New Year Sermon

What a difference a year makes

A Sermon preached on Sunday 2nd January 2011 at Evening Prayer in St. Columba’s Parish church.

In the name of God, Father, Son and Spirit. Amen

Just before Christmas, our youth group were kindly invited to the studios of UTV for a tour around the news studios and the radio station. In one of the rooms we were given a sneek peak at one of the programmes by a producer who met us in one of the corridors. It was a programme on the Highlights of Northern Ireland news.

The programme showed snippets of the highs and lows of life in the province, from politics, to sport, from ash clouds grounding all the planes to the snow storms recently experienced. This programme and many like it on other TV channels and radio programmes are a good way to look back and see what we all have been living through

2010 has indeed been a year which I am sure each one of us will have our own highs and lows. At this time each year it is a time to look back at what has been and look forward to what will be.

Certainly, looking back it is great that within this parish in 2010 we have welcomed back people into our parish, we have seen new people engage with church, we have been able to work together to get lots of things done -

• Heating systems fixed,
• flower festival organised,
• Ladies Guild & Mens Club anniversaries,
• held our ordination service,
• many baptisms,
• various weddings,
• Creche set up
• we have laughed together,
• cried together,
• worshipped together sunday by sunday
• maintained and extended our choral tradition...with the many special services
• we have welcomed new members into our congregation,
• we have faced challenges and overcome them,
• we do have a great family atmosphere in the parish, where people are prepared to stand alongside each other and work together.

I am sure each one of us could add other things which have meant something to you that has happened in the past 12 months.

As we look forward to a new year - I wonder what your hopes, your dreams, your resolutions, your prayers are for yourself, your family, your friends, your community and indeed this your church?

In Proverbs 29:18 we read that without vision people perish - What is your vision for 2011?

With church - We are looking forward to living up to and indeed helping to answer the prayer which is printed in each of our parish magazines.

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This is a big prayer, a big vision but one to which each one of us are called to play our part.

In our gospel reading this evening we see what happens after Jesus is born. Mary and Joseph up to this point have had what would have been described as a most extrordinary year. Encounters with angels, long journey, no house but a stable, baby born, strange visitors shepherds who came around and then magi making a huge journey to find them.

I am sure the Holy Family were ready to rest up and relax.

Then all of a sudden they are on the road again, responding to an emergency which they could not have expected. But this situation God had everything under control. In the panic and the life and death situation they found themselves in I am sure the turmoil must have been great.

We see from this reading that God had it all under control, he was working is purposes out. We also see that Matthew can look back with hindsight and see that God had already made plans for the flight to egypt.

As we progress into this new year, let us dream, let us plan, let us have a vision of what we could use this year for, of how things could be different.

Let us take the message of this season of Christmas that God is indeed with us, and let us remember that whatever problems, situations, challenges, ups and downs we may face, what ever joys and sorrows we may come across let us remember that message of immanuel, God is with us.

This year, 2011, we have been told by many quaters is going to be a tough, challenging year when finance, commerce employment and other factors are taken into consideration, however we have all got to remember what life is really about and the priority we need to place in our faith in God and his sufficiency.

Let us remember that God is walking with us, that he has a plan for us, he wants us to enjoy living. Jesus himself did say - that I have come so that they may have fulness of life.

My hope and prayer for all of us in this new year is that we will encounter God in a new way, that when trials come, when we are faced with challenges we will remember the truth of Christmas that Immanuel - God is with us.

Let us pray.

Good News v's Bad News

After Christmas – Good News v's Bad News … Sermon preached St. Columba's Sunday 3rd January 2010 - Evening Prayer

It is great to be back to some sort of normality after Christmas, with shops back open at the normal times, and life back to some sort of routine. On Monday I came up to Belfast to have a look at some of the sales and the town was completely manic … I queued just to get onto an escalator and when I got up to the menswear department there were only two rails of sale items left … why the rush?.

Before Christmas … people were rushing around getting all the preparations done.
At Christmas … people were rushing round doing the last minute things.
Then After Christmas ... there is more rushing around buying things in the sales.

The pace of life is indeed hectic to say the least... hopefully you will have had a little bit of time over the holidays to sit back and relax and enjoy a bit of space for yourself.

