Blessed ongoing beginnings (Howl "Wind" Howl)
The Baptism of our Lord, b, January 8, 2012
(Genesis 1:1-5; Acts 19:1-7, Mark 1:4-11
Happy New year! 2012 is just beginning. Do you believe that? Do you really think that there can be new beginnings? Or, is life simply, the same old, same old? Is Christmas, that time when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, when many of us had at least some days off coupled with times of honest generosity, is that just a blip on the screen, an interruption from the regular race of humanity? Or, can there actually be new beginnings, even after our first birth day or our second, third or 9th decades? Can something new be starting, gaining force, irrupting into our lives as epiphanies, manifestations of actual hope, forgiveness, unconditional love?
Just over 2 weeks ago, while I was hurriedly trying to write my Christmas Eve and Christmas Day sermons – and prepare for all the Christmas festivities here at the church and at home, I was interrupted. The phone rang. I glanced at the call display. It was a 306 number – the area code for Saskatchewan. But it wasn't any of those many numbers that are so familiar to me. Annamarie answered. Then she yelled from her office, that "it" was for me. I picked up. I heard a female's voice. She said, "Pastor Tim... this is a voice from your past." OK – now she had my attention. She proceeded to identify herself. I hadn't seen or talked to this woman since 1985. Her visage leaped to my mind. I tried to think of her extended family, her parents, her siblings, her children. Barely coming up for air she told me a bit of her story over these last 26 years - of a marriage that had disintegrated; of a new marriage that was better – not perfect – but in which there was love, respect, mutual assistance. And then, to my great surprise, out of the blue she thanked me – particularly for the influence I had on her son – now 38, with children of his own. Her implication was that somehow in that community called Redeemer Lutheran, even with me as a very young pastor, her son had some good beginnings, some identity and love that he had experienced. She wanted to THANK ME.
Beginnings. We hear echoes of that wondrous reality portrayed by a single word in Genesis – In the BEGINNING! Or as another translator puts it, "At the BEGINNING of God's creating of the heavens and the earth."
What are your beginnings? Are they when you experienced the contractions of your mother's womb and were ushered somewhat rudely down that birth canal? Were your beginnings in that moment as you were conceived? Were your beginnings when you were baptized and joined to the mystical body of Christ? Are your beginnings continuing to unfold? Or is your living marked by the same old, same old, WHATEVER?
In today's lessons we hear of at least two specific beginnings. Firstly, order is being brought out of chaos. Secondly, Jesus goes down into the River Jordan and is baptized at the hand of John the Baptizer. I wonder, did you notice something critically important and something in common regarding these events? God's Spirit is active, the generating force in both!
The Genesis account mentions that the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God or the Spirit of God swept over the face of the waters. Then God speaks – and the chaos is beginning to be transformed. Amazingly, into that darkness light shines. There are boundaries placed between the light and the darkness.
Then in Mark's account of Jesus' baptism, JUST AS Jesus is coming up out of the water, the heavens are literally not just parted but torn apart. Jesus, Himself, sees the Spirit descending on him like a dove. Then he is enabled to hear a voice from heaven: "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
God's Spirit brings about beginnings – a new thing –wonderful realities! Oh, such realities can't be fully controlled or completely manipulated by human beings. We might try to do those things. But the universe is ever expanding – beyond our capacities to understand or comprehend.
As Jesus hears the voice from heaven – as wonderful as that must have been, He isn't allowed simply to stay there basking in that experience. No! In the next few verses that same Spirit who declares Jesus' very identity as Beloved Son of God, propels him out into the world, the WILDERNESS. There Jesus is to live out His identity.
What's going on for you these days: in your family, in your personal life, at work, at school, in this time, this place, in the world? What's going on with you and God?
God wills to birth us into new beginnings, new possibilities, things we may have thought or felt were impossible. You see, God loves us! And God loves this world! This good news matters! It's not easy living with this reality in the forefront of our beings, because there are forces outside and within that resist God's love for us, for others and for creation. There are forces within and without that want to attempt to thwart God, deny God, limit God in order to debase humanity and creation.
Make no mistake – such forces are real. Such forces are powerful, way more powerful than you or me or even large segments of humanity trying to go it on our own. Witness the power of death: of murder, of hatred, envy, jealousy, fear. What we humans do to each other when we are given over to the undivided influence of such forces: of being certain that we are absolutely right and anyone who disagrees with us is wrong – and must be put down.
But – as we see, as we are told in that first wonderful creation story and in Mark's account of Jesus' baptism – WE ARE NOT ALONE. The "heavens" have been torn, ripped open and God's Spirit comes through Jesus and through a variety of God's activity TO US and FOR US.
When we are baptized, we are baptized in the name of whom? That's right, we are baptized in the name of the Father, that is the Creator, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Hands are laid upon us, conveying to us and to others that we are not alone, reminding and proclaiming to us that God's Spirit comes to us from beyond ourselves – sometimes even through others, as humble, as imperfect as we all are.
But that Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God blows upon us, creating faith, creating motion, willing to drive us beyond ourselves to see God, to trust God, to see others, to work at loving others, as hard as that is – as much as it may cost us. And the Spirit of God, refuses to stop blowing. That Spirit of God is like the prairie wind, sometimes gentle, sometimes howling, but always seeking to stir us up from death, from lethargy, from apathy to new beginnings and new life.
So, I wish for you not necessarily a happy New Year, but a New Year where you, where we, where our world experiences a number of beginnings – actual beginnings that have their source in God, the Creator of the universe, the Father of the One who gives His all for us – in whose name, within whose identity, our identity begins to unfold...
Otherwise we fall back into the same old, same old. Blessed ongoing beginnings through us, within us and among us, for Christ's sake, Amen.