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Sunday January 11, 2009 "New Beginnings" Mark 1:4-11 and ACts 19:1-7 |
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Location: Blogs Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons |
 | | Posted by: Brad Miller | 1/26/2009 1:58 PM | The church year can be a little strange.
While most of our society marks January 1st as the beginning of the new year, we Christians have a couple of other alternatives. Lots of us look to the beginning of the school year as the “new year” for the church. When everyone is back in town, that’s when we really gear up our programs, and so it feels like a new beginning.
That is not the only “new beginning” we as church folks experience. The liturgical calendar sets the beginning of Advent as the beginning of the new church calendar. So, sometime soon after Thanksgiving each year we enter a time of reflection, study and introspection in preparation to celebrate the anniversary of the coming of the Messiah, and what it means to our lives that Jesus told us that he would come again.
So, we use that time to prepare ourselves, to work to make changes in our lives, in our spiritual practices and in our outlook. The new year celebration of Advent ends with the celebration of the birth of Jesus and all that that new beginning means to us.
Then, finally, comes the celebration that most of our culture celebrates: the beginning of the new calendar year.
I loved new years as a kid. We got together with cousins in Detroit and played cards and ate lots of food and got to stay up late. At midnight, the tradition in Detroit was to go outside and shoot your guns in the air. We didn’t have guns, so we took the pots and pans with lids from the kitchen and stood on our front porch, banged them together and listened to the sound of gunfire all around. As I say these words today, it sounds pretty bizarre, but it was just what was done, so back then, it seemed normal.
I came to find out years later that the idea of making the loud noise on New Years Eve was a throw back to a pagan ritual that was supposed to scare away the bad spirits, the bad karma from the past year so that a fresh start could be made in the new year, unencumbered by the mistakes and problems of the past.
These days, you will not find me up banging pots and pans, or outside shooting guns in the air on New Years Eve. My new years celebrations have become much tamer, but still, I love what the whole celebration symbolizes.
I want to say that again: I love what the whole new years celebration SYMBOLIZES. How many times have we gotten to the end of a year and thought, “Boy, I will be glad when this year is over.” I have certainly had some of those years. Years of loss and struggle. Years that will forever signify sadness and grief to me.
But then, in the midst of winter, comes this new beginning. But what has changed? A page on the calendar is all, really. But have our circumstances changed? Has the slate been wiped clean? Are the consequences of bad choices suddenly gone, no longer applicable? Of course not. But, still, we have in front of us, this new beginning where everything is possible. A year where I will lose 30 pounds by Valentines Day. A year where the financial markets will suddenly right themselves and all of our retirement accounts will be strengthend. A year where past mistakes will be forgotten and broken relationships can be healed. A year where the sun will shine and the reservoirs will be filled, too. A year where the Detroit Tigers can win the World Series.
Hey, if firing a gun in the air on New Years Eve will allow those things to happen, show me to the nearest gun store! But, of course, it won’t.
New beginnings are wonderful thing and I love the making of resolutions and the hopeful plans for the future. I don’t even mind that many of those resolutions will fall by the wayside and some of the plans will not come to pass. I love that I can try again, and I love that some of the resolutions will stick and some of the plans will pan out. I love a new beginning, even if it is only a symbolic new beginning.
It is one of the things that draws me to Christianity. Our faith is based on a series of new beginnings. It seems like every other page on the bible contains a new beginning for someone…and most of them are the hopeful new beginnings that each of us long for.
The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament of full of stories of men and women who were raised in the faith, did their best to make their way in the world, made mistakes and were given another chance. Some were given third and fourth and fifth chances, over and over again. The Hebrew people who left the exile of Egypt in search of the promised land turned their back on God over and over again, yet God stayed with them and guided them.
Jonah refused to follow God’s directives again and again, yet was still of great use for God and ultimately felt the power of a new beginning.
Matthew and Zaccheus shared a profession that was viewed with disdain and dishonor. Yet both felt the grace of God in their lives and left their tax collecting days behind in order to seek out a new beginning.
Peter denied knowing Jesus three times, but in the beautiful scene in John’s gospel where the risen Jesus prepares breakfast on the beach, Peter is forgiven and instructed how to start on his new beginning. Ultimately, Peter became, as Jesus predicted, the rock upon which the church would be built.
It is striking to look at the kinds of symbolic celebrations of the calendar new year that we undertake, and compare those to the new beginnings afforded us as followers of Jesus Christ.
The differences in the two are the differences between doing our best to change our life, and relying on God’s holy presence to change our lives. Don’t get me wrong: I love the symbolism of writing out the resolutions and making the changes and feeling fresh, starting anew. In making these choices, I am charting a course for a lifestyle. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It makes good sense to try and improve ourselves, to chart an ethical course for our lives. But compared to the new beginnings present in our reliance on God, they are next to nothing.
