Rev. Tessie Mandeville
January 07, 2007
Christ Covenant MCC
Decatur, GA 30033

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Isaiah 43:1-7

Happy New Year! What an exciting time for all of us! We stand at the threshold of a brand new calendar year. Today is the first worship service of our new year. Today is also my first sermon as your new senior pastor. It is a new beginning for all of us.

At the beginning of a New Year, people often like to make New Year’s resolutions. Did you make resolutions for the New Year? I’m not going to ask if you broke some of them already!

I’d like to share with you this morning one of my favorite New Year’s prayers:

Dear God:

So far today I’ve done all right.

I haven’t gossiped.

I haven’t lost my temper.

I haven’t lied or cheated.

I haven’t been greedy, grumpy, selfish, or overindulgent.

I’m very thankful for that.

But in a few minutes, God,

I’m going to get out of bed.

And from then on, I’m probably going

To need a lot more help! (author unknown)

New beginnings are a time of wonder. They are filled with expectation, excitement, and even anxiety. As Lisa and I prepared ourselves for our cross country trip, we felt so excited. We wondered what our new life would be like in Georgia. We wondered what our new church home would be like. We wondered what kind of surprises would be in store for us once we arrived—never expecting that Allyson and Angela would surprise us with a baby Jesus nativity set for our front yard!

I trust that as you’ve been awaiting our arrival, you were filled with expectation and excitement. Perhaps you were filled with anxiety too when you learned what color I would paint my office. You were probably afraid that since I’m from San Francisco I’d paint my office purple (maybe even the church too!) never expecting that I would paint it pink! New beginnings are a time of wonder.

New beginnings are sacred. They invite us to open ourselves to possibility and to how the Spirit of God will move among us. At each New Year we are blessed with, and at every new beginning, I’m sure we all have dreams and hopes to make it our best year possible.

We’ve just come out of the Christmas season, which is a wonderful season all on its own, but it’s also a season with a lot of shopping and it can be a struggle against consumerism. We get used to being asked the question, “What do you want for Christmas?”

But today we enter the season of Epiphany where we realize the best gift we can ask for has already been given to us: the light and love of Christ in our lives. In this season of light, we have the opportunity to expand our vision as a people of faith. So maybe the better question is, What are your deepest longings? Not what do you want, but what do you long for? In this time of new beginnings, what do you long for deep in your soul, that when you think about it, it fills you with expectation for a new life?

Our sacred Hebrew scriptures tell us the story of the Israelites and their relationship with God. In the book of Isaiah, we learn that the Israelites were in exile in Babylon. They were taken away from their home land and everything they knew, including the temple of God where they worshipped. It was their belief that they transgressed the teachings of God and that God punished them by sending them into exile. We are just like the Israelites, I believe. When things happen in our lives that we don’t understand, we wonder where God is and what we did wrong. We believe that if something bad happens to us that God is punishing us, but the truth is, I believe we punish ourselves much more than God ever would.

In our story today, we learn that the Israelites long for redemption and they long to know that the presence of God is with them at all times. Isaiah chapter 43 is one of the most tender love stories in our entire Bible. Our God is a God of new beginnings, and in this love story, God is offering the Israelites a new beginning. God is calling the people back to Jerusalem, away from the exile they’ve been in, calling them to rebuild Jerusalem, calling them to new beginnings with the promise that God will be with them at all times.

Because redemption and the presence of God are what they long for, they are filled with expectation for their new lives. But you can hear that they are also afraid. This is why God says to them more than once, “Do not fear.” There are all sorts of things to be afraid of—how will they find their way back home, exactly how high will the waters be that we travel through, what will we do when we get back to Jerusalem, will God really be with us and not abandon us? But God woos them and says to them, “Do not fear. I have created you, I have redeemed you, you are precious, I will gather you, I love you.”

New beginnings, as much as they are exciting, can also be a time for anxiety. New beginnings bring with them new obstacles to face and new decisions, but they also bring new opportunities to experience the power of God.

Our Jewish brothers and sisters in the time of John the Baptist were also filled with expectation. They lived in a time of occupation by the Roman Empire and they longed for new beginnings. John the Baptist was quite popular among the people and had a huge following. He spoke out against the sins and the injustice of the Roman Empire and the corruption in their government. He proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In doing so, he proclaimed that new beginnings are always possible.

