to me, Don’t you wish that the spirit of Christmas could stay with us all year?  I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that over the years.  It’s a lovely wish, and people always say it with a certain wistfulness, because behind it lies a rock-hard assumption that it can’t possibly come true.  Unfortunately, too often, experience bears this assumption out.  Even now, with the month of January only a little over half gone, the spirit of peace, generosity, and good will that filled the air a few weeks ago is fading fast away.  The world goes on after Christmas just as it did before – all the hate, all the greed, all the self-centered pride – they don’t go away.  Christmas is a delightful interlude, a taste of what the world should be, but isn’t.  We enjoy it while it lasts, then sadly pack it away with the decorations, throw it out on the curb with the Christmas tree, close the door, and go back to business as usual.

But what’s the point of celebrating Christmas if that’s all we’re going to do with it?  Christmas is a beginning – of a new, world-changing life.  That’s why we get so excited about it.  Every year God invites us to let God’s Word, God’s love, God’s life be born anew in us.  And they are born in us.  God touches us at Christmas in ways that even the hardest heart can’t resist.  Somewhere, at some moment during the Christmas season – maybe when we see the wonder in a child’s eyes, or when we find ourselves reaching out to a family member we’ve kept at bay for years, or when we sing a Christmas carol and feel again the pure joy we remember from our childhood, or when we experience the pleasure of giving something special to someone we love – somewhere, even fleetingly, we catch a glimpse of the glory of God and we taste a drop of God’s boundless love for all humankind.  

How can we put that away and go on as we did before?  Well, we can’t – not if we’re going to be true to the transforming wonder of Christmas, or of any encounter with God.  When God touches us, it’s not so we can feel good for a moment, and then forget about it.  When God touches us, it’s an invitation.  God says to us what Jesus says to Philip in today’s Gospel reading:  Follow me.  Don’t pack this away.  Follow me.  We don’t have to follow – that’s our choice.  But if we don’t, we’ll be left behind.

In his poem, “The Journey of the Magi,” T. S. Eliot describes the three kings as they follow the star to Bethlehem, see the Christ child, and then return home.  In Eliot’s version of the story, they don’t get it.  They go to all that trouble, but they don’t know what for.  For them, it all stops at the manger.  They bring nothing away with them but a feeling of disappointment and being out of place in the world.  Speaking for all three, one of the kings asks,

were we led all that way for

Birth or Death?  There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt.  I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

Brrr!  This king is really out in the cold.  His experience in the stable has touched him – so much so that he feels his old life is dead.  But he hasn’t taken up the new life God gave him there, and followed through with it.  His experience in the stable has touched the king – so much so that he feels his old life has died.  But he hasn’t taken up the new life God gave him there.  He’s just sitting around, waiting for his last breath. 

But we’re like this king if we go to the manger to look – to ooh and ahh at the sight of God incarnate in a little baby – but we don’t bring anything away with us that somehow makes a difference in how we live our lives.  We’ve missed the point if once again, we just settle back into the cold, dreary January world and say, Ah, it seems so drab after Christmas.  Too bad people can’t be the way they are at Christmas all year round.

Well, why not?  What’s stopping them?  What’s stopping us?  We’re the ones who come to the manger every year, who kneel in the presence of God and soak up God’s glory.  What do we think that’s for?  Why can’t we be like Philip in the Gospel reading?  He’s so excited about meeting Jesus he just can’t keep it to himself.  He runs to his friend Nathaniel and says, You’ve got to meet this guy!  I think he’s the real thing!  And Nathaniel – well, he just has to stick a pin in Philip’s balloon.  Slow down, he says, You say this guy’s from Nazareth?  Well, that’s it – forget it.  None of the experts say anything good can come out of Nazareth.  Oh, you can keep God at a distance forever, if you wait for the experts to tell you what to think.  Better yet, you can keep from having to do anything.  But Philip has faith in his experience of Jesus.  He knows it’s true and important, and he doesn’t let Nathaniel discourage him or brush him off.  Instead, he drags him to meet Jesus for himself, and of course, Jesus wins Nathaniel over, too. 

We need to be like Philip.  We need to take our experience of God out into the world and share it.  We need to be like Samuel, in today’s Old Testament reading.  We need to be God’s prophets in the world.  Samuel’s just an ignorant boy when God calls him.  He doesn‘t know anything about God.  But he comes running when he hears God’s voice.  Here I am.  At first he runs to the only master he knows:  Eli, the old priest.  Then, when Eli sets him straight, he stays and listens to what God has to say.  Well, I think any of us would do that much.  But then comes the hard part.  God tells Samuel what’s going to happen to Eli and his sons.  And it ain’t good.  God’s message is a heavy burden for a 12, 13-year-old boy, and Samuel doesn’t know what to do with it.  He tries to keep it to himself – but Eli doesn’t let him.  This may be Eli’s finest moment, the moment when he’s more truly a priest of God than at any other time in his life.  Seeing Samuel’s fear, Eli makes him tell, and teaches him to be brave and honest in the service of God. 

Samuel goes on to become a national figure, famous as a prophet and leader who makes, breaks, and rebukes kings.  It’s not an easy life.  Kings don’t like to be rebuked.  The world is always hostile to God’s prophets.  But Samuel didn’t let that stop him, and neither should we let it stop us.  Because it’s just too important that we carry God’s transforming truth out into the world.  God doesn’t send us out to conform to the world; God sends us out to conform the world to God. 

As Christians, we have a vision to share – thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven – and we have a mission to do our part in every area of our lives to help make that vision a reality.  I’m not talking about standing on street corners, beating a drum, and shrieking at passers-by:  Repent, for the end is near.  That’s the picture we have, isn’t it?  It doesn’t have to be that way.  We don’t have to make such a fuss.  We can each of us have a tremendous impact, simply by carrying what God gives us in worship, study, and prayer into our everyday lives – to guide our words and our actions. 

Believe me, people will notice.  And people will respond.  There’s a ripple effect.  Each of us can make a significant difference, just by living our faith.  One little act of justice, healing, or reconciliation – one word about God’s abiding love – dropped into one little corner of the world can send waves that spread and grow eventually, fill the whole world to overflowing.

I’m thinking of Martin Luther King, and how he stood – alone at first – and said, The way this nation treats black people goes against the word of God, and how people gathered around him, and stood with him, and what a difference they made in our country.

We can do that, too.  When we stand with God, we’re not alone.  God is with us.  And we’re members of Christ, as Paul tells us in his First Epistle to the Corinthians.  We’re part of that great body of believers, past and present, who have followed Jesus, and carried his truth, his way, and his life into the world.  Closer to home, we’re part of a diocese that’s just announced a new mission:  to join in God’s transforming mission in the world.  If everybody in this diocese would take on this mission and live it out, what a wonderful difference we could make.  And if we all wroked together – wow!

Then the spirit of Christmas would stay with us all year.  Because what we call the Christmas spirit is that very spirit of healing, reconciliation, love, and wholeness that our diocesan mission statement calls us to cultivate and nurture in a world that’s given itself over to other ways.

So this year, let’s not leave the spirit of Christmas behind, but let it live in each of us, and turn this drab old January world into a new world, bursting with life, and aflame with the glory of God.  

I won’t tell you it’ll be easy.  It’ll be no easier for any of us than it was for, say, Martin Luther King – or for Samuel, for Philip, for Paul, or for Jesus.  The world puts up a terrific fight.  But God is with us.  God is for us.  We have nothing of any real value to lose, and everything to gain.  Amen.      

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