Love and excitement

From Helen
Today marks the second Sunday of epiphany. I was talking to someone on the phone the other day and I asked how their Christmas had gone and they replied, ‘that seems so long ago now…’

Well in case you are feeling a little bit sad that Christmas may seem so long ago-I would like to tell you the true story of a man who loved Christmas. This man loved Christmas so much that he celebrated it every day.  He even bought himself a little present for each day of the year. He put up different decorations every day and took some down each day.  Now to me that seems like a lot of effort. Strangely enough his odd behaviour caused television reporters to report his actions, and he did not see that he had done or was doing anything strange. After all, on December 25th he opened three presents instead of 1 !!

It may seem strange, and it frankly it is, but it got me to thinking, about the excitement and love this man has for Christmas and the excitement and love we have for Jesus the reason for Christmas.

As I looked at the gospel reading this morning (John 1:43-end), I was struck by the excitement and love as people saw Jesus, we heard of Jesus calling Philip who in turn was so excited that he went and found Nathanael who whilst a little sceptical at first quickly became convinced. Philip and Nathanael were both excited to have found Jesus, the one that they had heard about in scripture. Philip was so excited that he ignored Nathanael’s comment about anything good coming out of Nazareth and responded with the simple words, “come and see.” 

I love going into schools and talking to the children about God. One occasion I was talking to a whole primary school telling them a story about a special baby King. Now this was just before Christmas and I could hear the infants muttering with some excitement - She means Jesus.  Well, I have to admit I was rather impressed with this. But I kept on with the story, and then I asked some questions.

The children had cottoned on, that when I was there the answer was likely to have something to do with Jesus, and so they kept shooting up their hands. One little boy got so excited that he shouted out, “ Jesus is always the answer.”

To be honest, I was even more impressed and did think perhaps my work here is done !

The children were genuinely excited, and whether that excitement was just because they knew the answers, or because it was nearly Christmas I don’t know. But how great it would be if we were that excited, if we just wanted to shout out, “Jesus is the answer, we have found the Lord… come and see.”

God who knows everything about us, whose presence we cannot escape from who is always there as we sang in the psalm this morning.

God is the answer – to know God is to know the best thing, it always amazes me that we have the best news ever, we worship the Saviour and we know God loves us and yet we all often forget to celebrate this.

How great it would be if we could just smile and say, ‘Jesus is always the answer..come and see.’

Now I am pretty good on my sporting knowledge, I support rugby, I support football to a lesser extent (although I do have a bizarre knowledge of Liverpool football club gained by osmosis I expect) anyway I certainly do not know anything about ice hockey. However I did hear of an occasion when an 8 year old girl in America was singing their national anthem before an ice hockey game. The microphone cut out which could have really upset this little girl but all the crowd joined in with her. Lots of people will remember this game not for the result but for that act of support and celebration. A good thing happened and it made the news !

In the gospel reading we were told that Jesus was in Galilee and he met Philip who was from the same city as Andrew and Peter. Andrew had been directed to follow Jesus by John the Baptist and when he had looked and seen Jesus in action, he knew that there was something special and he knew that he needed to tell others – he went to his brother, Simon Peter, and he told him. Then in our gospel reading today Jesus met Philip from the same city and he was excited on meeting Jesus and he told Nathanael who was amazed and believed immediately.

These men were excited, they wanted to celebrate – they had met the Lord and they wanted to share the news with everyone.

Now this is a challenge to us today, we are to spread the news to have the same excitement and love for Jesus, that when people look at us, and see how we live they will see something of Jesus.

We are the people who are to be as Jesus today, we are the people who are to point others to Jesus. We are the people who are to show in our lives the love and excitement which comes from knowing Jesus.

In a building in San Antonio, Texas there is apparently a portrait under which is written, “this is James Bonham, however as there is not actually a picture of him this picture is of his nephew. Who looked a lot like him.”

There is not a portrait of Jesus, but when people look at us, how amazing it would be if they said” well, this person is like Jesus. So although we don’t have a portrait this persons life reflects Jesus so much we can build an image of Him.”

We can have the excitement of the first followers of Jesus we can know His love and by this, we can try to be more like him day by day and so point people to Jesus just by being his children.

In November I went to a concert by a worship band called, Rend Collective. They are a group of Christian musicians from Ireland who praise God using banjos, ukuleles and they have a lot of fun doing it. They have an album out called the Art of Celebration and they maintain that we shouldn’t just come to Church with an upside down smile, but when we worship we should be happy we should be excited we should be celebrating !

I am not suggesting that we use ukuleles or that we will always feel like smiling but we should always be excited that we have found Jesus and that’s the best news ever !

May God give each one of us the courage, the wisdom and the confidence to live as a disciple of Christ, and may He give us the words to witness to the light and love of Christ, and may others see in us, and hear from us, a message about God’s love for all. AMEN