Let us pray: We come to you, Holy One, with thanks for the visions you give us of your loving ways. Stir our hope and fill us with courage to imagine how we might journey in the paths you illuminate with your presence made manifest in many ways, and in the story of Jesus, the child born to bring your presence among us in human form. Amen.

Have you broken any New Years resolutions yet? It's become kind of a sad joke with the coming of a new year to consider how quickly our best laid plans to make changes in our lives can come to a crashing end. Despite the kind of bemused acceptance with which we seem to treat this flawed aspect of our lives, there are usually a few newspaper articles or radio interviews with experts who have good ideas at how we can best try to make positive changes in our lives and have them stick beyond a few days or even weeks.

The whole new years resolutions idea does make some sense. Connecting with the old idiom of turning over a new leaf, it seems fitting when we put a new calendar on our walls – thus indicating a fresh start – to also decide to make a fresh start with some aspect of the way we live our lives. I'm sure that there are many success stories, but I expect we are less likely to hear about them than we are the dismal failures. Perhaps it is something about the human condition that we are more likely to commiserate over our failings than we are to celebrate the successes.

I've come to avoid making new year resolutions. I don't know whether it is the vaunted failure rate that prevents me from participating or my own lack of success in previous attempts. I looked back in time for just a few minutes and I could not come up with any past success stories, at least as far as resolutions associated with a new year. I can recall a couple of times when I made a decision to change some aspect of my life and responded with a fairly high degree of success. But they weren't associated with the start of a new year, and they weren't all that life changing in any broad sense. As I reflect on the whole issue it seems to me that for myself at least, and I suspect for many others, that there has to be a bigger motivation to make a life change than just posting a new calendar on the wall and remembering to change the year when we write cheques.

Regardless of how well or poorly we adhere to resolutions made at the beginning of a new year, I think it is important for us to acknowledge that an important part of a faithful life is to engage in the search for transformation, for ourselves and also for society in general. Despite the almost comical way we treat resolutions made at the beginning of a new year, we know that many people can claim a dramatic change in the path their lives have taken and that a large part of those changes have come about as a result of some connection with their spiritual selves and with issues of faith.

How much of our time at worship is dedicated to naming and claiming transformation as a goal for ourselves and for the world? Certainly our prayers of confession are made with this in mind and in our hearts. The same goes when we make prayers of thanksgiving and concern. As people of faith we are convinced that God can work changes in us and in the world.

I was attracted to the idea of transformation this week as I considered the scripture readings for Epiphany and also as I considered the baptism of Rayne, which we celebrated this morning.

The baptism liturgy uses the word transformation to describe the faith journey, the beginning of which is marked by the sacrament of baptism. The decision to seek baptism is in itself a decision to follow a certain path, a path marked by connection with a faith community, a connection with the presence of God, a connection with the story of our faith which is itself a story of transformation.

The act of baptism has its roots in the story as well. The gospel of Mark chooses to begin the story of Jesus, not with the story of Jesus' birth, but with the story of Jesus' baptism by his cousin, John the baptiser. This marks the beginning of the story for Mark, the story of Jesus as a preacher, teacher, and healer – as he went on a journey around Galilee offering transformation for people in the way they understood and accepted the presence of God in their lives. John the baptiser, while he protested the need to baptise Jesus, was one who told a story of transformation. The word “repent” which he used in his message to those who would listen was literally an invitation to people to turn around, consider the lives that they had lived to that point and make a change, signified and ritualised by a cleansing immersion in the waters of the Jordan river to live lives more closely attuned to the path of God.

Matthew starts his gospel account a bit earlier, dedicating the largest number of words to the story of the visit of the Magi. This is also a story of multiple transformations. Something guided the magi to travel, following the star to the place where Jesus was. What searching, what longing, what needs were they experiencing to lead them to do so? We also heard of the transformation which came upon them, as they learned in a dream to follow a different path home.

The different versions of the gospel record and the markedly different accounts and ways in which the birth of Jesus is told in the the various gospels is interesting. Even though these three writers share much in common – thus explaining the term synoptic gospels which is used to describe the three gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke because they can be seen together – they choose to tell much different stories of the circumstances of Jesus' birth. One thing to note in this is that they are thus less likely to be truthful accounts of what really happened and instead are to be considered as a lens through which we can seek out the meaning which each of the writers wanted us to take in connection with the story of Jesus' birth. Matthew chooses to give the most time to the story of the visit of the Magi, and the resulting political crisis that was created when they chose to consult with Herod. Matthew's purpose then seems to be to describe just how revolutionary the transformative message of Jesus would be. If the mere circumstance of his birth was enough to prompt the visit of wise leaders from other lands and the frightened massacre of young male Jews by Herod, then how much more transformational would the message of Jesus be when he went about Galilee speaking with people and living a life that was closely connected to the path of God.

And truly that is the story of Jesus – whether we read it in Mark's minimalist version of the gospel, Luke's much more wordy account or that of Matthew – namely that it is a story of transformed thinking – about God, and about who and what matters in life. But not only is it a story of transformed thinking. That is but a start. It is a story of how transformed thinking will lead to transformed living. The baptism liturgy puts it this way, to be part of the community, to hear the story of the roots of our faith (including the transformational story of the life of Jesus) and to be called into response to the gospel. It's but an instance of the transformation described by the action-reflection- transformed action model of learning which is often used as a model and description of the journey of faith. In other words, the story of the roots of our faith – the story of interaction between people and God – the story of relationship between God and God's people and the deeper and keener additions to that story which come from the story of the life of Jesus cause us to live our lives in a transformed way, and then to reflect on how our lives are and could be even more faithful to the way of God, resulting in further changes to way we strive to live faithfully.

Whether it takes the beginning of a new year, the occasion of a baptism – reminding us of our own commitments to a faithful life, the meaning we have developed in a reflective season of advent, the enlightenment that comes to us as we consider the true meaning of Christmas or the invitation by words like those of Isaiah to seek the light and the new discoveries that we might be led to as a result, the story of faith is one which encourages to always consider a different path, a more faithful path, a path which leads more fully in the ways of God's justice and which seeks to be more fully lived in the abiding love of God. Amen.