New Beginnings
Based on Psalm 32, Joshua 5:10-12, 2Cor 5:16-21, Luke 15:11-32
We find ourselves in early Spring, and it is easy to find evidence of new beginnings. Birds are beginning to pair up and build nests, flowers and trees are blossoming, grass is greening up, many are planning to wet their boats (if they haven’t already), gardens are being planned and seeds sprouted. Spring is all about rebirth – about new beginnings.
There is an energy that comes with new beginnings – along with a sense of possibility and hope. Take for example the new major league baseball season which began on Thursday. Lots of energy around the country on Opening Day – a day where all teams have the exact same record and chance to win the World Series. Fans are excited at the prospect of seeing their teams compete and the possibility that they might win the very last game of the season. Anything is possible with new beginnings – and that possibility captures our hearts and imaginations.
We don’t need to wait all year for Spring to come for new beginnings, however. Each morning when we awake we are, through God’s grace, given a day of new beginnings. This day has never been before, and it will never be again once it is finished. Each day of our lives has the potential to be life-changing and life-giving – not just for us, but for each person and situation we encounter. We are given the opportunity to look at our lives at the beginning of each day and decide how we will live it. Each day provides us a fresh opportunity to repent, that is, to change our ways, to change our minds, to change the direction of our lives so that we move ever closer to the God of our understanding. Spiritually, this is the essence of new beginnings.
The great joy of the Bible is that it contains scores of stories about the power of repentance, rebirth and new beginnings. From the first page that details the genesis of creation to the final pages that describe the new Jerusalem descending to Earth – the writers offer us examples of how our gracious God provides the opportunity of new beginnings to all of God’s children. Take for example the narrative from the Book of Joshua. It describes the arrival of the wandering Israelites to the Promised Land. On the plain of Jericho, the men are circumcised, and all the people celebrate the Passover in their new home. Their 40-year journey from the first Passover in Egypt is over and they are beginning anew in the land promised by God to their ancestor Abram.
The Apostle Paul has been discussing the Resurrection of Jesus and the waiting we all are doing until He comes again. In our reading for today, Paul has detailed why it is that we should follow the Risen Christ. It is because, “if anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation. The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting peoples’ sins against them….” This is the good news of the ultimate new beginning for Christians.
I love the “Parable of the Lost Son” more than any other parable of Jesus. I have studied it, preached on it, led a study of it multiple times, and embodied each of the main characters at some point in my life. This parable is the culmination of three “lost and found” stories by Jesus in Luke. For me though, it has always been more of a rebirth and new beginnings tale than a lost and found story. Certainly, it is important that the son who was lost remembered who he was after he hit rock bottom and returned home to seek forgiveness. However, this is also an important tale of new beginnings – beginnings that are not completely spelled out in the parable. Like most of his parables, Jesus leaves much unanswered. Yet, like a new day which is full of possibilities, the return of the prodigal son carries with it the hope that the father’s unconditional welcome and celebration will offer the younger son rebirth and a new beginning towards a fruitful life.
The parable contains many other possible new beginnings as well. A couple of examples are: will the relationship between the brothers find a life-giving new beginning when the younger son seeks forgiveness from the elder? What will the younger son do with his new beginning – has he truly repented and changed his mind about how he will live, or will he fall back into his old behaviors? Think about some of the rebirths or new beginnings in your life: new jobs and maybe new locales, new relationships and marriage, parenting and grand parenting, living with chronic illnesses, recovery from significant health challenges, traumas or addictions, deaths of loved ones, the COVID pandemic, etc. All of these life events are either opportunities for new beginnings, or for us to continue to live, think and interact with our world in ways that are unchanged.
The recognition of the need for new beginnings often happens to us when we find ourselves at the end of our power, intellect and/or abilities; when we have exhausted our resources, are seemingly out of options and have effectively reached a dead end. There we find ourselves in need of a breakthrough in our thinking and/or living. We need to find a way where there seems to be no way. We need to choose to trust in the help of something beyond our human capabilities and understanding, something Almighty, compassionate, loving, faithful and supportive. We need a “Higher Power”, a God who can make a way for us, open a door or create an opportunity that didn’t seem to exist. We find that we have to trust that God will be God for us, as God has been for others in the past.
This is what we are about during this season of Lent. It is a season where we actively seek to trust in God to show us a way to be reborn, to begin anew. To allow God to bring us to our senses about our relationship to God and our neighbors through repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation; through the realization that we already are a new creation in Christ. The Bible certainly offers us some help and insight from the experiences of our spiritual ancestors, but we also find help to recognize new beginnings from our hymns. For example, hymn #383 is entitled, “This Is a Day of New Beginnings”. The third and fourth verses tell us: “Then let us, with the Spirit’s daring, step from the past and leave behind our disappointment, guilt and grieving, seeking new paths and sure to find. Christ is alive and goes before us to show and share what love can do. This is a day of new beginnings; our God is making all things new.”
The God of Jesus accompanies us into each new day and creates new beginnings into which we can live. This is made evident as we consider the parable of the Lost Son and the journey of Jesus to Jerusalem and the Cross. Both people have seemingly come to dead ends – there is no apparent way forward. But God…God is Almighty and God always has the last word. In the case of the Lost Son, God brings him to his senses and sets him on his way to be reborn through the unconditional love of his father. A father who has been waiting and hoping that his son would return; that he would come back to life. So it is with Jesus as well, as his Father waits to welcome him and to bring him back to life. So it is with us, when we trust our heavenly parent to love us into rebirth and new beginnings.
Today is a time to rejoice in the LORD and be glad, as the psalmist says, for our God is making all things new! New beginnings are times of discovery about us and about those whom God has placed in our lives. New beginnings bring us new relationships and experiences, new opportunities, new choices and new possibilities, new hopes and dreams. This is a day of new beginnings for each of us and for us as United Methodist churches. Every new day we are given the opportunity to look out at the world with new perspectives. We can cast off old ways of thinking and behaving that have led us to dead ends or the inertia of “this is the way we’ve always done it”. It is a time where we can ask God to open a way for us to be the ones who go out seeking to find the lost and bring them into relationship with us and with God. Every day may we trust in God to help us begin anew, amen!