Sermon for Sunday,  January 1, 2006  

STARTING OVER

by

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture:  Matthew 6:7-14

 ⁷ "When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. ⁸ Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. ⁹ "Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. ¹⁰ Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. ¹¹ Give us this day our daily bread. ¹² And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. ¹³ And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. ¹⁴ For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

Our family was able last week to get a little time with one of our active St. Andrew members who is having the experience of starting over, the topic of today’s communion meditation.

Dave Donahue has been a very active member of our congregation for the past four years and was just transferred to a new job in Chicago. It was a very smart move on the part of his company, Crate and Barrel, because Dave had been a successful store manager at the Park Meadows store and then had just recently opened up the Cherry Creek store. Now the company has promoted him to a new training role with many stores in the mid west so that many more people will benefit from his leadership, but it is a sad time for those of us here in our congregation who had worked with Dave in some of the ushering roles and design roles and other leadership roles he joyfully took on such as the installation of 200 luminarias for all of our Christmas Eve services last week.

Dave will be living the experience of starting over in a new city and new job and new church in the next few weeks and months, and this experience of starting over is one with a mixture of feelings. I thought of some people in the Bible who lived through the feelings that go with leaving something familiar and going to a new life and new experience. One of the first people we might think of is the father of Israel and of Islam and one of the fathers of Christianity as well, old father Abraham who according to the book of Genesis left his homeland and family at the age of 70 and set out to a place where God only knew about. I am sure that he had all kinds of feelings as he left his past and his kin folks and went with his wife Sara to a new land.

I thought of a line from the apostle Paul where he speaks of starting over: no matter what has happened before, I leave the past behind me and press on toward the goal of my high calling as a follower of Christ.

Leaving the past behind is what we do today in our worship service on January 1, 2006, leaving one calendar year and moving to a new year, and for some people it will be a good thing to leave behind what may have been a painful 2005 and having a chance begin with a clean slate.

One way that we can start over is to let go of some painful feelings that we may have been holding onto and refusing to consider the possibility of forgiveness. I tremble a bit at taking such a short time in a short sermon to mention forgiveness because this is a subject that is deep and can be complicated. Sometimes church leaders have urged people to forgive too quickly without working through the pain and anger and grief that we have a right to feel if we have been deeply hurt or betrayed. Sometimes people have confused forgiving and forgetting, and they are different because we do not want someone who has been abused to put themselves in a situation to be abused in the same way in the future.

But finally forgiveness, letting go of our right to hurt another person in the way they have hurt us; giving up our fantasies of revenge and refusing to let another person determine the quality of our life (that is what we are doing when we refuse for a long time to forgive)-finally forgiveness is necessary for every one of us and is part of our starting over and letting go and being healthier.

That is what Archbishop Desmond Tutu means when he says there is no future without forgiveness. That was true for his country of South Africa and that is true in each of our hearts as we remember that each of us depends on grace and forgiveness to live fully and that in the famous prayer that Jesus gives us as a standard for all of our praying, the need for us to receive forgiveness and grace is directly tied to our willingness to forgive others and to be agents of grace for them.

There are copies on the foyer table of several sermons on forgiveness that need to be looked at if this is part of your journey of starting over in this new year because this is a more important topic than I can deal with in just five paragraphs. Pick up those resources before you leave today and let them be part of your process of starting over, leaving the past behind and moving forward into God’s future of hope and new life.

“This is day of new beginnings” we sang in our opening hymn and some of us mark that new beginning in some practical ways: I did some cleaning and reorganizing of some parts of my study and my church office as well this week to symbolize starting over with a fairly clean slate and more orderly surroundings. I am constantly fighting the battle of paperwork and clutter and I like the ritual of reordering things and throwing away some things so that I can look a little more organized at least for a while.

For other people the New Year can be a time to begin some new habits or let go of some bad habits. If you see this as a time for New Year’s resolutions, let me suggest you not be over ambitious; pick just one or two things that you want to change or do differently and work to stick with that. Most of us can look again at eating more healthily and moving more in a time when obesity in America is almost a national epidemic. If we can resolve just to move more every other day-walk, march in place while we watch TV, eat more nutritiously in a change of life habits-not just a temporary diet for a few weeks that we go off of later but a real change in a life pattern, we will be surprised at how much better we feel on less sugar and more exercise. I am fired up about this as most of you know, and have seen in my own life over the past 25 years the benefit of regular physical activity especially coming from a family where both parents had some cardio vascular disease.

We can make something a habit by doing it for 21 days, so whatever you are doing new this new year for a healthy heart or a healthy spirit, stick with it for a few weeks and see if you don’t like how you feel after that time.

The first day of a new year is a good time to make a new commitment to your spiritual health as well. More and more research is showing us that the people who are happiest and who are healthiest in body and spirit usually have an involvement in a church or synagogue or some faith community that brings out the best in them and helps them be forgiven and practice forgiveness and lets them be in a role of service to others. Those are the benefits of being active in a community of faith like this congregation.

And January 1 is a great time to renew our promises to God and to be active in God’s church. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism 250 years ago used this change of calendar years to give people a chance to start over and to renew their commitment as followers of Christ and we will be using a part of his covenant renewal service right now.

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