ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS John H. Buchanan
Luke 2:225 36-40 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
Jamary 2, 1983 Columbus, OH

The December 13 issue of Time reported that tlalcolm Muggeridge, at the age
of 79, had publically confessed his faith and joined the church. For much of
this century, Time reported, Muggeridge has been the "great gadfly of British
letters, unleashing his rapier prose on much that civilization has held dear,
including organized religion." A decade or so ago Muggeridge began to see
Christianity in a new light while working on a BBC documentary, focusing on
Mother Teresa of Calcutta and her work with the poor. Muggeridge was profoundly
impressed with the selflessness. In the interim he thought, prayed, wrote a
marvelous book on the life of Jesus. And now, he was ready to make his personal
commitment. And so, in a small Roman Catholic parish church Muggeridge and his
wife declared their faith. iis reflections on the occasion I found, as always,
provocative and well put.

He had, he said, “a sense of homecoming, a picking up the threads of a
lost life, of responding to a bell that has long been ringing, of finding a
place at a table that has long been left vacant." Afterward, "Muggeridge
stepped out into the brisk English autumn air, and for once seemed content with
all he surveyed. ‘It's a particularly joyful sort of day' said he, ‘It's rather
like when you fall in love with a woman and ask her to marry you. You know
there are no more questions to be asked.'" (Time, 12/13/82, p. 63)

That delightful accounting reminded me of nothing so much as the incidents
reported near the end of the second chapter of Luke. Mary and Joseph had
brought their infant to the Temple for the rite of purification. While there
they encountered two elderly people. One, named Simeon, Luke reports, took the
baby in his arms, like a loving grandfather, and said words which have become,
over the centuries, the beloved Nunc Dimitis, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant
depart in peace."

The other person was Anna: eighty-four years old, a widow, a prophetess,
who spent most of her time in the temple, praying. She saw the baby and she too
gave thanks to God. Both appear in Luke as representatives of a people who have
been waiting. Both, with the wisdom of the years, recognize the significance of
Jesus. Neither of them, by the way, appear again in the biblical narrative.
Both, like Malcolm Muggeridge, indicate that what they have seen has blessed
them with an illusive sense of completeness. "Now I can die in peace," Simeon
said. "There are no more questions to be asked," Muggeridge echoed.

There is no theological significance I know of for the occurrence of
Christmas and the New Year one week from each other, unless it is this: having
seen the Christ child, aged Simeon and Anna knew that their own time now had a
sense of completeness about it. To see Jesus is to know that something is
ending and something new is beginning.

That motif is common in the Biblical narrative: unlike Eastern philosophies,
history is not cylical in the Bible, predestined to repeat itself over and over
in a monotonous continuum. Biblical history has a beginning and an end, a goal,

a purpose. And with the grand sweep of things, individual histories are com-
prised of a series of endings and beginnings.

=

Life can be renewed: people can change: the old can be put to rest and
the new brought to life. "Repent" John the Baptist shouted to his startled
countrymen: that is, "start anew - become new people.”

Ordinarily, however, our sensitivity to time is confined to the lament that
there isn't enough of it. Michael Quoist speaks for most of us in this prayer:

"Lord, you must have made a mistake in your calculations.
There is a big mistake somewhere

The hours are too short,

The days are too short,

Our lives are too short." (Prayers, p. 98)

It seems that our greatest unhappiness, and our most frequent lament has to
do with the scarcity of time. For middle class America, the common lament about
how terribly busy one is has almost become a form of social greeting, or a positing
of one's social importance. Empty time, it seems, is, if not immoral, at least
suspicious. The truth about most of us most of the time, is that we are strapped,
burdened, and unhappy because there are not enough hours to do what we must, with
any remnant left over for doing what we want to do.

We march to the tick of the clock - the calendar appointment, the scheduled
deadline. It is, on measure, a peculiar but good thing about us. Our prompt~
ness and time --~ consciously, have made us a very productive people. It does
not take many days living in another culture to discover one of the major reasons
for American efficiency: namely, the high value we place on time and its use.
Labor saving devices save time as well: a machine which does the work of 20
people, frees their time to invest elsewhere. And yet, as Marshall McLuhan
reminded us several years ago, every technological advance is accompanied by a
loss of something.

