Sermon
Title: Are You Ready for a New
Beginning?
Sermon
Date:
In Rabbi Marc
Gellman’s children’s book, “Does God tells us about a conversation between God
and Adam. Adam (as it says in Genesis
That is a big job
for one person. He tried numbering them
but that was too overwhelming. He tried
calling all of them, “HEY YOU!” but you can imagine that it got confusing. Finally in desperation Adam sat down on the
brown furry with teeth to think more, but nothing came to him.
“Then the brown
furry woke up, shook Adam into a nearby bush, growled a big growl, looked Adam
in the eye, and said to him, “Listen to me!
With all your talking you never once thought to ask us – the animals –
what we would like to be named. …..I
don’t know what they call a skinny-hairless-red-earth-foot-walker like you, but
they call me BEAR.
So
There was a
beginning -- Of the world, of God’s relationship with humanity, of humanity’s
relationship with the animal kingdom.
The creation of our world had a beginning even if we can’t pinpoint it
on a calendar or agree on exactly how it happened. There was a beginning, and our Bible gives us
our story of creation. “In the
beginning….God created the heaven and the earth.”
Now jump many,
many years later to the story in the Gospel of Mark, another new
beginning. A man named John has been
given the job of preparing the people for the Messiah. Here is his story:
Hear the words of Mark from The Message:
1The good news of Jesus Christ--the
Message!-begins here, 2following to the letter the scroll of the
prophet Isaiah.
Watch closely: I'm sending my preacher ahead of you;
He'll make the road smooth for you.
3Thunder in the desert!
Prepare for God's arrival!
Make the road smooth and
straight!
4John the
Baptizer appeared in the wild, preaching a baptism of life-change that leads to
forgiveness of sins. 5People thronged to him from
7As he preached
he said, "The real action comes next: The star in this drama, to whom I'm
a mere stagehand, will change your life. 8I'm baptizing you here in
the river, turning your old life in for a kingdom life. His baptism--a holy
baptism by the Holy Spirit--will change you from the inside out." (The Message by Eugene Peterson)
The connection
between the creation of the world “in the beginning” and the creation of a new
world in Jesus occurred to me while reading Brian McLaren’s “The Story We Find
Ourselves In.” It is the second book in
a series called “A New Kind of Christian.”
In the first
book, Neo, one of our main characters, is a science teacher who has befriended
a burned-out pastor. They help each
other through difficult times and their friendship deepens as the story
continues. In the second book, Neo is
sharing his faith in unusual ways with Kerry, a young woman who studies
endangered species. Her faith is
confused, at best.
Kerry has taken
Neo on a workday on the Galapagos Islands.
He is awed by what he sees and says this to her:
“It seems to me that we have to start here to begin to understand
who we are: part of a larger creation
and connected to it, but also given a “unique” status – created in “our” image,
says God. We find ourselves carrying
this special endowment of the breath of life…….We find in our souls and
in the story a resonant need for connection with God, with creation, and in
particular with the rest of humanity……We feel an inescapable responsibility to
be stewards of the rest of creation – just as a gardener cares for a garden,
the story tells us.”
Maybe you
remember that I said a few weeks ago that we aren’t problems for God to
fix…..well, “Neo goes on to say, “we aren’t an accident. We aren’t orphans. We aren’t on our own. We aren’t in charge. It’s not our world, to do with whatever we
want. We may be at the top of the food
chain in many places, although don’t the little microbes beat us all in the end?
– but we aren’t at the top of the chain of Being. LISTEN TO THIS – We have a place, and we have
a mission as gardeners and as namers and as companions to God and one
another. And if we take seriously the
phrase “in the image of God” we can understand our mission as something so
profound…so awe-inspiring; we are here to be God’s junior partners in creation.
……God creates us in it to be God’s young apprentices, God’s students, and
learning to create too.” (McLaren,
Brian. “The Story We Find Ourselves In.” p. 39-40)
Like Adam, we are
junior partners with God. As was John
the Baptist.
Did you know there was conflict between the followers of John the Baptist and the
followers of Jesus in the days of the early Church. John’s people claimed superiority because
Jesus had once been a disciple of the Baptist and had been baptized by him. The
Jesus people responded with stories in which John was presented as preparing
the way for the coming of Jesus.
