Once upon a time….
Or maybe “A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…”
Those are magic words.
It’s the magic of rich possibility and delighted expectation that comes with beginning a story - whether that story is a mystery or a comedy, a deeply human tragedy or an exciting tale of good triumphing over evil (with some dramatic space battles along the way).
The same magic can happen with other beginnings, too - not just stories, but years and relationships and projects and such. New Year’s resolutions carry that sense of fresh start and great potential, no matter how long they last.
New places can too. Perhaps you like to explore.
Or do you enjoy the “new car smell,” and delight in new things?
Or like starting projects better than slogging through, or finishing them?
If that’s you (and maybe even if it’s not) this is a great Sunday, because it’s full of beginnings. Did you hear that in our scripture stories?
“In the beginning…. the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…”
I’ve always been spiritually and emotionally attached to the miracle of God creating the universe out of nothing. I’m equally fond of the Big Bang Theory - the scientific idea, not just the TV show - because of the tremendous potential and wonder of this fresh start.
But there’s one tiny problem with how much I love God creating everything out of nothing.
Did you notice it when you heard the story this morning?
God doesn’t actually start with nothing.
There’s all this water there, already: water in the darkness, with the breath or wind or spirit of God roaming above it. The “formless void” we hear about in our translation is just as much of a messy, wild, ongoing something as it is empty nothing.
In fact, this story tells us about God working with the waters, and the darkness that are already there: calling out light, and land to separate them from the dark and wet.
This is a new story, a beginning, yes,
but it’s a middle of something, too.
Which actually makes it a perfectly normal beginning.
The same thing happens with another beginning in today’s scripture stories.
We heard the story of the baptism of Jesus, “the beginning of his public ministry.” And it’s the exact beginning of Mark’s story, the first thing we find in the document that he calls “The beginning of the good news of Jesus….”
The very beginning.
And the middle, too.
Mark’s story starts in the middle of John’s ongoing, busy, important ministry of baptism. And in the middle of Jesus’ life, not at birth or 18 or 21 or the equivalent ages of adulthood and beginnings in first century Israel.
It’s in the middle of a very ordinary day for most of the world, including all the people who end up following Jesus, or even fighting with him.
The beginning of Peter’s story happens another day. The beginning of Mary’s story was a while back. The beginning of the story of salvation happens at all kinds of different times and places,
most of them right in the middle of everything else, and most of them not seeming like much of a fresh start at all.
There are an awful lot of beginnings in the world, and in our lives, that feel more like the middle of a project than a blank canvas, and very few beginnings that have that nice crisp new car smell.
Some beginnings surprise us - appearing in a routine doctor’s visit or a phone call - and the special sense of “beginning” may be overwhelmed by the need to re-arrange the ongoing world to accommodate a baby, a diagnosis, a fantastic job offer.
Some beginnings are carefully planned and much anticipated and just don’t live up to their hype. New Coke, anyone?
Others sneak into consciousness - the discovery that a life-giving, life-long marriage was formed without noticing, while you were just being friends; or that years of “this and that” were actually the first steps in a vocation to heal or teach or build or something else.
And some feel vitally fresh to you or me, but are invisible or old-hat to the people around us (like the dozens of world-changing decisions I made in my twenties that surprised and impressed exactly no one). Perhaps it even happened to Jesus: “Mom, listen, God is telling me to be a prophet!! I’ve got to go get baptized!” “Yes, honey, I know. Did you take the garbage out like I asked?”
And that’s the most wonderful thing about beginnings after all.
Better than the blank slate, the new car smell, the build up of possibility and expectation. The best thing about beginnings is that we get them right in the middle of nothing much.
Right in the middle of the ordinary day, the dreary month, the dragging year.
From our very first stories about God, our “beginning” stories, we learn that wonder and abundance and new, fresh starts come right in the middle of the same old stuff.
Earth and sky, light and humans, all begun from a long-running wet mess.
The first rehearsal of resurrection is business as usual at John’s baptism shop.
It’s a truth we acknowledge at our own baptism, too, and it’s why the church calls on us to “renew” those baptismal vows regularly.
The promises we make at baptism lean heavily on continuing, persisting, striving… We don’t make promises about what we will do for the first time once we’re baptised, but about how we will continue to become God’s children over and over and over again, in the middle of the busy life we already live.
That’s great news for me, because I’ve got a lot more business-as-usual in my life than brilliant inspiration. And a lot of well-worn ruts that could use a new direction.
How about you?
Is there ordinary in your life that needs refreshing?
Or a busy, ongoing muddle where creativity would be welcome?
A stuck rut that demands your continuous attention,
a beginning you don’t even know how to wish for, much less plan?
That’s where God starts.
That’s where - often, if not always - our salvation begins.
If you’ve got a middle in your life that might be ripe for renewal,
or even an ordinary and comfortable pattern - at home, at work, in relationships, in thought - that you’re willing to let God recreate,
take a moment of silence, right now, to offer it to God.
Just offer the middle-ness, the ongoing busy-ness of your life to God,
remembering that that’s often where God starts to make us new.
And as you offer that middle, that ordinary, the boring or busy to God, listen.
Listen, because sometimes, as God makes you new, you can hear a voice from heaven whisper, “You are my beloved child. With you I am well pleased.”
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