Last Sunday I expressed my Christmas desire for all of us.  That we might be in a good place this Christmas time.   That we maybe be in a good situation.  That we may be favoured.  That we may be blessed.  We said that to live in the promises of God, to live in the love of God, to live in the truth and wonder of God With Us is to be in a good situation, no matter our circumstances. To live in the light of the hope, peace, joy, and love of Advent – in the light of Christ – is to be people of Advent.  This is who we are in Christ – people of Advent - no matter what time of year it is.

A new year is almost here, and today I have a New Year’s blessing to share.  We’re thinking of home today, and our experience of home may have differed over the holiday.  For some of us, it may be that nothing much changed in terms of routine and where we were physically.  For others, we may have left our homes to be somewhere else.  For others, our homes may have been transformed by company. Our church home was certainly transformed by decoration and light, and company!  This time of year, for many, has been a series of comings and goings.  I pray that we’ve all been blessed in these comings and goings.  In many ways, our lives are a series of comings and goings, aren’t they? 

Here is our New Year’s blessing,g and it comes from the truth sung in Psalm 121:8.  “The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.”  May God keep you in all your going out and your coming in every day.  In the presence of God With Us, may you always feel that you are at home, no matter where you may be.

It’s wonderful to see the sense of being at home reflected in our gathering together, isn’t it?  A few years ago, I was standing in our Friendship Room after a Sunday service.  We were celebrating a child's dedication with lunch together.  As I looked around the room, I saw joy reflected in faces; I saw people from all over the world; I saw people of vastly different life experiences, ages, and backgrounds; I saw people caring for one another.  Someone came up to me and said – “This reminds me of home!”

What does it mean for a place to feel like home?  No matter our personal experience of home, we have an idea of what home should be like. Home is a place where you are accepted, safe, cared for, caring, free of judgement, free to be yourself, free to be vulnerable – in a word, loved. 

I pray that God makes, continues to make) this faith community is such a place.  I pray the same thing for all the people from different faith communities with whom we may have gathered over the past four weeks.  It’s wonderful to see it.  A young man came into our Christmas Eve Candlelight service and stood at the back of the church.  He was here from Saudi Arabia visiting family and decided to come into the church.  I spoke to him after we had sung “Silent Night” together.  He told me, “This feels like a place of great peace.”  How thankful to God this made me!

I am thankful.  I also know that something like this may be said by the skeptic: It’s very easy to feel that kind of thing when the church is awash in candlelight, and those familiar carols are resounding through the place, and we’re having extra time together to share meals, and open houses and give presents, and donate to good causes. 

What happens when we go back to life?  Back to our usual comings and goings.  Back to the mundane.  It was very much the same in the stories we’re looking at today.  We read about Samuel’s parents – Hannah and Elkanah.  At the beginning of the story of Samuel, Hannah is longing for a child, going to the temple of the Lord at Shiloh annually, weeping and praying.  She is vowing to dedicate a child to the Lord’s service.  All of this is so unusual that the priest Eli thought she must be drunk.  Little Samuel is, and Hannah bursts into song – “My heart exults in the Lord, my strength is exalted in my God… He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honour. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and on them he has set the world.” (1 Sam 2:2a, 8)  This should be reminding us of another song at the announcement of another miracle birth!  “My soul magnifies the Lord,” Mary sang, and we sang, “and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.” (Luke 1:46-47)  In the story of Samuel’s birth and growing up, and in the story of Jesu’s birth and growing u,p we have two sides.  On one side, we have miracle births and people singing, along with angelic visitations and angels singing.  On the other side we have people going about their everyday comings and goings.  Hannah coming to the temple with a little ephod she made for her son - no doubt having him try it on to see how it fit and what adjustments needed to be made.  Everyday stuff!  In the story of Jesus’ birth,  we have Zechariah (John the Baptist’s father) going about his regular service to God in the temple. We have an unexpected pregnancy.  We have the shepherds returning to their work.  A return to the mundane.

Here's the thing about the mundane, though.  Mundane can have a fairly negative connotation.  Dull.  Uninteresting.  Workaday, as people used to say.  Here’s the thing, though, about the event that we have just celebrated and we will continue to celebrate, God helping us.  Nothing is the same.  God is with us.  Nothing is merely mundane in the sense of dull or uninteresting or workaday drudgery.  Life needs no longer be that way when we are walking in the light of Christ – the light of hope and peace and joy and love.  Let us continue to remind each other of this truth and ponder it in our hearts individually and collectively.  Living in the hope of Christ which looks forward to the renewal and restoration of all things.  At the same time, we stand together with our heads up, asking God to show us where He is working around us and giving us the strength and will to join Him.  Living in the light of the one who is our peace, asking, “What kind of person might God make me?” and praying, “Make me a channel, a delivery system if you like, of your peace, Lord.”  Living in the light of a deep-rooted joy that is not dependent on circumstance, joy that recognizes mourning and loss, joy that is based on the saving and delivering acts of our saving and delivering God.  Who loves us.  Who carried us like a shepherd carries a lamb close to his chest.       

God who is with us.  God who has entered our world.  Mundane originally means “of the world” or “wordly” from the same Latin root that gives us mundo in Spanish or monde in French.  Nothing is simply “of the world” because Jesus came, Jesus is here, and Jesus will come again.  The Lord will keep you going out and you coming in from this time on and forevermore.  This is the promise with which I want each and every one of us to walk with as we enter a new year.  Let us walk into the new year in the continuing light of Christ, which the darkness cannot overcome.  Let us walk into the New Year with a strong sense of being at home in the love of Christ – being accepted, cared for, caring, free to be ourselves, free to be vulnerable, loved.

1. This is the other thing about the truth of God with us.  Being formed into the image of the one who is with us.  Because we have heard the good news.  The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.  Because we wondered in awe, along with Elizabeth, “And why should this happen to me?”  That salvation/deliverance/rescue should come to me?   Because we responded with Mary when she was told about her part to play in God’s saving plan, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord.  Let it be with me according to your word.”  Because we heard the news that came to the shepherds when heaven broke through as if it couldn’t contain the joy of the angels.  They had seen God do wonderful things.  They had seen God lay the foundations of the earth when the morning stars sang together, and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy!  They had seem God appear in fire to Moses and speak to others through messengers and speak through prophets.  They had seen God’s spirit rest on people.  But look what God had done now as a baby’s cry pierces the night.  He is with them!  We went to the manger with the shepherds to worship and adore, and now we return, glorifying and praising God for all we have seen and heard.    

How could we not be changed? 

Someone has said this about those shepherds who return glorifying and praising God: “They didn’t just return to their work, they returned with glory.  They returned with praise.  It makes you wonder what it was like in those fields in the region around Bethlehem. Was there spontaneous singing breaking out at unusual times during the day?  Was there more laughter than usual, or laughter that lifted up instead of knocking down?  Was there a larger vision that didn’t ignore the needs of the sheep, but saw serving sheep as somehow holy work now, God-infused work, instead of a chore fit only for folks on the margin?”

We don’t know the answer to those questions, but I like to think all those things were true.  We know that we can go home, whatever that looks like for us, as people who are at home living in the transforming strength of God with us.  We know that we can go home transformed, carrying the things we have shared, like worship together, the love of family and friends, old traditions, and new traditions. So we go home as people who are at home on our way.  As we go, let us be reminded that in all our comings and goings, the Lord will keep us from this time on and forevermore.  Thanks be to God for the wonderful gift of his loving presence, and Happy New Year to you all!

Amen