When he preached his message, he tapped into the people’s deepest longings for justice. The reign of God that they were expecting would call everyone to do justice and to be in right relationship with one another. They longed for the Messiah to come and to inaugurate this new reign of God. This is where Jesus makes his first public appearance. He’s been pretty obscure up until this moment. But I have to admit, if I were Jesus, I might be a little upset at how my cousin, John the Baptist, portrayed me. John portrays Jesus as holding a pitchfork in his hand. Now, if you’ve spent any time in church at all, then you know there is another less than reputable character who is always portrayed with a pitchfork in his hand. Any guesses?! That’s right; it’s the devil or Satan. I personally think Jesus has every right to be upset about this portrayal.

And I’m reasonably sure that Jesus would not only be upset about being portrayed with a pitchfork, but he also would be puzzled by the meaning we’ve given this scripture in our churches today. What the scriptures say is, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear the threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Maybe Jesus would be more than puzzled; he’d be angry. This scripture has been used to scare people and used erroneously to say that Jesus is separating the “good” people from the “bad” people. As LGBT people, and as other people who don’t fit the dominant paradigm in our society, we know the pain of having the Bible used against us in this way.

In that time period, winnowing forks were important harvesting tools for separating wheat from chaff. The person using the fork would throw a forkful of wheat into the air; the heavier wheat, the seed which is edible and nourishing, would fall to the ground, while the lighter chaff, which was useless and had no benefit for human consumption, would be blown by the wind currents. That chaff would then be tossed into the “unquenchable fire.”

As theologian Anne Dunlap (Out in Scripture) states,

“What is being described here is not a "sorting out" of "good" people from "bad," with the bad tossed into hellfire, an interpretation with which LGBT folk may be too familiar. Rather, the winnowing process echoes a process of discernment and spiritual growth. God separates out of one’s self and the community those actions, beliefs, prejudices, biases, attitudes, which do little to edify and nourish the individual and community. That which is, in fact, harmful, is separated from that which nurtures. To be saved in this process are those things which build up, which heal, which create community and individual wholeness. That the fire is unquenchable implies that this winnowing is a perpetual, ongoing practice for all. Jesus as the winnower, beloved of God, shows us a Jesus, then, whose concern is to bring about the wholeness of the beloved community of God.”

Jesus’ concern at that time, and still today, is to bring about the wholeness of the beloved community of God. I long for wholeness in my life and I’m sure I am not alone in that longing. In order to move toward that wholeness, we have to separate out those things that bring us life and death. We have to begin by separating out, if you will, the voices that we hear.

Jesus heard God’s voice saying, “You are my beloved. With you I am well pleased.” Most of us, whether or not we are LGBT people, are used to hearing voices that say to us, “If you want to be loved you must do something to prove that you are worthy of love; you must earn it or work for it.” Henri Nouwen, one of my favorite priests and teachers says, “Our spiritual journey has more to do with learning to listen to and hearing the voice that says, ‘You are my beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” There is no earning this love; there is accepting this love.

I think that’s part of what makes Jesus special. In that new beginning for Jesus, he heard the voice and he accepted the love God had for him. Jesus hadn’t done any miracles yet; his ministry was just starting. God said he was beloved simply because he was created and loved, without doing anything.

Today is a new beginning for all of us. As a church and as individuals, we’ve had new beginnings before and we’ve struggled with them. We’ve made false starts and felt the disappointment of failing. We’ve risked loving and trusting again and were disappointed. I’ve heard it said that “getting past the past is one of the hardest things there is to do in life.”

But today, we stand at a threshold with a stunning power in our hands to choose the paths that bring us life. To listen to the voice of God who says, “You are my beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Our deepest longings for redemption, for justice, and to accept the love of God, can be fulfilled.

“I said to the angel who stood at the gate of [new beginnings]: ‘Give me a light that I may go forth into uncertainty with sure feet.’ But the angel answered, ‘Step out into the darkness, and lay your hand in the hand of God. That is better than a light, and surer than a known way.” (author unknown)

My friends, let us take the step forward together, onto new ground, as we clasp our hands together and lay them in the hand of God. Amen.

Copyright © 2007 by Rev. Tessie Mandeville. Permission granted for non- profit circulation with attribution of author and venue. Other rights reserved