SERMON New Beginnings

Lent 1 (B): Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15

Most of us think of Ash Wednesday as the beginning of Lent. Actually Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the Lenten fast. Today -- the First Sunday in Lent -- is the day on which the season of Lent officially begins. And it begins with water. Or more, exactly, a flood. And the aftermath of a flood.

And we know about the aftermaths of floods, don't we? Even as the National Guard prepares to leave New Orleans after three plus years, we learn about people still trying to rebuild in the aftermath and people who still cannot rebuild and will never return. And we are reminded about the events that made the aftermath so much more deadly and destructive. About officials at the highest levels who were told that in all probability the levees would be breached but did nothing to prepare. About delays in telling other officials about the levees when they were breached. And we remember the devastation in the aftermath of the New Orleans' flood. Of dead bodies floating in the flood waters. Of victims who will never be identified. Of families that will never be reunited.

Katrina was an education. None of us will ever think of floods in the same way. We now know about floods and their aftermaths.

Even so, Katrina is nothing compared with the flood we just heard about -- a flood with parallels in the myths of all ancient near eastern cultures. In our account, God destroys all humans but Noah and his family and all but the animals in Noah's ark. And God does that because the wickedness of man. We read:

The LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

                So the LORD said, "I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created -- people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them."

And that's what the LORD God does. Everyone and everything but Noah and his family and the animals in the ark are blotted out.

But then there's the aftermath. One of the many things that makes our flood different from those in other myths. Different from the aftermath of Katrina. And that's what we hear about this morning.

We hear about an aftermath that involves not only the survival of Noah and his family but more. It involves God stating that he is making is a covenant -- the Hebrew word simply means "contract" -- a contract with all living things. God tells Noah that "never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." Furthermore, God tells Noah, "I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth" -- a sign not only to human beings but to God -- of this covenant.

This is a remarkable contract. And at first glance we might miss why it is so remarkable. After all, God may have promised not to destroy all humankind by means of a flood but, as we well know, God has not decided to control floods -- even the devastating Katrina floods. And certainly God has exercised no direct control over the free will given human beings and their ability to make war, to exploit others, and to destroy God's creation. It is hard to see why, in these days of an escalating war in Afghanistan and disastrously failing economies here and around the world, this contract is so remarkable. Or why it should it begin our Lenten season.

But it is remarkable. Especially in these days of escalating conflict and imminent financial collapse. As one of my divinity school professors points out, in the entire Bible, this is our God's one unconditional covenant, and the rainbow is our God's one unconditional sign.

By contrast, God's covenant with Abraham "[to] make [him the] ancestor of a multitude of nations" is conditioned on Abraham's and his descendants' being circumcised. On something they do as well. It becomes the sign to them of that covenant. The rainbow is the sign to God of this covenant.

In contract law, God's covenant with Noah is an executory or promissory contract. It's not technically a contract because it is totally one sided. Rather, it is gift -- pure gift of grace that says something about God -- a God who, again in the words of my professor, "desires community, desires giving and receiving, desires communication." A God of faithfulness and love. A God who could have remain aloof and in splendid isolation but didn't. The covenant with Noah is God's affirmation of a good and wise creation.

But there's more. This is a covenant that was made long before Moses and Abraham came on the scene and long before God's unique and special relationship with them and God's chosen people. This is a covenant that was made with all human beings and all living things. God's gift in love to all.

And, as such, it becomes a covenant about new beginnings. A new time. A different time. A fresh start. Noah and his wife are a new Adam and Eve with all the responsibility that entails but with all the newness and excitement as well. They start over with God's unconditional promise and covenant. With God's sign in the heavens. With God's love.

And something similar happens with Jesus. More new beginnings. After Jesus is baptized (more water!), he hears God affirm, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." And with that affirmation, and all the responsibility it entails, he is driven by the Spirit into the desert for forty days where, in Mark's brief account, he is with the wild beasts and is tempted by Satan.

And then, with all the excitement that his baptismal affirmation has engendered, and propelled by the Spirit, Jesus begins proclaiming, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near." And in that proclamation, Jesus calls for nothing less than the renewal of God's good and wise creation. For new beginnings. New beginnings with roots in God's covenant with Noah. New beginnings in God's love.

And it's the kind of new beginning that we all have experienced at one time or another in our lives.

I had a morning of new beginning fifteen years ago this spring. We lived in Evanston, and I would go running by the Lake in the early morning. That spring, I was wrestling with the thought of leaving my law firm after 18 years and going out on my own to practice part time. To finish my M.Div. degree I had to do Clinical Pastoral Education and an internship. Doing that and billing 2,000 hours a year wasn't going to happen. I had just spoken to the managing partner, an old friend, about my possible -- nothing sure about this at all! -- about my possible call to ministry. He had been encouraging. Even so, nothing had been decided. Life apart from the firm was impossible to imagine. I was deeply torn. Not at all sure what I wanted to do.

On the morning of my new beginning, I was particularly concerned. I was mentally doing a "on the one hand, on the other hand" all the way down to the Lake. The endorphins were not kicking in. To make matters worse, it started to rain. No point in turning back, so soaking wet, I went on. Even when the rain stopped, I remember thinking this was probably one of the worse days of my life. And then I looked up. And there across the sky was a perfectly formed rainbow extending from one side of the city to the other. The only one that I've ever seen like it. I stopped. And stared, and stared, and stared. That bow in the sky said it all. It was Noah. It was God's unconditional love.

And, in the end, the unconditional gift and promise behind that sign made new beginning possible. What had started out as one of the worse days of my life became the morning of my new beginning -- with all the responsibilities entailed (new beginnings are never without their desert days). But new beginning with all the excitement as well.

New beginnings are what this morning and this season of Lent can and must for us. Both individually and as a church. Meet all our Little Lambs. They are new beginnings. Look at our reinstalled clerestory windows. They are a new beginnings. Consider the loan to rebuild the towers that we have started to pay down. That's yet another new beginnings for our congregation.

They are new beginnings that are not limited to this community and this building, and new beginnings that do not stay with us or stop when we leave this place. Rather, new beginnings that begin with the water and promise of our baptisms and propel us into ministry and the world. Just as the new beginnings of Jesus' baptism propelled him into ministry. To proclaim the kingdom. To work for peace. Can there be new beginnings in a time of war and collapse? There have to be. Like Jesus' days in the desert of deprivation and temptation, the new beginnings of peace and recovery require sacrifice and vigilance to succeed. They are not easy.

They are not easy but they are real, and they are possible. And, for us as Christians, they are both because of God's grace and promise. Consider the words of the hymn by Brian Wren:

                      This is a day of new beginnings,

                           Time to remember and move on,

                      Time to believe what love is bringing,

                           Laying to rest the pain that is gone.

                      For by the life and death of Jesus,

                           God's mighty Spirit, now as then,

                      Can make for us a world of difference,

                           As faith and hope are born again.

                      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.

                      In faith we'll gather round the table

                           To taste and share what love can do.

                      This is a day of new beginnings;

                           Our God is making all thing new. Amen

March 1, 2009

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church

Chicago