Well Begun
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Communion Meditation for the
2nd Sunday of Advent – December 7, 2008
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[texts: 2 Peter 3:8-15a/Mark 1:1-8]

“Well begun is half done.” Have you ever heard that proverb before? I remember my Grandmother saying it to me and a number of teachers I’ve had through the years have said it as well. “Well begun is half done.” I thought of it as I read these texts for this second Sunday of Advent and then had it brought powerfully home to me on Friday evening as I listened to the Holiday Pops Concert at the Symphony. The first thing that reinforced it for me was the work of the arranger who puts the music into the form I actually heard. Second, I was thinking of the time musicians put in before I even take my seat and that was brought powerfully home when a twelve-year-old and a nine-year-old cellist and violinist came out and played, delightfully I might add, with the symphony. Aristotle, yes, the phrase is his and comes from The Politics, was right: “Well begun is half done.”

Advent is the season of well begun and reminds us that there are beginnings even before beginnings. John Shea, theologian and storyteller, points this out when he writes:

“Some facilitators of group process have a saying: ‘It begins before it begins.’ On a first level, this means that if the group starts at nine, it really starts as people gather in the room at 8:30. On a second level, it means that people bring their history of group interaction into the room with them and, to the degree it is possible, it must be taken into account as the process and conversation unfold. What is the readiness level of the people? Are they willing and open? Can they engage the people and the tasks.” [Eating with the Bridegroom p. 27] Advent serves, then, to ask us about our readiness, our willingness to hear afresh the message of God’s Word, God’s love spoken into flesh for us in the person and the work of Jesus Christ.

The role of the prophet is, as we heard from Isaiah, to speak a word to God’s people. Sometimes it is comfort and other times it is warning. John the Baptist was the last in the long line of prophets and his task was to be the forerunner of the Messiah. He came not to bring his own message, but to point to the message that was coming. He offered people both a word of warning and a word of hope, but said,”The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. I am not worth to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

John preached a “baptism of repentance.” He told the people that they needed to turn-around their lives, which is what repentance means. The word in Greek is metanoia and literally means a change in direction. When Jesus appears – and in Mark’s Gospel, which we will be reading from this new liturgical year, we’ll see him come quickly, because Mark is the Gospel of immediacy – he comes preaching, “repent and believe the good news, the kingdom of God is at hand.”

Repentance is something that needs to be well begun and if it is well begun, then we are well on our way to the goal of life in union with God. Repentance, we believe, is something we do from sin and part of the problem with contemporary American culture and, indeed, with mainline Christianity is that we don’t think we need to repent because we don’t sin. I want to turn to something Shea said, because it’s just so well-put, “If sin is understood as any thought, deed, or disposition that breaks the flow of life between God and the self, as well as between the self, other people and the earth, then a different picture of the desire for forgiveness presents itself. Perhaps people wake up one day and find that there is no ‘life’ in their lives. The passion, pleasure, and purpose of what they do and who they are is no longer there. They go through the paces and fulfill their duties, but there is something wrong. Beneath the surface they are out of sync. Although they still fight for money and position, they know the payoff will not be all that it promises. . . Although they may not be able to list their sins, this is a sinful condition. The flow of life has dried up, and they want out. It is often said that the longing for liberation begins when you notice you are in prison.” [p 27-8]

Advent reminds us that we are to join in the preparation for the Lord’s coming afresh into our lives; which includes our liberation and our incorporation into God’s very life. For us to be well begun in our spiritual life means letting down the barriers we throw up – leveling the uneven ground of our lives – and turning off the filters that keep us from hearing God’s word of transforming love spoken to the ears of our hearts. John prepares the way, but it is Jesus who comes to us speaking the ultimate word of comfort and of hope; and it is Jesus who demonstrates in his own life, death and resurrection just how much God wants to share life with us.

In the midst of the worries of this time in our nation’s history and in the crazed busy-ness that marks what we call “the holidays,” take a moment and consider the word spoken to us through the prophets, through John and in Jesus. Hear a word of comfort that says what really matters isn’t the perfect present, the party without a flaw or anything else but the love of God in you and me – and that love extended to a world broken and needing to know that there is more than the material that matters.

Well begun is heeding this word and opening our lives to the One who is coming and is already here. Well begun is, truly, half done when we come to the spiritual life. Today as we come to the Lord’s Table, listen carefully to the words that are spoken, be a part of the action, and when the bread and cup come to you receive them as one who is, in that action, received by God. Allow this small, ordinary action of eating and drinking to be what it truly is – the sign of something deeper, better, greater than it is. For in it we are joined with the One who comes to us afresh again and again, speaking to us God’s own word of comfort and of hope. Well begun begins here.