Several years ago, I preached a sermon on the Sunday after Easter that was called “After the Eggs are Egg-salad.”  The issue raised in that sermon was, once all the Easter foo-foo – the Easter egg hunt, the new Easter outfits, the dazzle and beauty of the special Easter church services – was over, then what?  What does it mean to live as people of faith out of what we’ve experienced as Easter people?

            I was going to follow the same approach for today’s sermon, but I was pretty sure that a sermon title like “After the Christmas tree is finally taken to the compost facility or put away in the garage, depending on whether you had a live tree or an artificial one, and after your vacuum cleaner has sucked up the last strand of tinsel that fell off the tree while you were taking it down, and after you’ve finally disguised the last of the turkey leftovers as enchiladas or curry or turkey pot-pie” simply was not going to fit on our sign-board out front.

            And yet, following Christmas and Epiphany, the question remains:  now what?  Even, so what?  Now that we’ve remembered and celebrated again the birth of Jesus, and the visit of the wise ones, how do we live the meaning of all that into today’s world in a meaningful way?

            Now, as is the case with so many profound and life-shaping questions, our culture offers us a ready answer to this one too:  “Buy a treadmill.”

If you’ve been reading your newspaper for the last two weeks, or turned on your television, you can’t help but have noticed that every single slick, colorful sale-flyer that’s in the paper – plus all those you may have received in the mail – plus all the ads that appear in-between prime-time television shows – are pushing exercise equipment.  Treadmills … stairmasters … Nordic skiers … exercise bicycles are all on sale now!

            It appears that, in the lights of the retailers, the real meaning of Christmas was overindulgence, especially in all things good to eat.  Those advertisers know – just like Santa, or your mother – about the three boxes of Enstrom’s toffee that you ate, and the third piece of Uncle David’s pumpkin pie, accompanied by the slice of Aunt Sarah’s pumpkin cheesecake, that you had to eat just so no-one’s feelings would get hurt, and the countless Christmas cookies you scarfed down just because they tasted so darn good.  And now, our culture tells us, the appropriate response to the Christmas season is to start getting rid of all that excess body mass we’ve just accrued … and that will, the ads assure us, make us feel like brand-new people.

            Well, gee … from a faith perspective, wasn’t that kind of the point of the season we’ve just celebrated?  Wasn’t that kind of the point, as we understand it, of God sending Jesus into the world?  To help us be and become brand-new people? 

            In case you’re debating about this, the answer is “yes.”  That is precisely the point of the Incarnation – of God coming to humanity in a new way – to show us what God looks like in the flesh, and to show us what we’re called to look like as the people who would worship and follow this God.

Which could be why those folks who put together the lectionary – that schedule of Scripture readings that most mainline churches follow through the course of the church-year – chose today’s passages from Isaiah to hold up before us as we begin this new year.  It’s sort of a mini-primer on what it means to serve God, what it means to to be and become new people, and to live out our faith in new ways in the coming year.

            This passage, sometimes called the “Servant’s Song,” tells us that God’s faithful servant is humble … this person doesn’t insist that he or she is always right, or that her or his way is the only way things can and should be done.  It says that God’s faithful servants do their work quietly and steadily – they don’t do what they do so that other people can see it, or with a whole lot of fanfare, or so they can brag about it, they just get the job done because it needs to be done.  God’s faithful servant does her or his work without complaining – theoretically, at least, we never hear God’s faithful servants whining, or saying things like “this is just too hard” or “but we’ve never done it that way before.”  God’s faithful servants do practical, hands-on things – they extend real, concrete healing words or actions to others (think hospital visits, sending comforting notes and cards, making casseroles for shut-ins or those recovering from illness, praying for people who are struggling).  And most of all – this is the bottom line, here folks – God’s faithful servants have patience and perservere … even when the work we’re called to do is incredibly difficult, even seemingly impossible, God’s faithful servants hang in there, and keep at it, never giving up.

Okay, admittedly it’s a long list of things that ways that we – as God’s would-be faithful people – are supposed to be, and a long list of things that we – as God’s would-be faithful people – are called to do.  But the list certainly looks do-able.  And as just-past-Christmas people of faith, we are pumped up, and ready to do it!!!  We can be humble … and steady … and hands-on doers of God’s work … and we will be, starting today!

            And as we do, we have to be careful about not being just like all those folks who are buying those new treadmills or rowing-machines (which may include some of us) and thinking that in only six to eight weeks those extra holiday pounds – plus any other extras that happen to be clinging to us – will just come tumbling off, and we’ll be that brand-new self we were hoping for.  Because if we’re honest – especially if we have ever actually purchased exercise equipment in the past – we know it’s not all that easy to do.

            I’ll freely admit, Bob and I have bought any number of exercise bikes and treadmills and stair-steppers … and when we start out, we have great intentions of using them faithfully, and getting in shape.  But over time, life sets in … we’re tired at the end of the day; we’re not losing weight as fast as we think we ought to be able to; we just don’t feel like it.