In church life, we have come through advent, a time of preparation, a time when we prepare ourselves once again to hear the message of good news, On Christmas day we celebrated that good news -the Birth of Christ, the Baby in a manger and directly after this we are presented with some really bad news in our reading

We have good news until King Herod comes in and decides to slaughter the boys in Bethlehem under two. Its not a story we like to remember, its not a story which is usually mentioned in the Christmas Nativity plays we sit around and watch in schools and churches. It is polemic to the good news of the angels, star, the shepherds and mary and Joseph, inn keepers, wise men. But it is very much part of the story of humanity - Good and Bad experiences existing together in tension with each other.

The slaughter of the Holy innocents as it is called, the church remembers only 3 days after christmas, year in year out, continually reminding us that – where God is active there is always someone/thing out to twart the plans. We see it here, we see it throughout Jesus ministry, the opposition of many, ultimately at his death. However it doesn't stop there - for his followers throughout the book of acts & in historical record where Jesus' Disciples are plauged with persecution.

This episode in the gospels does not fit into a nice fairytale ending … young boys are killed because the ruler does not like what God is up to. Does this sound familiar? Hopefully the answer is yes!





Looking back the things which Matthew writes in the passage we read tonight does echo some of the greatest stories in Israels past
Flight to Egypt
Dreams of Joseph
The killing of the first born (Moses was saved)
Call out of Egypt (Moses)
Working within David's Line

Yes God was up to something new with the incarnation, God becoming Man, God with us but it certainly was in continuity with the past, and Matthew was at pains to ensure that his readers were made aware of all the references which had gone before.

So what does all of this mean for us today?
We are here at the start of a new year – 3 days in. New year is traditionally a time when we start into thinking about what has gone before, and what is about to come.

I was amazed on New Years eve to watch the fireworks on TV at the London Eye – an amazing spectacle on BBC, just before they started – the presenter gave a run down of the decade years beginning at the millennium → The good, the bad and the ugly
nature of our news bulletins.
Non-event of the Millennium Bug,
through the developments in technology,
the big news stories of the decade 9-11,
war in Iraq and Afghanistan, London Bombings, President Obama,
the mix between Good and Bad news.

In the Belfast Telegraph likewise, last week they had a countdown of 50 monumental news stories from the decade – good news and Bad News all mixed in together – a Decade that has seen so much progress and life in Northern Ireland Change – images such as the big wheel at city hall, changes in the police, stormont assembly, 11+, developments in infrastructure and new shopping experiences. But again and again we are living in the tension between Good and Bad. It has been there from early days.

But now that we are living in the time post the birth of Jesus – the hope that that little baby provided and the means that that child provided humanity with to restore the relationship we have with God allows us to be confident with the future.

Before Christmas … many were running around preparing all sorts of things
At Christmas … there were many Jobs to be done
Now that Christmas has past us by for another year … why not, at the beginning of this new year … Stop and reflect on the past, how it relates to the present and how things can be different in the future.

God is a creative God, the story of the israelite nation is one of good news of the relationship they have with God, how that relationship is sustained even in the tragedy they find themselves in and how he delivers them. In this story this evening we see Good News, we see Bad News, but above all we see the greatest hope of all – Jesus safe and well.

All of us I am sure can relate to the Good News stories of life, and all of us I am sure have had Bad News stories affecting us at one time or another. One thing is for certain – God is able to walk with us through them all. That is the good news of the Christmas Gospel which is able to sustain each one of us when we have to walk through the Valley of the shadow of death as the psalmist puts it. He is with us.

At the beginning of a new year as we reflect on our relationship with God and with one another, as we think of the good and the bad things of our lives - if we were to think over the past decade, if we were to choose 10 or 20 events from the past ten years which have shaped us as people what would they be? And as we think back then how do we move forward?
are we prepared to do something new, are we prepared to do things that God wants us to do?,
are we prepared to journey with God into new places, into new situations, to use what he has provided for us, are we prepared to trust him, wherever he may lead. Are we prepared to step out of our comfort zones?

If you don't know what that involves why not ask? … who knows what sort of adventures God has planned for you?