The debate no
longer concerns us today. But we do see that, whether intentionally or not,
John did clear the way for Jesus because he preached a decisive change in
history. He offered a new beginning to the people hearing the message. They hadn’t heard anything like him before.
He was the most
powerful of all the apocalyptic preachers at a time when everyone was expecting
change. The change which came with Jesus was not one that people expected,
probably not the one John expected. But his warning that it was a time for
"metanoia," a word meaning "total transformation"
was valid for his day. And for ours. (Andrew Greeley homilies)
Say the word with
me – metanoia. What a great
word. Total transformation. You and I can be totally transformed by the
love of Jesus. John invites us into the
water to be baptized so that we can be partners with God in the many new
beginnings that will be available to us in the days ahead.
As I said last
week I have no idea how many days that actually gives us. But we have been given days in which we can
serve God and show our love of Jesus to others.
And God wants us to use them wisely.
So here are a
couple of questions to ask yourself during this Advent Season:
In a book titled Reconcilers,
Spencer Perkins tells about the time when someone stole the presents from under
the Christmas tree.” At first he thought that the children were playing a joke
on him. But he could see quickly that they were visibly upset. Apparently
someone had come into their house while they slept, picked out some choice
presents, removed the blanket that covered his favorite chair, and used it to
haul away about a dozen or so gifts that were to be given to the children and
to friends and family on Christmas morning. To say that the children were angry
would be an understatement. After his 11-year-old son, Jonathan, realized that
among the gifts stolen were his brand-new Nike sneakers, he stormed out of the
house in tears.
Perkins, himself, sat silently on
his coverless chair, stunned and fuming. He had seen the children’s Christmas
special “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” dozens of times since childhood. But
he never believed such a tale could come true. How do you forgive a person like
this, he thought to himself? “How do I teach my children to practice
forgiveness?”
“Because it is unnatural,” says
Spencer Perkins, “we have to practice forgiveness, like any other discipline.
According to Dr. King, ‘Forgiveness is not just an occasional act: it is a
permanent attitude.’” Later that day he put the question to his son. “How
should we as Christians respond to the person who tried to steal our
Christmas?” “Yeah, yeah, I know, Dad,” he said. “Even though he doesn’t deserve
it, we’re supposed to give him grace.”
“Sure,” says Spencer Perkins, “I knew
that the words that came out of his mouth were almost the complete opposite of
what he was feeling in his heart (I knew because I felt the same way). But I
also knew we had to start somewhere. And if, one step at a time, our
discipleship as Christians could include giving each other grace, if our
children could learn and practice forgiveness as well as they practice praise
and worship, if we could literally create a counter-culture of grace, then just
maybe, as we all mature in our faith, our hearts could finally line up with our
words . . . And the world would have to take notice.” (Spencer Perkins, “A
Counter-Culture Of Grace,” Online Leadership Journal).
There is no doubt that that moment transformed
the lives of that family. That was a new
beginning for a wounded and betrayed family.
This is the kind of radical change God wants to make in our hearts this
Advent season. Metanoia. When we
talk about Christ redeeming us from sin, we are not talking about keeping us
from drinking too much eggnog or spending too much on presents.
God is a
righteous God. God’s will is that we shall live righteous lives, lives
resembling that of our Lord Jesus Christ. That calls for a real change within
our hearts. Metanoia.
Maybe
there is someone you need to forgive this day? Someone you need to embrace?
Maybe a habit you need to change.
My NUGGET for today is from the
words of author Andrew Greeley “We are called upon during advent and indeed
through our whole lives to transform ourselves, to break out of our old habits
and begin life again as a new person.”
(Greeley, 2nd Sunday of Advent homily)
Are you ready for a new beginning? Is our church ready for a new beginning? Are we ready to see what exciting and wonderful things God wants to do through and in us in the year ahead or even in the last days of this year? Are you ready?
During
this season ask yourself how you want to spend the rest of your life. Ask yourself how to prepare for that
life. Ask yourself if serving Jesus is
the focus of the rest of your life.
John
said, “Prepare.” Advent invites us to
“Watch.” Jesus says, “Come. Come to the God of new beginnings.”
Let
the babe of Bethlehem show you the way.