Beginnings

Luke 3:21-22; Lamentations 3:22-23

Beginnings.

Some beginnings are wondrously starts—like the birth of a child, starting an adventure like hiking the Appalachian Trail, like New Year’s Eve, or starting a new job. Other beginnings are different—like starting a round of chemotherapy, or starting retirement, or coming home to an empty house now that the children are grown. Things begin every day. Dawn brings a new day, dusk brings a new night. 

A beginning is a renewal. It is a chance to do things over. It is a moment to rekindle an interest. It is a time to make changes and improvements. A beginning means we are not out of options. It means the road is long with much to see and to experience. The journey is in its first steps.

A beginning is a refresher. A couple empty-nesting get to remember who they once were when they were just a couple. A new retiree rediscovers what life was without a daily job routine. 

A beginning is a reconstruction. As things change, we change. A cancer patient will experience a retooling of life. A newly single person will have to reconsider what makes life livable. A fresh graduate will have to build themselves as something other than a student. 

Beginnings come in every phase of life, and they come shining gloriously as well as tinged with sadness and grief. In some sense, all of us are always beginning. This day is not yesterday. Who we are is not necessarily who we were. 

Which brings us to God’s eternity—something Jeremiah saw as God’s faithfulness. As Jeremiah’s world changed and altered radically with Jerusalem’s collapse (Lamentations is a great kaddish to its fall, full of nearly unbearable grief), he saw a constant—a sure and certain presence that fired hope even in the darkest valley the prophet would ever know. That constant was God. God was there. God was good. Grace was present. Things would begin again.

Jeremiah could utter his great hope because he believed. 

That sounds almost stupid—just believe and all shall be well—how many times has that phrase been uttered in the face of tragedy with no power whatsoever to make anything or anyone better? Things still emptied to nothing. Yet—in good faith, I stand before you, knowing full well the reality of suffering, the truth of hurt, and the feeling of hopelessness before it all, and say with complete sincerity—believe, all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

I do so because of another beginning. 

As Jesus embarked on his ministry as the Messiah, he started with baptism. He went to his cousin John out in the Jordan wilderness and allowed himself to be swept under the flowing waters, raised into his life as the Messiah, the beloved Son of God. 

That beginning changed all other beginnings. Jesus taking on the mantle of Messiah meant God entered human existence in all its beginnings—the miraculous starts to life at its pinnacle and the tragic upstarts that bring life to its nadir. God would take all of it into God’s own being. God would experience every nuance of what makes us who we are. God would breathe every sort of breath you and I breathe over our lives. That beginning brought God fully into our lives—there is nothing about us that God does not know, that God has not experienced, and that God will not use to draw us closer to him unfettered, unbound, and unchained by any sort of hurt or suffering. 

That is the good news of Jesus as the Christ. That is the promise of Christ no matter what sort of beginning we may be within as this new year continues to dawn.

The year has already got off to a halting start with crews still retrieving wreckage from another Malaysian plane lost at sea, terrorists shooting up a French newspaper, and, closer to home, members of our congregation meeting the new year by losing someone dear to them. For some, this week’s bitter cold is a perfect analogy to their outlook—new start, but cold sterility everywhere. 

But in Christ that is not and will not be the last word. The last word is resurrection—the end of death itself. Actually, resurrection is the end of all endings. Promise blooms where hopes fade. Hope rekindles where loss seeps into us. Next chances sprout where last chances seem missed. 

All that begins with Jesus beginning to embody the Christ which begins with John submerging him in the Jordan. As Jesus rises from the water, resurrection begins its work in creation, renewing, restoring, and refashioning all that is, including all of us. So, today we begin. It is the beginning and God’s Spirit hovers over all of us, ready to create and recreate us into God’s own.