What we have lost, I believe, is what could only be called a philosophic
sense that we have enough time to do what we ought to be doing. We have the
capacity to end some things and to begin new ones. Unfortunately it takes a
tragedy or near tragedy sometimes to learn the lesson. The intrinsic value of
the time we have is sometimes apparent only after we have lost a great deal of
it. Isn't that what really is behind the wish that we were young again? Now
we know how precious that time was.

Sam Keen is a theologian philosopher who went through a classic mid-life
crisis in the 70's, leaving church, profession, marriage, and family behind, in
order to participate in the new revolutionary experiences of our culture. He
has written a remarkable book about it in which he confesses: "By infidelity I
learned that vows may be sweet bonds that tie us to the earth. Through exile I
learned that I cannot live without a home." (p, 93) And then: ‘so long as we
evade the fear of coming to an end we never begin or begin again." (p. 40)

The coming of Jesus Christ means that there are always new possibilities
in time. There is, that is to say, hope. We are not predetermined to die ina
nuclear holocaust. Nor personally, are we predestined to keep repeating old
habits, old customs which are destructive, hurtful, unhappy. We can change -
begin again.

a

One of my favorite quotes is from a speech a professor made once at a
library dedication. Instead of the normal academic fare one expects on that
occasion, he decided to tell students and faculty what he had learned through
the recent death of his wife...It had to do with time. Citing an Emily Dick-
inson poem that goes:

"By a departing light

We see acuter, quite,

Than by a wick that stays.
There's something in the flight
That clarifies the sight

And decks the rays."

He commented, "It's a sense of the ending that makes the beginning and all
that follows therefrom, so much more meaningful." He gave wise advice about
the time to love. "Love them while you can," he said, “and never, never be
embarrassed...Look at things not only as if you were seeing them for the first
time, but as if you were seeing them for the last time, and had to take them
all in and remember them forever..."

I suppose next to our static concept of time, our greatest error, in this
context, is the assumption that present time is simply preparation for the
future: that hope, success, joy, meaning will happen someday, but not now.

We need, all of us, the lesson in time which teaches that this is the only
life we are going to live. There will never be another January 2, 1983. What-
ever significance this day is to have - will be experienced today...period...

I am suggesting that to know who the child is, is to believe in the possi-
ble, to embrace the power of God which makes all things new - even your life and
mine. I am suggesting the simple discipline of surveying one's life and putting
to an end what one doesn't want there, and resolying to begin what one hopes,
strives for and wants for the future.

The birth of Jesus after all ~- is aittle more than harmless sentiment,
until it begins to make a difference in the world. And it does that, not
through some mysterious cosmic process, but as individual men and women know
the love of God, and respond to it by resolving to live new lives. Peace in
the world - reconciliation between two people - won't happen miraculously -
but slowly, painfully, laboriously, as individuals begin to stop acting in
old ways and begin to act in new ways.

With the wisdom of her years of waiting, old Anna saw in the infant Jesus
the beginning of something brand new - for her people - for history - and for
her personally. The waiting was ended. The future was beginning.

So today, one week after we celebrated the birth, we observe the passing
of time. I am suggesting that, by God's grace, it may be a time of ending and
beginning for us as well. As Simeon and Anna saw the end of the old and the
beginning of the new, so let us come to table - to celebrate the miracle of
incarnation, the mysterious presence of God - but also to renew our faith, our
trust, our love, our obedience. AMEN.

~gd—

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a source of hope and strength precisely because
it begins with the ordinary - the radically human. It's essence is truly net the most
gloricus "Gloria in Excelsis Deo," with organ and trumpei, but this est ordinary
birth, K's strongest manifestations is not, therefore, high communion at the high
altar - but perhaps bedside communion with one whose life is cbbing. The Gospel
is Saving because it takes our life in this world at least as seriously as life in the
next world. It is strength and help and hope for every, day precisely because it
began as all things human begin ~ with birth and the everday ordinariness of a mother
and a father ani their new baby.