Our Scripture reading for today are those suggested New Year s Day.

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1 Our Scripture reading for today are those suggested New Year s Day. Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 The first scripture is one that I think most of you will be familiar with. For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven. But to me this passage less about accepting whatever happens as it is about making the most of the moment, living in the present. Psalm 8 VU732 Our responsive Psalm is a psalm of absolute praise and wonder, praise to God for the astounding richness of creation and wonder that, You have made us little less than divine and crowned us with glory and honour. Revelation 21:1-6 Our reading from Revelation is a passage often quoted when referring to the rapture when God will destroy evil and create a new and perfect world. It contains the promise, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his people. But isn t that what we celebrate at Christmas, God coming to dwell among us? If so, is the new heaven and new earth spoken of in Revelation a future promise or a present commitment? Matthew 25:31-46 Our last reading is the passage frequently called the judgment of the nations or the sorting of the sheep and the goats. It challenges us to ask what we are doing in the present to determine what the future will hold.

2 Past Realities, Present Opportunities, Future Possibilities So the celebration of Christmas Day is over. The carols have been sung, gifts have been unwrapped, the turkey and all the leftovers that go along with it have been eaten, and the company has gone home. Now all that remains is to take the tree down, put away the decoration, and get back to normal. Right? But as we begin this New Year I want to ask you exactly what you think normal will look like for the year ahead. Are you excited about it or concerned, or perhaps a bit of both? I m sure that most of us would like a year where family and friends are healthy and happy, where our work is productive and rewarding, and where our finances are stable. But the reality is that, those who can even dream of such a year are a very small minority of the world s population. Many will simply dream of having enough to eat or of a time when bombs and guns will fall silent. For many people, normal will be an ongoing struggle to survive. Even for those of us who are fortunate enough not to have to struggle to survive, the New Year may hold less than happy dreams. For some the diagnosis of an illness or disease will leave them uncertain of the future. For others this past year may have offered changes in employment, finances or family structures that have so altered any sense of normality that they don t even have an idea of what to hope for. To even think about the future may seem impossible in the face of the reality which many people face.

3 But whether we are dreaming and hoping of a bright and exciting future or whether we are dreading what will come, the New Year us upon us, ready or not. And what this New Year will hold for us depends, to a great extent, not on what actually happens, but rather on how we will respond to it. For many year, following the Christmas Eve worship service, it was a tradition in my family to watch the 1951 black and white version of Charles Dickens Christmas Carol, a story first published in Now I m sure that even those of you who have not read the book or seen the movie know the story of Scrooge. Scrooge is a selfish and bitter old miser who hates Christmas and anything else that does not help to add to his already immense wealth. Although Scrooge is, by the standards of his time, extremely wealthy and has more than enough money to buy anything he wants, he lives a very Spartan existence. He appears angry, bitter, and to a great extent even cruel. Scrooge does not seem to find joy in anything. He has cut himself off entirely from his family and the only person that might have been classified as his friend, his business partner Jacob Marley, died seven years ago. On Christmas Eve, as Scrooge retires to his cold and lonely rooms, he is visited by four ghosts. The first is the ghost of his long dead partner Jacob Marley, who warns him of the consequences of his selfishness and tells him his only hope of escaping the eternal torment Marley himself endures, will be through the visit of three other ghosts.

4 The first ghost is the ghost of Christmas Past and through this ghost we begin to see the events that have led Scrooge to where he is now. What becomes very clear is that it is not what has happened to Scrooge, but how he has responded that has made him who he is today. It is the decisions that Scrooge has made that have turned him into the person he is. The second ghost, the ghost of Christmas present, forces Scrooge, for perhaps the first time in a very long while, to look beyond himself. He is forced to observe how those around him live. He sees the immense poverty in which his clerk lives, and yet he also sees in this man a vibrancy and a joy of life that seems completely beyond Scrooge s comprehension. He also sees his nephew who, although not living in the same sort of poverty as the clerk, is by Scrooge s standards poor and he is shocked when he hears his nephew express pity for him, when he asks the question, What joy has all his wealth every given him? Scrooge witnesses the immense gratitude and joy that a simple act of kindness can inspire and, like it or not, his eyes are opened and he can no longer shut out the world around him. The final ghost, the ghost of Christmas yet to come, never speaks directly to Scrooge, but shows him where his current ways will of life will lead. Of course by the end of the story, Scrooge has learned his lesson, amends his ways and become a better man than anyone would ever have believed possible.

5 As I read this morning s scriptures with the story of Scrooge in mind, I couldn t help but think about how each one of these passages, in its own way, reflects the same messages as those brought to Scrooge by the three ghosts. For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. There are things that happen in our lives that we simply cannot change, things that happen in their own time regardless of what we might want. Like the past revealed by Scrooge s first ghost, these things cannot be changed, but what can be changed is how we react to them and how we move forward from them. We can choose, like Scrooge, to become angry and bitter when life becomes hard and things are intensely unfair. We can choose to shut ourselves off from the pain by refusing to allow ourselves to feel it or we can learn empathy form those difficult times so that we can begin to understand the struggles that other people may be going through. Our reading from Revelation reflects, for me, the ghost of Christmas present. The things that were happening in the world around Scrooge did not occur simply because the ghost showed them to him. They were there all along. The pain and sorrow were there even if Scrooge refused to acknowledge them. But so were the people who saw joy in the simple pleasures of life, and those who brought joy to others through their caring and generosity. It s just that Scrooge couldn t or perhaps wouldn t allow himself to see them before the ghost forced him to.

6 The home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his people. This is something that doesn t change. This is the promise that we have just celebrated with Christmas. God is with us. Nothing will change that. What changes is our willingness to open our eyes and see God alive and active in this world. This is what Scrooge had to learn, to see the good in the world. And all too often this is something that we also need to be reminded of. There is good in our world, if we simply open our eyes and our hearts to see it. Our final reading this morning, our gospel reading, is the one that perhaps most closely reflects the story told by Charles Dickens. The ghost of Christmas yet to come warns that if Scrooge continues to treat others with the same contempt, if he continues to think only of himself and refuses to share with others, he will pay a heavy price. Matthew warns that if we refuse a cup of water to the thirsty, a cloak to the naked, or a caring hand to the lonely and despairing, we are refusing these things not only to them but to God. Like the warning given Scrooge, we are warned that it is our choices and our decisions that determines what our life will turn out to be in the end. Once again we are reminded that it is not what happens to us but what we choose to do about it that really matters.

7 This is true for each of us as individuals but it is also true for us as a church. What we say and what we preach is important, but it is what we do and how we act that reflects most clearly what we really believe. Today, as we begin another new year and as we prepare to celebrate our 50 th anniversary as a church, we need to remember our past and learn from it, we need to celebrate and make the most of the present, and we need to look forward with hope and trust into the future. So how will we choose to live, both as individuals and as a church in 2017? What will we choose to do with the opportunities and the times that will be offered to us in the year ahead? When others reflect on the choices we make, will they be saying Well done good and faithful servant or will they say, what a Scrooge? The choice us up to us. And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!