"Ever New Beginnings" June 19, 2011 Trinity Sunday

Genesis 1:1 - 2:3
Matthew 28: 16-20
Every story growing up seemed to begin differently, “Once upon a time,” “In the Beginning,” “Long, long ago, in a far distant land, in a different galaxy,” “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Yet, at the end of the story, all the plots were reconciled, all the characters cared for, “And they lived happily ever after,” or as in a Shakespearean drama, everyone save the narrator lay dead, and there was the postscript “The End.” But in every way, the Bible is a curiosity, just a little bit different. Every ending seems to be an Ever New Beginning. “And there was evening and there was morning.” Jesus, the Savior, the Rabbi and Teacher, was arrested and put to death, his body buried, on the third day he rose from the dead, led the Disciples to Galilee of the Gentiles and Commissioned that they baptize and teach in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We are a people, whose imaginations are locked in a fixed reality. For the last few hundred years, we have known the dimensions of everything that exists in length and height and width, by breadth and depth, even in order from beginning to end. Our greatest desire seemed to be to quantify, to qualify, to order and control life itself. But we now live in a New Beginning, where in addition to what is tangible IS what is Virtual. Where in addition to speaking words and writing language, we blog and text, where we can share all our thoughts. Our histories are written of persons like Paul Revere, who rode through Village and Town calling “To Arms to Arms, the British are Coming.” Of underground groups working together, communicating by code. In the last several months we have been witness to Revolutions across the Middle east, orchestrated and a critical mass accomplished by Facebook and Twitter. A generation ago, we were taught The Scientific Method as absolute, that the goal of education, the whole purpose of knowledge was to prove, to know, to have certainty. In the early 1980s two students working on their degrees in Education came to the realization that nothing could ever be proven. There was always exception to the rule, bits of evidence that began new theories. All we can know is our experience, and how that reality creates new beginnings for others.

In Confirmation Class, the minister attempted to explain the Trinity that God was the Creator. Jesus was the Redeemer, the Savior, who was born and lived and died and rose again 2000 years ago. Which meant that the Holy Spirit is God with us today. As if these were three separate historically bound Gods or God at different ages. But what if Creation is not fixed and static and controlled? What if God is continuing to Create ever new ideas, ever new dimensions to reality, today? What if Jesus were not only that one man born in Bethlehem in the time of the Caesars, but present in redemption, offering hope throughout human history? What if Genesis is not so much about HOW Creation Began, or WHY, but instead an affirmation of WHO Created?

There are so many delightful elements to this passage of Genesis! First, the Ordering, both that beginnings arise out of what has been before, not destroying so much as providing balance. Light does not destroy the darkness, Dry land does not replace the water, what is created creates a new beginning with a new balance. But also, that everything, all of creation from light and darkness, to microscopic organisms and sea monsters, God and humanity, ALL are inter-related in this creation. No one element can be removed without effecting everything else. The first half of Creation is about creating a HABITAT, a place of being. The Second half involves filling that Habitat with INHABITANTS and how they shall procreate and replicate and continue throughout time.

What is Fascinating about this narrative, is that thousands and thousands of years before Darwin, before Sir Isaac Newton, before Plato and Aristotle, the Ancient Believers got the Order of Evolutionary Creation! Prior to there being human beings, there had to have been other mammals, and before these birds and fish and organisms in the waters. Before Vertebrates and Invertebrates there had to have been plants and for plants there needed to be soil in balance with water, there needed to be an atmosphere, for lack of a better word a firmament (foundations that hold up what is out there) and that light was created out of the dark and void. SO before anything else, do we believe that life as complicated and complex as this creation, do we believe that life began as an accidental cataclysm of combustible gases? Or, do we believe that greater than anything we can know, before anything we can imagine, that there is God wanting us to exist?

Language, be it that “God Said Let There Be,” or the finest compilation of words and idioms, grammar and poetry, or the texting of letters and numerics to instantly express our thoughts inspiring revolutions, language continually opens up new beginnings. In the Beginning, the Spirit is described as BROODING OVER THE FACE OF THE DEEP. Do we understand this to mean that God was introspective, moody, searching the Depths of Chaos, Expectantly Waiting, all of which are words describing closure, focus, going more and more intense? But the same phrase which is translated as BROODING can also mean SWEPT as like a broom that pushes and moves, gathering together, while also scattering beyond.

A more basic and volatile argument than between Creationists and Evolutionists, has been over translation of the very first word of Creation. In Hebrew the phrase can be translated either “IN THE BEGINNING” or “WHEN GOD BEGAN TO CREATE”, which suggests that before time and space, God may have done something else. Which then also establishes that everything we know and have experienced is simply foundation for what is to come in Ever New Beginnings.

The end of the Gospel of Matthew is delightful. Earlier, Jesus had already SENT OUT the Disciples with power to Preach, to Heal, to Pray, to Accomplish Miracles. What happens in Matthew after the resurrection, is that The Teacher Commissions the Disciples to go and Teach. Rather than possessing some new power or understanding, rather than having mastered knowledge and being graduated to be experts, Jesus sends the disciples out as INTERNS. Interns have a wealth of knowledge and need to experience, need to ask questions, need to make applications of what they know, the miracles they have seen and heard done to their lives.

How different would our faith and understanding of life be, if the Canon of Scripture were not arranged from Genesis to Exodus to Kings to Prophets to Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, Epistles to Revelation, but Instead Began with The Parables of WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR and REDEEMING THE LOST, Commissioning the INTERNS to Go and Teach and Learn and Baptize, that eventually led to EVER NEW BEGINNINGS?

The World, even our membership seem to have discounted what we believe/ who we are as believers, as if the Church were a static institution, a known quantity, with established answers as opposed to fresh experience and questions. I am about as thoroughly learned as a pastor can be having gone on for seven years of education after College Graduation, my father and mother were also were Seminary trained Presbyterians, and their fathers and mothers were Presbyterians. Yet, a few years ago, we experienced something I had never seen before. There was a woman who was an active leader in the Church, an ordained Elder, Chair of our Missions. Her husband was a man who had retired from Professional life, who had grown up in Edinburgh and though he now wanted to be had never been Baptized. We met together over several weeks, the morning we were to share the Sacrament, he walked up this aisle, and having recited the phrases we did this morning “We Baptize in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”, we asked “Who is Your Lord and Savior?” And rather than giving the established Answer, he stopped and you could see from his expression he was weighing the possibilities, thinking through what do I believe, who is the greatest authority in my life, do I have a Lord and Savior, and having thought about the answer, he replied “GOD!” I am not certain I can describe what witnessing that has meant as it created ever new beginnings of others being baptized.