Genesis 1: 1-5
January 8, 2012
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX
Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch, Preacher
What with the ongoing concerns about the end of the world so often dominating Christian conversation, we often forget that Christianity is not about endings. It’s about beginnings.
Even the so called “end times” are not about endings, per se, but beginnings. The “end times” also known in the Bible as “The Day of the Lord”—in other words, the day when God’s reign, which has always been reality even though we did not see it, is at last officially inaugurated. The “end times” are not the end of the world, as we are often taught—they are the beginning of the new, true world, the new heaven and the new earth.
Endings are not endings, but beginnings. Want more Biblical proof?
In Genesis chapter 7, we are told the story of the first Biblical Armageddon—the Great Flood where only Noah’s family and a ship-full of animals are saved. But at the end of it, in Chapter 9, God re-establishes the covenant God made at Creation, double-binding it with the promise of the rainbow, which proves that God will never allow such destruction to happen again. Through the flood, God has essentially recreated the world—but in the process, humanity is given a second chance.
In the first chapter of John, the Gospel writer tells us about the divine nature of Jesus by deliberately referring us back to the first Chapter of Genesis. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the in the beginning with all things, and all things came into being through Him… And the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us.”
The Apostle Paul presents Jesus as the New Adam, who by His life, death, and resurrection fixes everything that the Old Adam broke, and renews our and the world’s relationship with God.
And even in Revelation, the very book to which we all refer when we want to talk about the terrible, awful, no good, very bad day of the end times, we hear that the end is not the end, but the beginning: “then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…. And I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among human beings; God will dwell with them; they will be God’s peoples and God in Person will be with them; God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death shall be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”
These are the things we affirm at somebody’s funeral service—that death isn’t an end, it’s a new beginning, an eternal beginning, embraced fully into the arms of God who completely loves us and Jesus Christ who died and rose for us. That’s nice to hear at death that all that pain and suffering is worth it, it’s just the prelude to new life, it’s just, as Paul says in Romans 8, the labor pains of a new creation.
It’s a little harder to hear while we’re still alive. We don’t like to have pain and suffering while we’re still alive. We’d like to think we are okay the way we are, that we don’t need pain and suffering in order to grow.
A couple of years ago I went through a hard time because of a big mistake I made. The thing kept escalating, and made me aware of personal shortcomings and sins that I had always thought I could keep away from seriously affecting my life, my relationships with others, and my faith in God. What I learned about myself was painful and unpleasant, and learned in a painful and unpleasant way; but, I believe by God’s grace it made me a better person. I was recently sharing this with some friends at church. I said, “I really believe that God strengthened me and made me a better person through all that stuff that I went through. But I really also believe I could probably have learned the same lessons in a less painful way.”
And one of my friends said to me, “No, you couldn’t. Nobody makes changes like that except through pain.”
He’d hit on a sad reality. He was right. We—maybe I should speak for myself, “I”—never want to make serious change unless I have no choice. And most of the time, the only time we hit that moment of incontrovertible, irrevocable decision, is through suffering.
It’s a sad reality, but it’s also good news; because that pain is the labor pains of a new beginning. Jesus taught, “You must be born again.” Theologian Stanley Haeurwas has said that Christian life is not one conversion, but an ongoing series of conversions. We’re always being born again. We’re always, by the Grace of God, being made anew. But it’s almost always because a crisis makes us aware that we must change. So suffering and crisis are but the prelude to a new beginning.
This is the good news of the Gospel. It’s what Jesus meant when He taught, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” The Kingdom of God is always a crisis right around the corner. The Kingdom of God is a matter of life and death, a recognition that we must change or die, whether literally or spiritually, if we want to have a true relationship with God, if we want to be true disciples of Jesus Christ. It sounds awful, but it’s good news because it means that all suffering is prelude to a new beginning. All pain is the pangs of labor for new birth.
That’s always been the message of Scripture: “Repent” means turn, change, transform. It means that whatever and wherever and whoever we are now, we must change; and it means that by God’s grace, whatever and wherever and whoever we are now, we can change. But the biblical message has always been that, whether we like it or not, pain, suffering, some dramatic point of decision is the point at which God confronts us with the necessity to change. Something must die for something new to emerge. That’s always been the message of Scripture, and anybody who tells you anything different is just wrong.
So pain, suffering, death, the very things that make us feel like the world is out to get us and the end is at hand, all of that is but prelude to God’s new beginning. Those times when we become aware that for all our self-development we are actually without form, and void; those times when we feel darkness moving on the face of our own personal depths—those are the very times God speaks, if we only listen; and when God speaks, God is always speaking a new beginning.
And that seems like pretty good news at the beginning of a new year.