In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

For many people Christmas is over for another year. The presents have been unwrapped and some of them have been returned. The turkey supper has been devoured and the Boxing day sales have been endured. It ended at some point on the 25th of December. But for us Christmas is still upon us. This season of celebration of Emmanuel-God with us continues to run until early January when we will begin the season of Epiphany.

This is a wonderful time of year because it truly is a mixture of both reflection and expectation. Our season of Christmas coincides with the winding down of one year and the marking of another new year this evening. We stand today on the boundary between the old and the new.   
 
And as we stand on the boundary there is a sense of expectation for the dreams and possibilities of a new year  and at the same time  there is a  moment of reflection as another year in our lives passes away.

Perhaps some of you are in the habit of making new year's  resolutions at this time of year. A recent report indicates that women make more resolutions but men are better at keeping them. The most common resolutions are often to quit smoking, joining a gym  or lose weight. An desire to change ones physical appearance. These resolutions mark an attempt to make an improvement in our lives, an effort to start afresh with a brand new year, an attempt to put off the old and put on the new as we stand on the threshold of a new year.

It is this action of putting off the old and putting on the new which marks our epistle reading this morning. . . In our reading this morning from the epistle to the                     Colossians written around 61-63 CE - the Apostle Paul is encouraging us to cast off our old ways and clothe ourselves in the new life in Christ.

Listen again to v.12
AS GOD'S CHOSEN ONES, HOLY AND BELOVED, CLOTHE YOURSELVES WITH COMPASSION, KINDNESS, HUMILITY, GENTLENESS AND PATIENCE

We are God's chosen ones linked to all Christians here and now and those who have come before us by virtue of our baptism in Christ forming together Christ’s body on earth – the church. Think about that for a moment. You did not decide to choose God or to be part of his church.

God has chosen you through grace from before the foundation of the world to be part of Christ’s body. You have done nothing in order to merit being chosen. It is the will of God through grace. God has chose you to be in relationship with him through grace.

As God's chosen ones our conduct is to be marked not by selfishness but by kindness and patience as a witness to grace. Our relationships with our spouses, friends, family members and complete strangers is to be marked not by anger but by humility and love as a witness to grace. For we do not exist in a vacuum living solitary lives but in relationship to other people both family and complete strangers.

St. Augustine summed up this doctrine of God’s grace with the maxim, “Love God and do as you please”. Now Augustine’s statement looks to many like a license to indulge one’s desire for “earthly things”. But in reality it touches the deepest motivations for our actions. We have been justified by God’s grace and so we have a new, higher and nobler motivation for our actions – setting “our hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of the of God.”

In this single verse the Apostle Paul has captured our purpose as a community of faith, as the body of Christ, as the church. We do not exist for our own sake. The church exists for the sake of the world – for non members. We are witnesses to God’s grace to a world that has forgotten or does not yet believe that God is Emmanuel.

Certainly our efforts to witness to God’s grace are not easy at times. The  existential philosopher Jean Paul Sartre once said:  "Hell is other people" and this can sometimes be the case. For our relationships with other people are often lived in a tension between selfishness and selflessness. We are torn between our Christian call to give  selflessly and the attitude of rampant individualism that pervades our society.

Even here in the midst of the community of faith it can be difficult. As I have said to  you before the church is a family and the one problem that we have is that we do treat each other as members of the same family. There are disagreements and we grumble and complain about one another. We long for status in the eyes of the world and we grasp for power.

But for all its flaws and challenges, the church has the capacity to act in ways that are unique within our society because we are chosen by God through grace in Christ to be a community that gives witness to grace. This witness is not just verbal. It manifests itself in loving service to the community that surrounds us and ultimately to the world.

Yesterday, we marked our final community breakfast of the year. This meal is a good example of what I am trying to articulate. It is a meal supported and offered in response to God’s grace. A free meal and hopefully a time of fellowship offered by us to those in need in our community – this is a witness to grace to a world that has forgotten or does not believe. 

When we make a decision rooted in the grace in Christ -when we act selflessly  motivated by God's call, when we do something in the name of Jesus we have the hope that Paul speaks about, that God will work through us, to bring good into the world . . .

So here we stand on the threshold of another new year, fresh with possibilities and dreams as individuals and as a community of faith....
May our living truly reflect our putting off of the old, and putting on the new life in Christ -May our words and deeds be moved by our hope in the God of life
who has chosen us through grace to grow in
patience, kindness, humility, compassion and love . . .
Thanks be to God!    Amen.