Sermon - Blessed Beginnings

Sermon – First Sunday after Epiphany – Year B

“Blessed beginnings”

Genesis 1:1-5, mark 1:4-11 / January 11, 2015

Let us pray:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

I have a question for you.   Where did you begin?  Where did your story – the story of you – begin?    Is it a birth story?  Did you begin the night you were pressed upon by waves of fierce contractions,  forcibly evicted from the dark womb  into the light of this world?     Or did you begin in a sweaty, lusty union of your parents (God forbid we think about that on a Sunday morning!), when your own unique mix of DNA was created?

or did you begin farther back in history?   Are you part of a noble race, a shoot from a distinguised family tree?   In my family I’ve been told I am a descendant of the British explorer Sir Humphrey Gilbert.   However true or not that legend might be I am kept humble by also being told that his ship named the “squirrel” sunk in Hudson’s bay giving rise to the equally fun legend that we who are his descendants are all ‘nuts’. 

Some of us are not as old as our bodies.  Maybe you began the day of a great awakening or enlightenment in your own mind, or the day you met your soul mate, or the day you finally went sober for good.   I read a cute story about a four year old at bedtime.   He was used to having his parents read a bedtime story or a story that they would make up.    One night his mother asked him if he wanted to hear a real story about his birth.  

the little guy replied, “no, i’d rather you tell me about the time I got to go to ‘target’ to look at the expensive toys.”

Beginnings – whatever they are – are important.  

They tell us who we are, and they often tell us where we are going in this life.  Today, Dorothy read a story about the first beginning.  “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.   The earth was empty, a formless mass cloaked in darkness.  And the spirit of God was hovering over its surface...”    here the biblical writer declares that god draws near the empty waste. 

God gazes into the chaos and then goes about creating form and order, beauty, light and life.      Many scholars believe that this story of beginnings in Genesis was written down during the exile of the Israelites in Babylon.    

What this piece of information tells us is that this story of beginnings had special value to the Israelites in their time of exile – their time of chaos and disorder.   

It is a story the people needed to hear – about their God who creates order from chaos, light out of the darkness, life  from what is lifeless.     Because when the world feels like chaos, when we find ourselves trapped in the formless mass of loss or grief or despair, when even God seems to us to be nowhere....in that time when we are desperate for a new beginning, we have this story.   It reminds us that we have a creating God who reshapes the chaos into order.

Beginnings happen every day.    I’m sure most of us are aware of the “occupy movement” which began as “occupy wall street” a few years ago.   whatever you might think of the movement, it is interesting to consider its beginnings.   Months before anyone occupied anything anywhere, a group of people met in a room to dream.   Some of them were New Yorkers, but others were Egyptian, Spanish,Japanese,  Greek.  They did not dream and talk about protest plans.  Their passion was not for organizing events.   What these people dreamed about was how to create a new life, together.    they were frustrated and angry.  Something essential about life in their eyes had gone missing.  

They were concerned about a world of big things: 

Big governments, big companies, big banks, big forces.   

It felt like ordinary people had no power; 

It sometimes seemed to them as if ordinary people didn’t matter at all.   And so they dreamed about a way of life that would testify to that belief, a world that was truly democratic, a world of personal and collective responsibility, a world with access for all people to education and medical care and art and information and housing and nutrition and natural spaces.   And so they founded what they called the New York City general assembly to bring about order into the chaos they experienced.

whether it is this occupy movement, or here in Canada the ‘idle no more movement’, or something more simple and local – like a mothers’ group or a support group,

Or even a church – wherever people gather to stare into the chaos, into the dark mass of our felt reality and then we speak, we act and create order, form, and beauty; we echo the voice of our creator god who brought new life from a murky deep.

Beginnings are important.  They tell us who we are and they tell us where we are going.

