What’s It Like to Begin Again?

I have, floating through my mind, images from the screens of my life – TV, social media… The images of war and suffering in Ukraine or Gaza; of cyclonic winds, rain and flood waters ripping through towns and cities, destroying homes and businesses; of fire storms raging through bushland and into suburban areas, reducing everything in their path to ashes… Images of people loading cars, boats or bikes – any vehicle they have – of filling bags and backpacks and leaving. They drive, ride, float or walk away… Never knowing what they will return to – if at all! Will the firestorms destroy everything, or the floods consume and ruin or the bombs and missiles of invading armies reduce to rubble all that we know… What is it like to start again? When confronted with health issues and crises, of life and death situations that close down life and diminish hope, we begin to ask questions and feel the sense of anxiety about how we will live through and beyond this. When I celebrate the life of a person, loved and missed, and there is deep sadness and grief at the loss. The questions begins to emerge, How can we live? What will it look like? What is it like to begin again? In so many ways, in so many times of our life, we ask, we wonder, what is it like to begin again? What will it mean and how will we cope? Into my pondering of late, an ancient prophetic voice from the Jewish Scriptures echoed down through history: ‘A new thing, I am doing a new thing!’ The prophet Isaiah utters these words in a reading this week (Isaiah 43:16-21). This prophetic voice, with its anticipatory hope is good and ominous – What is it like to begin again? Whether God is in it or not! What is it like to have to start over, to rebuild, recreate, renew and find our way in a world that is dynamic, changing, resistant and difficult? What is it like to begin again? There is much in life that we anticipate with joy and excitement, new things emerging in our lives – experiences, babies, events, new ‘toys’ to play with, new work… Change is everywhere present and some we negotiate well. Other change is hard to embrace as securities and familiarity disappear or when change is omnipresent and all-consuming. We feel swept up in the cataclysmic maelstrom of being and feel deep anxiety, fear and resistance. New things can be really hard – especially when we feel no control over life! New things or possibilities often also mean an ending, that something old is now being set aside, thrown away and lost. When we think about the new, there is also the old, with the attendant grief and loss associated with its passing. God promises these Jewish people a new thing, a new way and that is a source of hope and peace. Their lives have been turned upside down over a generation or so. The Babylonian armies have destroyed their home, temple and everything that was theirs. They now endure life in the far-off land of Babylon. So, this is welcome news. They will have hope and life. The prophet is speaking into their hopelessness and promising a hopeful end to their struggle. The people do eventually return home, but home is rubble. There is newness and possibility but also grief and no doubt the desire to return to the way everything used to be. Why couldn’t we just have our city, homes and Temple? Why couldn’t everything be the same as it always was? There is the struggle between the new thing and what was. The ‘what was’ can no longer be, and it must be let go of in order to embrace the new thing that God is offering. How hard is it to begin again? We are often caught between what was and what can be – the old thing and the new possibility. This is precisely the situation we wrestle with in so many of our institutions and organisations at this time in history. As everything changes so rapidly all around us, we are being driven into new places of meaning and relevance to encounter and deal with the world that is our lives. This is difficult! In so many ways the new is life-giving and exciting but also harrowing and difficult. It takes energy and will to embrace the new thing and not sentimentalise the old. It sometimes takes courage to step out in faith to engage with the new thing that lies before us – that, which God is perhaps drawing us into. In the midst of the new thing and the change that it represents we need to prepare ourselves and even grieve in order to accept, embrace and engage the new thing before us. In John’s story of Jesus (John 12:1- 8), we are confronted with a strange story of Jesus dining with Mary, Martha and Lazarus (the one of resuscitation fame). During the meal, Mary, out of gratitude and understanding, anoints Jesus’ feet. This strange event is about grieving Jesus. Mary, it seems, clearly understands that Jesus’ time is limited, that he will soon be sacrificed on the Roman cross. His prophetic and compassionate life is too confronting to the powers that be and the world can’t handle such love and grace. She takes expensive perfume and anoints Jesus, preparing his body for burial. This sounds very strange to us but is a beautiful act of love and Reflection Notes – 6/4/25 5 th Sunday in Lent – Geoff Stevenson acknowledgement of what will be. Mary understands what is to come and what confronts Jesus. She understands that there is a new era about to emerge and Jesus will not be part of it – he has prepared the way, and the Spirit of God will be with the people, but Jesus will not be there. This is a public act of love and grief that recognises what will be; what perhaps has to be. Mary celebrates Jesus and grieves what she will lose. There is a curious comment of Jesus after Judas castigates Mary suggesting the money for this expensive perfume could have been used for the poor. Jesus says. ‘The poor you will have always. You will not always have me.’ This points to the new thing, the new way that Jesus has begun but will continue on through those who follow, who take up God’s way and carry on his mission. They form communities of grace into which the poor (and all people!) can belong and find they have enough. This is a prophetic statement that envisages a new way in the world where all will have enough and learn to share with those who don’t. It is a new thing where love, courage, faith, compassion, justice, peace and joy will mingle with hope to bring life – like a stream in the desert there is flourishing! The way of God always calls us into new life, new ways and new possibilities. God is always doing a new thing because there are always people who need new hope, new life and liberation. It can be hard to embrace all the change, all the letting go and the unsettling instability that embracing newness can require. We are all in a constant state of change, transition and movement into new ways of life but there is a constant that grounds us in hope and provides security amidst the change. That foundation and constant is God’s love and grace that can hold us in tenuous moments and sustain us in difficult times of transition and transformation. It is difficult to begin again, to start anew and engage with transformation – but God is with us!!! May God hold you, strengthen you and energise you through the times of newness and the new things that life offers.