New beginningsBy The Reverend David Burgess
The churches celebrated two lesser-known festivals in mid-January – on the same Sunday, in fact. Right from the start of its history, the church worldwide has celebrated the Sunday after the Epiphany in remembrance of Jesus’s baptism. And in this country, in rural communities for a good many years, the same day has been marked as Plough Sunday. Both festivals are about new beginnings.
Plough Sunday is an occasion to think about the beginning of the agricultural cycle, the beginning of the preparation of the land so that in due course it will offer up a harvest. It’s a hard business, this preparation of the land; we know the soil is full of potential and promise, but it needs a lot doing to it if it is going to fulfil that potential.
We can see this if we note how quickly unmanaged land reverts to wildness; leave it to itself and it will soon be a mess of grass, thistles, nettles, and brambles. Care and effort has to be spent on land if it’s not to become formless waste, but rather give up the good harvest that it has the potential to deliver.
The Baptism of Christ marks another beginning: Jesus stepped for the first time into the public sphere and he first heard his special status proclaimed in the voice from heaven, thus receiving licence to begin his ministry.
Like the farmer, God puts care and labour into making us, his creation, very good. But none of us is the finished article. It takes time and effort for the harvest to be ready. Growth in faith and spiritual development is a process, rather than a sudden coming to perfection. Whenever in our lives our baptism happens, it doesn’t mark the completion of the process.
We may find that frustrating, knowing ourselves as yet to be so far from the fulfilment of becoming what we’re meant to be. But we’re in good hands. God is patient; he’s prepared to take all the trouble that is needed. From God’s beginning in our lives flows the beginnings of our reaching out to others.
We have families in our communities, families within our congregations, who are engaged in other beginnings – in a radical overhaul of their lives. New beginnings aren’t necessarily comfortable or easy things, especially when it’s the start of life without a loved one or the prospect of a life which may soon be ending. These are the people with whom we need to be sharing God’s love, to journey with them as it’s appropriate, and to help them make sense of their world.
Jesus’s coming helps us to see the world better for what it is – to identify evil and sorrow and wrong for what they are, but to see the potential for God to be at work in everything and in the lives of everyone.
God the creator hasn’t left us alone. He’s given us the tools we need to overcome what the world throws at us. He’s given us each other as encouragement, sounding-board, shoulder or any number of other roles. And, supremely, he’s given us Jesus as saviour and the one with whom we identify, the one through whose eyes we now view the world – whatever and whenever our new beginnings may be.