In the beginning, the spirit of god hovered over the waters and brought forth life.     In the beginning of Jesus’ ministry the spirit of god hovered over the water of the Jordan river, and in Jesus,--  order, form, light, life and beauty entered the world again when it was needed.   John the Baptist was involved in that beginning.   He appeared in the wilderness shouting, demanding that people rise up and take responsibility for their lives and for the state of the world.  John didn’t show up in a world where everything was fine.  It was a world scarred and disfigured by the oppression of the many by the few, by state-sponsored violence, by greed, by the exploitation by the powerful of the powerless. 

John showed up there, standing in the waters of the Jordan urging people to see the chaos around them and to make a change.

In our Baptism, the spirit of god hovers over us, over the church, offering newness of life, a way of life, the gift of a life with order, light, beauty, --  a life in which darkness and chaos and death do not have the final word.       Baptism is, often, our beginning in our life in the church; in our life as followers of Christ.    To be in the church is to be together in community, that strange family begotten by “water and the word”.    

Baptism not only incorporates us into the church but also reminds the church, again and again, of who we are and what we are supposed to do. 

And then Jesus wades in next to john.  can you focus your mind’s eye on that moment, see with me that instant there in the rippling waters of the Jordan, where Jesus stood and looked down and saw his own reflection on the face of the deep?   It was creation happening all over again.  The wind blew down that river as john scooped up the water and poured it over Jesus’ head.   

A voice broke the silence, “you are my child, with you I am well pleased.”

And just as before, there was light in the darkness.  As it was in the beginning, here, again,  God was in the world, wresting order from chaos.   this time it was by proclaiming good news to the poor and release to every captive.  God was in the world to speak peace to the world’s strongest army, to feed the hungry as others hoarded excess, to restore dignity to all in a world that afforded dignity to some and stripped it from others, to forgive us our sins and free us for love. 

As the beginning of creation was spirit filled, so, too, was the beginning of Jesus’ ministry at his baptism spirit filled and, so, too is our beginning at baptism.   

after Jesus was baptized, the spirit drove him out into the world; the spirit fills us in the church and drives us into the world – to bring light to the darkness, order to the chaos, beauty and life to a world so much in need.   each year on this day – baptism of Jesus day, I am reminded of the persons at whose baptisms i have been privileged to officiate.     I often wonder how their lives are unfolding and the place baptism holds in their lives as such an important beginning.  I wonder how the spirit is at work in their lives and where the spirit is leading them to someday be co-creators with God of order. Light, life, and beauty.  in this church I think of those baptized in my time here:      Eli, Joseph, Joshua, Nora, Signy,  Zachery   - I wonder about the beginning of these children’s faith journey and where the spirit will lead them along the path of God’s good purposes.

You know, there’s not one beginning in the bible; there as so many.   And there is not just one way to begin in our journey of faithful discipleship, but however that beginning takes shape, it will contain the same theme:  when the earth was a formless mass, God ordered the chaos and made a good creation.   When injustice reigned in human life, God gave us Jesus to reorder lives from the inside out.  

When the earth was dark, and its saviour had been laid in a tomb, he rose again to show once and for all time there is no disorder that the love of God cannot remake; there is no chaos that God’s love cannot turn into something beautiful.    Shortly, we will refresh ourselves with the promises made in our baptisms.  As we do, I want to ask you again:  when did you begin?  

When did the spirit of God hover over the chaos of your life, call you by name, and deliver you into a good and blessed place?   Beginnings  matter.  They tell who we are – and whose we are.  They tell us where we are going – and even who we will meet when we reach the end.    Amen.

Major Sources:

“As It Was in the Beginning” by The Rev. David Lewicki in Day1.org http://day1.org/3456-as_it_was_in_the_beginning.   January 8, 2012.

“Family – From Out of Nothing” by William H. Willimon, in Pulpit Resource, Vol. 28, No. 1, Year B, pp. 7-9.

Editor:  William H. Willimon.   Wood Lake Books, Kelowna, BC.  2000.

“Pastoral Perspective” by Elton W. Brown in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 1, p. 238.

Editors:  David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor.  Westminster John Knox Press.

Louisville, Kentucky.  2008.