            And in fact, when I was talking about this very thing this past week with a friend who is an avid fitness fan, one of those folks who actually does work out at the gym three or four nights a week, she started laughing.  She said that every year, she and her husband notice all the new people who join the gym in January – everyone decked out in their brand-new athletic shoes and new sweat-suits or Spandex – and they all have an excited gleam in their eyes – and they come to the gym regularly, and get on the machines, and run and jump and pedal and sweat … and then … a few weeks later … when they don’t get quick results – say, by the end of January – they quit … and by spring, the people my friend sees at the gym are just the “regulars,” the ones who do this stuff year-‘round.

            And I think that can happen to us as people of faith, too.  We love the celebrations of Advent and Christmas – we love all the Christmas songs, and the special decorations, and the hope and joy suggested by that new baby lying in a manger.  Maybe we’ve experienced joy – or sacredness – or God’s presence – in some new way in our lives during the holiday season.

And so we’re fired up as the new year begins to once again go out there, and do our part for Jesus.  We want to be God’s servant people.  We have recaptured the vision of how the world is supposed to be – a place where there is actual peace in our very own families … a place where there is no more war, anywhere, for any reason … a place where everyone has enough to eat, and safe, warm, dry homes to live in … a place where our very own church members all get along, and cooperate, and enjoy each other, and work together to accomplish our ministry together.

            But then reality sets in.  We really don’t like our older sister or younger brother or second-oldest grandchild very much … wars still rage across the globe, and we can’t imagine what, if anything, can be done to stop them … we look at the hungry, homeless people living right here in Grand Junction, and make judgments about them – surely, if they just tried harder, they could get a decent job, and earn their own way, and we wouldn’t have to support them … and we come to coffee-hour after church, or to committee meetings, and we still hear – or produce – gossip about other people, and how small the Sunday School is this year, and all the mission projects in this community that we aren’t supporting and should be … And it’s easy just to give up.  Just to give up altogether on the idea that things can ever – will ever – be any different – any better—any more God-like in our world than they are now.

            And that’s when it’s time to look not at the baby lying in the manger, but at the man named Jesus standing on the shore of the Jordan River in today’s passage from Matthew.  The man who has come to his cousin John, John, the prophet, John, the preacher, John, the baptizer, and asked to be blessed (to be baptized) to begin his ministry.

            And John says, essentially, “no way.”  No way can I baptize you.  I need to be baptized by you.  You’re the one who’s supposed to come and set everything right.  You’re the one who’s supposed to do all the faith-work to fix the world.

            And Jesus responds, “That’s not how it works.”  I’m not here to fix things for you.  I’m here to fix things with you.  He says, “this is how all righteousness will be fulfilled.”  This is how – Jesus in partnership with John – God in partnership with us – things will be made right in the world.

            The point of faith is that we are not in this whole human venture and quest and effort alone.  Yes, we do have to do our part.  Isaiah – and all those other Biblical writers – got that right.  And we can also trust that God will do God’s part.  Those Biblical writers – and people of faith across time – have gotten that right too.  And together, over time, we can bring about “righteousness,” we can make this into the kind of world God is yearning for it to be.

            Right now, if you’re feeling discouraged about accomplishing whatever your faith-goals are, I invite you to think about some time you wanted to accomplish some other kind of goal – some goal that took a whole lot of hard work and practice – and that sometimes discouraged you, but that you hung in until you made it happen.

            For me, one of those goals was learning to ride horses again, after not having been on horseback for nearly 35 years.  Especially the first few months, week after week I nearly gave it up.  My body hurt incredibly – I went through bottles of aspirin and tubes of SportsCream just to deal with the pain.  I felt incredibly clumsy – at first, I mounted and fell into the saddle like a sack of potatoes, and every time I trotted, I thought my teeth were all going to jolt loose.  I didn’t think I’d ever get it.

But every once in awhile – maybe one lesson a month, for 3 minutes of the many hours that I was riding – something would click, and just for that moment, I’d know I’d “gotten it.” Like the day I could stand up in my stirrups, and raise my arms high over my head, and ride a horse moving at a full trot around the track without holding on to anything but my sense of balance … “Look, Ma, no hands!”

            And you’ve had that experience too.  Maybe you were trying to learn to play golf … or to play bridge … or to make pottery …             or to paint … or to knit … or to play the cello … or to bake a perfect cake.  Whatever it was, you accepted the fact that it would take time, and because you really wanted to make it happen, you were willing to keep at it, doing it over and over again, until eventually you got it.

            And so it is with our faith.  Our God’s invitation – and call – is to keep at it.  To do those small concrete things – attending worship each Sunday, greeting a visitor during coffee-hour, making a cake or a jello salad for the homeless shelter, sending a letter or a package to someone serving in the military, or attending the Martin Luther King Jr. Day rally downtown … trusting that each one of those things matters … and that over time, the accumulation of all those little things will add up to a very big thing – the thing we have done with our life to help bring righteousness into the world. 

            In this new year, may we indeed be pumped up by the beautiful story of beginnings – the Christmas story.  And may that excitement – that joy – that passion carry us into this new year to try – and to accomplish – new things for, and with, our God.  Amen.