Epiphany – the season that we are in at the moment, is our reminder that God does not remain in the glittery wrappings of Christmas for very long. It is our reminder that we are dealing, in Jesus Christ with someone who encountered people. Someone who looked people in the eye and said – “Come follow me.”

Last week we were considering the call of Samuel. This week we have the call of Simon and Andrew casting their nets into the sea. Jesus looks at them. Sees what they are doing and says, “Come, and I will make you fish for people”.

But before that, we heard just a bit of Jonah’s fishy tale. The bit where he too is called.

Now, the boy Samuel was ministering in the temple.

And he hears God’s classic call.

So familiar are we to the call of God in the stories that we can become immune to it. Perhaps, we think, God has called all these other people to do special things, perhaps that is only for special people.

This week on my day off, I went down to Edinburgh to see an art exhibition. It is a display of the all the art that has been collected by Sir Timothy Clifford over the last 21 years that he has been the director of the National Gallery of Scotland.

I was wandering around, looking at the pictures. There was a lot to see and a wide range of things. Beautiful things. Old things. Mysterious things. Modern things.

Everywhere you looked there was more to take in. And it was busy too. Quite a crowd of people had made the effort to go and look.

However, I got distracted by something when I was trying to look at all the lovely things. As I was looking at a portrait of a woman in a black hat, someone was standing beside me, explaining one of the pictures to someone else.

The imaginative hymn that we have just sung (Brian Wren’s Bring Many Names) is a salutary reminder that one name was never enough for our God. Whether we think of God’s doings in the Hebrew scriptures or in the Greek testament to Jesus Christ, we find that God is known by many, many names.

A name is fundamental to who we are. My own name, Kelvin, tells me something about where I come from. It is a reminder that I’ve roots in Glasgow where the Kelvin river flows. My mother was from that city, or to be more accurate from Clydebank, just a bit further down the Clyde. It also reminds me of the golfing passion of my father who was following a then well known golfer called Kelvin in the 1960s.

A name can say it all. It says who we are and can say where we have come from. Now, on this day, the first day of the New Year, we have a feast day – the Feast of the Holy Name. What does the name of Jesus Christians tell us about who he is and where he came from? And as people still known by his name, what does that say about who we are and where we come from?

God comes to us at night.

Midnight is that magical hour, when one day turns into another. Midnight mass, which we keep right now is that magical time when the world is changed, changed completely from one world into another.

[I’m not preaching again today due to a couple of baptisms, but here is one I prepared earlier.]

The message this morning is an easy one to remember. I am going to sum it up, right now in one sentence.

Mary said yes to God – what do you say?

The story that Luke paints of the annunciation has been taken by us and made into something rather lovely, but at whatever level we read it, it must have been quite scary for the recipient.

Many people have had a go at painting the annunciation since, but the picture that Luke paints shows Mary portrayed as minding her own business when suddenly she is confronted.

I often concentrate on John the Baptist at this time of the year – we get him twice in Advent and then return to him after Christmas. Often I say, listen, what a surprising voice this is. The one who witnessed to the Lord was a wild and lonely figure raging over the hills and telling people to watch out or else God would get them.

Every year, I hear people begin to moan about it getting earlier and earlier.

It used to be the start of November. Then the end of October. Now, even sooner. The appearance of the first Christmas promotions in the shops.

I’ve tended to join in. Can the retailers not wait?

Rather than preach as I usually do this morning, I am going to talk you on a journey that I made last week – a walk in London when I was on holiday down there last weekend. A little pilgrimage, if you like.

We will start in on of the churches that I was visiting – St Martin in the fields. I was there to worship with and meet Bishop Gene Robinson from the States, but it is not him whom I want to talk about this morning.

As I came out of the church, I noticed on some of the lamp-posts near the church an emblem. It is of a cloak cut in two.

I have become accustomed to seeing in the bookshops great quantities of what have become called “Self-Help Books”. I may even have one or two on my bookshelves – many people do. You know the kind of thing – The Road Less Travelled, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, Women who Run with the Wolves, Super-Elder, I’m OK, You’re OK, Living with Angels. You know the kind of thing. At best they can be helpful, at worst, positively silly.

Well, I’m thinking of going into the business with a book for those shelves. It has got the following chapter titles:

·        Piety for pilgrims

·        How to be good

·        Know right from wrong

·        How to mix politics and religion…in a good way

·        Learning more and more about God every day.

·        A radical approach to living the good life.

It is going to be called My Inner Pharisee.