Beginnings....

Mark 1:4-11

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

Beginnings--whatever they are--are important.  They tell us who we are, and they often tell us where we are going in this life. Think of a time in your life when something important happened…when you encountered a new beginning; the birth of a child, buying your first car, moving into your first home, meeting your first grandchild. We know that there is something sacred and holy about beginnings.

The Bible has a story about the beginning and some of us know it by heart. We heard it read as part of the readings appointed for today:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God* swept over the face of the waters.

I love that scene, that image! I love to think of God getting up close and personal, going into the midst of the formless void, the darkness. God looking into the storm tossed waters, the chaotic waters and making sense out of chaos. If we pay attention, if we listen carefully we hear of a God who is personally connected to the creation, not a God that is removed, and far off, but a God who is intimately close at every beginning. In this story of beginning we hear God parting with a part of the divine self in order to bring forth something new, something beautiful and good. This story of beginning speaks a truth to us that is beyond the simplicity of this story.

I often hear friends of mine who are not into Church complain that they can’t believe in a literal creation of the world because it is not scientific, it doesn’t make sense to them; it doesn’t fit with our understanding of evolution and geophysics. Well it’s not supposed to. The Bible is not a scientific text book or a geophysics compendium; it was never meant to be. This story and the bible, are meant to convey a deep truth that is beyond the “facts”.

The thing is the people who wrote these ancient books we have put together in one volume and called The Bible didn't think they were writing textbooks and they certainly weren’t concerned with the facts. They were writing about the experience of the holy in their life and what that experience was like in the life of a whole people; how that experience changed who and how they were. They were trying to make sense out of their common experience of encountering God as a people.

What they wrote down wasn’t a detailed account of God but rather how they came to experience God. Like us they tried to make sense of their world in the only way they knew how; in poetry, ancient stories, angry letters, legal documents, prose. Even a couple of old love songs wound up there. These stories, encounters, these writings were an attempt to capture a truth about God.

Even in the book of Beginnings –Genesis -we see the people of God struggling to make sense of the creation, to make sense of their beginning. Genesis may be the first book in the bible but it is the youngest Old Testament writing. The people of Israel believed themselves to be created at the Red Sea, in the escape from Egypt. Genesis was written while the people of Israel were in captivity and needed to be reminded that God was with them, that God created them that God was an intimate part of who they were from the beginning. This beginning story was a story to reassure the people that when their lives and the world around them was in chaos –it was not meant to be the facts of the creation because no one was looking over God’s shoulder taking notes.

I think we need this story of beginning because it is the most important kind of beginning, a story that shows us God staring down chaos and making beauty.  Because when the world feels like chaos, when we find ourselves trapped in the formless void, in the deep waters of loss or grief or despair, when God seems to us to be nowhere...in that time when we are desperate for a new beginning, we have this story.  We have a Creating God who reshapes the chaos into order, even into beauty.

You see beginnings are important.  They tell us who we are and they tell us where we are going.

One of the mistakes that most Christians and our culture often make when we read the Bible is that we think that the Bible only has one beginning.  In fact, the bible is a book that has dozens of beginnings, maybe hundreds, and many of them echo this same theme.  God creates order out of chaos. 

That is where John the Baptizer comes in. John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness shouting, demanding that people rise up to take responsibility for their lives and for the state of the world.  John didn't show up in a world where everything was going just 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 calling the people to see the chaos around them and to make a change. 

And then Jesus wades into the water next to John. And just as before, in Jesus there was light in the darkness.  God proclaims “You are my son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased”. As it was in the beginning, here God was in the world, creating 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 their 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.

When John and Jesus arrived, the earth had again been covered in darkness.  But when God's Spirit moved on the face of the waters, God was making order from chaos through Jesus.

There's not one beginning in the Bible; there are so many.  But they contain echoes of the same theme:  when the earth was a formless void, 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 Savior had been laid in a tomb, on the third day he rose again from the dead to show once and for all time that there is no disorder that the love of God cannot remake, there is no chaos that God's love cannot turn into something beautiful.

The same is true for us –there is no chaos in our lives, in our world that God is not able, through Jesus, to make new. We are always and everywhere given a chance at a new beginning. Beginnings are important because they tell us who we are, where we are going and remind us of whose we are.  God is calling your chaos into a new beginning. Thanks be to God. Amen. 

The Rev. Deon K. Johnson

Preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brighton MI January 8, 2012