There is a fundamental difference in striving to be good, ethical people and in striving to honor God by giving ourselves up to God’s power and grace. Being good people will take us a long way, but being God’s people will take us everywhere we need to go.
At first glance, one of the strange things about our church calendar is that the birth of Jesus and the epiphany of the wise men is followed quickly by a Sunday where the church celebrates “The Baptism of Our Lord.” The Mark passage we heard this morning is being read all over the Christian world this morning. And upon further reflection, it does not seem odd to me at all.
This is a story of a new beginning; maybe the most important new beginning that the world has ever known. Jesus, ordained at birth as the messiah, has grown into man hood. Tradition puts his age at about 30 when he is baptized and we are not entirely sure what he has been doing since we last have a scriptural reference about him. At the age of 12 he was speaking in the temple in Jerusalem, gone to the great city during a high, holy feast. And then, when we next see him, he is being baptized in the Jordan River by his cousin John, he of the wild demeanor and disheveled appearance. John, we are told, was called to prepare the way for the messiah, and in this reading, those preparations have reached their zenith as Jesus sets out on his 3 year earthly ministry.
For many, the idea of Jesus needing to be baptized is absurd. John himself saw no sense in such an act. Many people treat this episode in the gospel story as a symbolic act signaling the start of this new ministry, this new beginning. But it is nothing of the kind.
As Jesus came up out of the murky waters of the Jordan, God’s voice was heard and the spirit, like a dove, descended upon him.
No, this was not shooting guns in the air, or making a resolution or eating black eyed peas and collard greens to celebrate a new beginning: this was God’s Holy Spirit, present with Jesus, guiding him, bolstering the promise of this fully divine, fully human Jesus on his earthly journey.
And just so we don’t find ourselves saying, “Well, of course, that was Jesus, and he was special” we turn to the baptisms of the Ephesian gentile Christians who had been taught by Apollos, a contemporary of the Apostle Paul.
It seems that Apollos had not followed the orthodox teaching that Paul, and Peter and John and the others who laid the groundwork for the church had advocated. The Christians in Ephesus had been baptized in the same manner that John had baptized Jesus, but they had no understanding of an essential element of Jesus’ baptism: the presence of the holy spirit. In fact, they had no inkling of what the Holy Spirit was.
As we look back on the stories of new beginnings throughout our Bible, God’s presence is made known over and over again. Moses is directed by God, as is Abraham and Jonah. It is God who upbraids and forgives them. It is Jesus who is present with Matthew and Zaccheus as they start their new beginning. It is the risen Jesus who assures and directs Peter as he begins again.
And it is the Holy Spirit, the third figure of God, the ever present part of the God-Trinity who empowered Jesus and changed the life of the Ephesian Christians.
You see, there was nothing wrong with what these newly converted Ephesians were doing, but in a very sense, what they were charting was an ethical lifestyle, rather than immersion into a life guided by the very presence of God’s Holy Spirit. They would do good things, they would live good lives, but until they understood that they must indeed open themselves open to God’s eternal and holy presence, they would never have the ultimate new beginning offered them. Only upon their baptism by Paul and their acceptance of God’s presence in their lives, did their ministry really begin.
This morning we heard various references to the leaders of this church being guided by God, being blessed by God’s Holy Spirit, and that is what sets apart membership and leadership in Christ’s church from say, a civic organization. Our purpose is to reflect God’s will, and that can’t be done until we truly open ourselves up to that will being made known to us through the Holy Spirit.
This then, is the importance of this new beginning. When we turn our lives over to God, when we open ourselves up to the presence of the Holy Spirit, we are changed people. Some look at the act of baptism and the act of communion and say, “Well, they’re only symbolic acts.” I would disagree. There is symbolism to be sure, but when we truly open ourselves to all the possibilities that God has to offer, the act moves beyond symbolism and leads us straight into transformation. But it starts with us accepting God’s Holy Spirit into our lives and allowing the spirit’s transforming grace to work.
We stand at the beginning of a new year, in awe of the new beginning that the baptism of Jesus signals. We stand at the beginning of a new year, hoping against hope that this new beginning will be one that leads us forward. We stand at the beginning of a new year, asking God to stay with us, to guide us, so that this new beginning might honor God and serve God’s will.
So, how do we get started? How about together?
We stand on the threshold of a new beginning. All of us together, hand in hand, heart in heart, with God’s holy spirit guiding us, can make this a new beginning to remember.
Now is the time.
This is the place.
We are the people. God’s people.
Happy New Year. May this new beginning be everything that we hope and pray for, today, tomorrow and always.
Let us pray: Loving God, we thank you for all the gifts you have graced us with, especially the fact that your Holy Spirit is ever present, if we will only be open to it’s movement. Thank you for the chance to begin again, and again, and again. Help us to honor you with this new beginning and every one that comes our way. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. | | | Permalink | Trackback |
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