December 7, 2014 – Mark 1:1-8
Mark 1:1-8
The Beginning of the Good News
Second Sunday of Advent – December 7, 2014
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
We’re at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel here:
The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God
Most scholars agree that this is the title that Mark gave his whole Gospel.
You’ll notice he didn’t call it, “The Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
He called it, “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
His Gospel is not the whole story of the Good News!
HisGospel is just the beginning!
And there is lots of Good News in that.
The story that Mark tells about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is just the beginning of
something amazing that God is doing.
It’s just the beginning.
Beginnings are exciting, right?
They invite your imagination to go to work.
They excite you to the possibilities.
If you start a new hobby, you’re excited about the possibilities, right?
If you start a new job, you get excited about the possibilities.
If you begin a new relationship, you get excited about the possibilities.
Beginnings are exciting – they invite your imagination.
Isaiah is excited this morning.
The prophet imagines a new future for his people.
A future in which they really will become the people God imagined them to be in
the wilderness all those years ago: a people of manna sharing and
justice doing and mercy giving and peace making.
When they crossed over the Jordan River into the promised land from the wilderness
all those years before, there was such hope for the future,
that the people would become a new kind of people in the world:
The people God imagined them to be and schooled them to be in the wilderness.
When that didn’t work out and the people were defeated by the Babylonians and
taken into exile, God re-imagined their future for them and had Isaiah announce:
I will bring you home! You will have another chance!
I will give you a new beginning! So make a road through the wilderness again!
And make a new start – filled with possibility!
Well, that didn’t always work out either.
But it’s not the end of the story.
God decides to make another new start, to make another new beginning.
And this morning sends another prophet, John the Baptist,
to announce the new thing God will do.
John takes the people back into the wilderness, schools them again in the ways of
mercy giving and manna sharing and justice doing and peace making.
Then he leads them into the Jordan River once again and leads them out so they can
have a new beginning and become again the people God imagined them to be.
Only this time when they come out of those waters, they will be met by one who will
inspire them with the Spirit of God’s very self and give them the Spirit of God so that
they can indeed finally become the people God intends them to be:
Jesus of Nazareth, God in the flesh.
You can sense the possibility in what John the Baptist does this morning as he
prepares the people for the new thing,
the new beginning God is about to make in the world.
The future is filled with hope – with possibility, with imagination for what is possible.
Things do not have to be as they have been.
When Jesus comes, the Good News is just beginning.
I suppose it’s time for me to tell the yearly telling of my Worship Space Story.
When we were in the process of renovating the worship space 8 years ago or so,
all possibilities were on the table.
We had a meeting where all our members were invited to brainstorm the possibilities and
let their imaginations run.
Over 80 people came.
At a certain point in the meeting I got up and said,
Well, I’m excited about my idea! Why don’t we put a big moat filled with water all around the worship space! Then when we come in to worship it’ll be like we’re crossing into the Wilderness through the Red Sea, like when the Israelites fled from Egypt. While we’re here in worship it’ll be like we’re in the wilderness and like God is schooling us in God’s word and in manna sharing at Holy Communion. Then when we leave it will be like we’re crossing the Jordan River to live what we’ve learned here out in the world! Isn’t that great!
Friends: there was deafening silence after that suggestion.
Until, that is, I heard someone’s voice say, “Does anyone else have any ideas?”
The thing is, even though I tell this story over and over, I don’t really want the real moat.
Because the moat actually exists in my imagination.
And by telling the story over and over I’m hoping it will take root in yours.
Imagination is powerful – it can shape your reality.
God imagined this whole world in all its beauty and wonder.
God imagined peace and justice and mercy giving and manna sharing.
God imagined you and your body and your brain in all its vast potential for
caring and nurturing and service.
And then God did something amazing – God shared with you the gift of imagination,
so you too could imagine new beginnings and new possibilities.
And have hope.
The future is not closed – and as things have been they do not have to be.
I have loved listening to all our speakers this year during the Season of Stewardship.
A couple of weeks ago when Jack spoke I was very very moved.
Jack is a long time member and has seen lots of history unfold here at First Lutheran.
He spoke of how at one point – well, at many points – in our history we had thought of moving.
How at many times in our history it seemed that our location had become
a liability for flourishing, for becoming the people God intends us to be.
I will say that that began to change when 8 or 9 years ago someone on council suggested that
in fact our location wasn’t a liability but actually an asset for doing ministry,
because there was so much God was calling us to do,
so many possibilities for ministry.
And so together you began to imagine that this location was not a liability but
an asset for flourishing.
And that was like a new beginning.
And together you began to imagine food banks,
and partnering with other congregations and ministries,
and you began to imagine a kids club free drop in ministry during the summer,
and you began to imagine an amazing and ambitious Christmas Hamper ministry,
and you began to imagine Community Meals and last year
you provided over 2000 hot homemade meals to the people of this neighbourhood and you imagined an engaged youth and
you imagined a welcome to every single person who visits our worship and
you imagined inclusion and hospitality and
you imagined what it would be like to be generous to give our ministries a chance.
You imagined a new beginning. A new future.
And you had hope.
And then, a couple of weeks ago, when Jack spoke, something new happened again.
He used a word that is a new one.
He certainly didn’t say that our location was a liability – that is now old language.
And he didn’t just say that our location was an asset.
Jack proclaimed that our location was a blessing.
That it is a blessing to be here, in this place, at 580 Victor Street.
Because this is where God is. This is where Jesus is. This is where the Holy Spirit is.
Because this is where God wants us to be.
Part of this community.
This is where God has imagined us to be.
And now we can imagine it too.
And that has given us a new beginning together.
The roads have been straightened. The rough places made plain.
The obstacles our imaginations sometimes present have been removed.
You have cleared a path for God to come and make a place in your life and in
the lives of countless people in this community.
Your imagination cleared away the rough and rocky language of liability and
made way for the highway language of blessing.
You have imagined this place to be blessing – and it has become so.
For me, for and for many.
Truly what began in Jesus and his ministry all those years ago was just the beginning.
Your life, and the life of this congregation, is full of possibility, and hope, and future.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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