Genesis 1:1-3; John 1:1-5

Ending up at the beginning

Carolyn, our sons and the girlfriends saw Starwars: the last Jedi” on Christmas Day.  I don’t know how many of those I have seen over the years, beginning in the seventies.  All I know is there is always some big, spectacular finish that seems to be the end all to all things.  At the same times we know the saga will continue, because there is just too much money to be made from it.  The movie company will not pass that up.  So the ending, as definitive as it may seem, will always have to turn into a new beginning.  Right now the villain in charge of the First Order is a haunting figure with good still in him, a villain with ten percent hero in him and the rebellion is limited to a group that can fit easily into the trusted Millennium Falcon.  It is a kind of VW bus of Starwars or a post-modern day Mayflower with a multicultural group of people (and another species or so) going off in search for a new planet. We know Carrie Fisher will not be back and Harrison Ford’s character was already killed off in the last film. So there is a clear sense of sadness of an ending, but also hope for a bright, confident, diverse new generation continuing the sage.

Friends we watch movies because at our heart we want our lives to imitate them.  Julian Barnes, one of the best writers in the English language, penned a novel called “A Sense of an Ending,” about some unfinished part of the main character’s life.  One quote from it says:”“This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn’t turn out to be like Literature.” That’s true isn’t it, friends. Our lives are often a lot more boring and sometimes a bit more terrifying than our the movies we see and the books we read.  But we do have the endings. Rola has a new beginning and an ending. A flight on Qatar airlines just days ago was the line between and ending and a beginning.  She has begun a new experience in a new timezone and I am sure today she can feel that. today The day will come when her work here will reach an ending and there will be a beginning of something new again.

Friends, the ministry of the Church sees all types of endings, of people’s participation, of people’s health, of people’s suffering, of people’s lives, of certain programs.   But ministry is also an endeavor with that must lead to new beginnings. You never wrap it up, put a bow on it. You end a story, a narrative, and immediately you must write a new one.  They say pastors like detective stories because the beginning may be messy and the middle mysterious, but the ending is always tight and clear. There is no doubt about who the victim as well as the innocents and the guilty party. And ministry is not like that.  The work of the church is full of the well-intentioned who sometimes aren’t fully committed and at other times get carried away.  There is very little black and white and a lot of gray.  Almost never is there a villain.  Also the story is never done.

Today another year come to an end,  This is a year that has seen many friendships end because of death.  It leads us to a greater awareness that much of a whole generation is no longer active, that our ranks have been culled by the inevitability of nature.  It is an ending we must recognize, but we also know it leads to a beginning.  Two residents are standing ready to give what they can to refashion our ministry and turn it into a new beginning with a new generation.  They are ready to be your partners if you will allow them to be. The rest is up to God’s grace which has never failed this congregation.

Yet, friends, how do we move from endings to beginnings in our lives? What keeps us from throwing in the towel or setting our changing life aside?  What strengthens us as we are tempted to box things up and say:” I’m done with this.”  The answer is faith.  John reminds us that the Word Who is Christ was always there, that that Word is sown into the fabric of all things created. The Word that is the Christ is a constant. What makes endings beginnings is faith, faith that we continue on the road God has laid out before us and faith that the people we travel with are well-intentioned. That’s what’s important in the church and in families and wherever people try to get things done harmoniously, that we have faith in people and God’s grace among us.  And so our struggling is not a sign of things ending, but of things beginning. Thanks be to God.