We think about time in a very interesting way; it begins at one particular point and ends somewhere but imagine it to be linked like a line or a thread from one point to another. We describe our life using it by saying that there was a beginning and there will be an end—that is, right now we are on that linear progression to somewhere. In this sense, when a person dies unexpectedly we say that her life was cut short in the same way we would talk about a thread being cut short instead of being given the full length.
We think of each year as a short segment of that long line, called life. In this spirit we ask each other what New Year’s resolutions are. Many take the countdown to the New Year seriously in hope that something better will await them in the coming year. In this way we think that January 1 offers us a new beginning.
Lives of people are thought much the same way. That is, at birth, we celebrate the beginning of life filled with hope and future. Each liturgical year begins by reciting the story of Jesus birth on Christmas and followed by his ritual at the Temple as we heard from Luke’s passage today. Next week, we will be celebrating Epiphany—traditional celebration of Jesus’ baptism. Birth, circumcision and Baptism were symbols of new life. In Christianity Baptism is accepted as the beginning of new life in Christ.
However, what we understand might not always be the only way of understanding. Let me explain.
Life is not a linear progression of events nicely arranged like a necklace made of pearls of same sizes and colors. They are more like collection of events which collide into our lives. Life resembles more like random collisions forcing us off into new directions than following a neatly drawn line. It does not travel in one direction nicely plotted out like a spaceship following its trajectory. It gets off track as it encounters a new event big or small and forced about by random events that hit it.
Even the story of God’s chosen people is all about how they kept on going in a different direction than God intended them. Like a comet hurtling in space, they continually were pulled closer into those gigantic stars and planets than following a nice path that was laid out for them.
Scientists are good and figuring out patterns in our world. They bring out with amazing accuracies the laws of nature. They might find a pattern that explains a mystery after many hours of efforts only to be confounded by many exceptions and deeper mysteries. It is never ending chase of an answer that always eludes to be the final answer that they have been seeking.
Here we are; we read the Bible as if it is confined within the beginning and ending. Yet, Jesus is declared not as the content that fills the space between the beginning and end, but as the very alpha and omega at the same time—the beginning and end as well as the source of life for what fills the in-between. We want to read this morning story as something that begins at the very beginning of Jesus’ physical life. What we end up reading is not only that he was the beginning, end, but also that which is the way, the life and the truth.
Life is dotted with new beginnings. Sometimes, new beginnings rush in all at once from all directions. They are everywhere and nowhere. The wise sees and works through them; the fools try to make manage them on their own terms. The loving ones know where to find them; the selfish ones search with little success. These new beginnings attract, force, take us off in to directions that we do not wish to go.
Trying to make sense out of life that constantly follows different path (each new beginning that is followed) offers no clarity. Scientific explanation talking about evolution and progression of patterns do offer a sense of order, yet, they too are nothing more than human attempts to understand things linearly in the random and mysterious world.
Unlike science, what Christian's focus on faith, hope and love offer is a way to find, establish and give meanings to this life that does not follow the linear progression. Christ is the counteract to all our attempts to put things in order. Christ recreates our worldview of seeing and managing the world and life according to our understanding into the way of hope and love. Faith, hope and love are not well ordered and linear way of managing. Indeed if one sees life through faith, hope and love, we see life everywhere ready to burst in and surprise us as new beginnings.
Everything that Jesus was from his birth even just to his presence in the Temple on the eighth day signified new beginnings for those who waited, received and saw in faith and nothing for those who had their own worldview and refused to trust and rely on God.
Everything we read from Luke 2 about what Simeon and Anna said about Jesus means nothing if we do not read it in faith, hope and love of God and neighbour. Simeon’s and Anna’s praise mean nothing to those who cannot see not only God’s offer of new beginning, but also the new beginning for the creation. In this new beginning, love became the prime source for all that is life and living. All experiences and encounters to love others in ways that God loved us in Christ have become ways to new beginnings for those who offer and those who accept.
That is, those who love see how life begins again anew; experience how life takes hold even in places of death; become part of life that rises above despair; and give one’s own life to bring about life of faith, hope and love. Love that was received and gave each of us new beginning releases us to life of loving God and neighbours. In this way, even the life that seems to have arrived at end or have been wasted is facing new beginnings, not death.
To love God, we cease every moment as way of bringing new beginnings to all that God has created in ways that fulfills the creative intent for each life and thing. Loving neighbour is to receive each moment of encounter with my neighbour as sharing of and pointing to the life that fulfils one’s life’s purpose in a new way of faith, hope and love. Simeon and Anna pointed the way. They found their new beginnings in their encounter with the baby Jesus.
We in faith, hope and love came to our new beginnings in Christ. Now we clumsily, awkwardly and imperfectly offer and share the body of Christ that is tattered, broken, rejected and made up of us to our neighbours as sign and seal of that baby Jesus who was, is and shall be the new beginning for anyone who has courage to find the way, the truth and life.
On this New Year’s Day, may we humbly come to know that unlike our thoughts and understanding of what life and time ought to be, new beginnings God reveals to each and everyone are everywhere present at every turn of life as love, hope and faith. Amen.
