New Beginnings
Acts 10
Revelations 21: 1-7
April 23, 1977
One of the most enjoyable books of the past year was a novel called in the Beginning by Kayam Potok. Hotel starts out his novel with this reminiscence. I can remember hearing my mother murmur these words while I lay in bed with a fever. Children are often sick darling, that is the way with children. All beginnings are hard. You’ll be alright soon. I remember bursting into tears one evening because the passage of the Bible commentary had proven too difficult to understand. I was about nine years old at the time period you want to understand everything immediately, my father said, just like that. You only began to study the commentary last week. All beginnings are hard.
I say it to myself today when I stand at the start of a new school year. All beginnings are hard. Teaching the way I do is particularly hard. Often students are shaken. I say to them what was said to me. Be patient, you are learning a new way of understanding. All beginnings are hard
. And sometimes, I add what I have learned on my own. Especially beginnings that you make yourself. That’s the hardest of all.
This is precisely where Cornelius and Simon Peter found themselves. In our lesson this morning, facing a new beginning. Cornelius was a Roman centurion by trade and a religious seeker by temperament. One day it was announced to him that all his asking and seeking and knocking on the ears was going to bear fruit. He was about to be given new insight into ultimate reality, and he was told to send for Simon Peter, who was at Joppa. Cornelius did this, and the chain reaction was thrust to Peter, the big fisherman, out into a new situation. Realize that Simon Peter was a provincial Galilean Jew. Taught all his life not to associate with people to the West of him. He had never had the experience of interacting religiously with these people. Suddenly he was face to face with an entirely new situation. And like all new beginnings. I’m sure it was hard. It called for some new relationships and new ways to communicate the gospel. And I’m sure Simon Peter, as well as Cornelius, had lots of questions about each other and the new situation.
Life has a way of doing this to us, doesn’t it? Suddenly, when we’re sitting comfortably in our provincial, insulated world, where we have become accustomed to a way of life, where we know what to expect, suddenly we are thrust out into brand new situations. And, like all beginnings, they are hard and scary, and raise many questions in our minds.
I’m sure you realize by now that I’m not just referring to Simon Peter, or to myself. I’m referring to you also. You know this from your own life. Most of us would rather fight than switch. We would do almost anything rather than be thrust into a new beginning. It’s hard, isn’t it? It’s hard because new beginnings mean a sense of disequilibrium, a sense of change, a sense of the unknown. All beginnings are hard.
I suppose that is why most people and most institutions avoid new beginnings like the plague. They represent something hard, and oftentimes something painful. My observation has been that people and institutions have become past masters at avoiding new beginnings. And one way an institution can do this is just to keep doing the same things over and over and over again. The only thing they do is to sandpaper or oil up the old machines, once in a while.
Do you ever have the feeling, when you join an institution, any institution, that it’s almost like seeing a continuously running movie? I can recall that feeling as a child, when my mother gave me $0.50 to go to the neighborhood theater on a rainy day. Two or three films would be showing, but it never mattered when you arrived or when you left. It was all pretty much the same. Delightful, diverting, but ohh so very predictable. Another way for people to avoid new beginnings is to stop dreaming, to cut off the visions of what could be, and to settle down for what it is. John Gardner says, the reasons mature people stop growing is that they forget how to dream, and become less and less willing to try new beginnings. Gardner reminds us of the biblical truth, that without vision the people perish, and without new life, all the gains of the past slowly rot away. And without new beginnings, we are left with an endless routine.
One short parenthesis that I would insert in this, my maiden sermon. And that is, that I am not saying nor implying that the past is unimportant. One of my principal tasks as your new rector is to honor the past period. Saint Phillips has a glorious tradition, it has had a series of remarkable accomplishments with great leaders. Both lay and clerical. Without the past, we would be nothing, you know it and I know it. Our sense of history is important period I hope that I never get tired of hearing, and you never get tired of telling me, anecdotes and stories that are from your past.
Yet in a sense, all the wonderful past is just a prologue to our new beginning. Important as it is, and it certainly is, we can’t stop there. We have got to move into the future, building on the solid foundations that have been laid for us.
In the next few months, I intend to do a lot of listening period I want to hear about your past, but more than that, I want to hear about your visions and dreams. I started this listening process last weekend, with the vestry and long-range planning committee. And in the pulpit, I plan to share some of the hopes and dreams that I could bring to this magnificent place. I propose that we take as our theme song, for the next few months, that period piece I used to hear old timers play. You tell me your dreams, I’ll tell you mine. This is what Simon Peter did once he got to cesaria. He began to recount his experiences and share his vision. I can think of no better investment that we could make on this first leg of our journey together than sharing and meshing and time together our dreams.
Somehow, I’ve always been attracted to the dreamers in scripture. They always have a handle on reality, which is exciting as well as terrifying. One such person, John, is sitting on the Isle of Patmos dreaming dreams, having visions, looking into the heart of existence. This is what he wrote,
Then I saw a new heaven, and a new earth, and I heard a loud voice proclaiming from the throne, Now at last God has his dwelling among men! He will dwell among them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, there shall be an end to death and to mourning and crying and pain, for the old order has passed away. Behold, I am making all things new.
I am making all things new is a long name, but it’s one of the names of God. I am making all things new. I am the new beginning. The alpha and the Omega. The beginning and the end. That’s who he is. That’s where he’s to be found, that’s his dwelling place.
And the dream of the Johns, and the Simon Peters, and all who have been touched by God’s grace is to find God in new beginnings, in the unknown, in the untested. For that, God’s dwelling.
We can’t ooze into the future; we have to leap into it, and thus find God. We can’t hold back ourselves from people who are different; we have to share our visions, and in the sharing, we will find God.
Well, what about yourselves? How’s it with you? Are you willing to risk dreaming dreams? Are you willing to go out into the unknown and find God in new ways? This is my challenge to you, on this, my first sermon.
As we think and pray about our new life together, perhaps T.S. Eliot, with his lines from The Rock, can speak to each of us. Let these words echo in your hearts, be grasped by them.
Where the bricks have fallen, we will build new stones. Where the beams are rotten, we will build new Timbers. Where the work is unspoken, we will build with new speech. There is work together, a church for all, and a job for each. Every man to his work.
Amen