Endings and New Beginnings
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
August 5, 2021
John 3:3-12 (New International Version)
3 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?
Along with this weekend being known for celebrating labor in our country, it is also well-known for considering endings and beginnings.
For us folks in the Midwest, the summer is officially coming to a close and fall is upon us. Another year of school has begun, and the future seems a bit in the air. We thought we were coming to the close of the pandemic, only to find the variants raising the numbers of cases and us beginning to explore new ways to move forward safely.
Another aspect of considering endings and beginnings that I often find myself in conversation about is the views of completion or closure.
We have had a couple important memorials this past summer and one of the topics I would overhear people talking about was finding closure. But it is not just at memorial services that we seek closure – it is also in a variety of things from our current and political past, our religious upbringings, to even the interactions on our Nextdoor community apps.
Even more, I sense the pandemic has left us yearning when it comes to closure. Even though there is such a desire to get back to the said, “normal,” we are learning to work with and embrace what I might call a “holding pattern” or “wait-and-see mentality.”
Often in religious circles we talk of “new beginnings” and the importance of “ending well” – sometimes, maybe to our detriment, because it takes our focus off being in the present moment.
Yet I find endings and beginnings also to be very spiritual times. Take for instant a baby being born, a wedding, the start of a pilgrimage or spiritual journey, or a death of a loved one, a retirement, even the ending of a bad habit or addiction. Not only are many of these milestones in life, but they also have a deeply spiritual component.
In the world we talk about these times being marked by transition – while in the religious world we might use the world transformation instead. A transformation often implies that an ending becomes an opportunity for a beginning.
These transitions or transformations define the journey of our souls. I believe they are the tools the Divine uses to shake us, regardless of our age, sexual orientation, social or financial status, back onto the journey of self-discovery and Divine connection.
These transitions or transformations can abruptly remove the props we use to hold up our self-image and help us be more vulnerable to those around us. And yes, they also can mark a time of deep confusion and even identity crisis.
I sense we at First Friends are in a time of transition or maybe better yet transformation.
It is clear in many areas we are at times deeply confused and maybe even having an identity crisis. We have begun to reach the end of the way “we have always done things” and are seeking new ways to do the ministry and business of the Meeting.
This is no easy task – simply because it means we must admit we are arriving at an ending…and at the same time must have our eyes open for the possibilities of new beginnings.
If there has been one thing that the Pandemic has taught us at First Friends– it is the fact that we have an ability to transform – even to start something completely new and be successful.
I am just going to put it out there, but I sense one of the biggest deficiencies in the Quaker world as a whole is the lack of transition or transformation.
Often, we buddy up with American Christianity and talk of being “born again,” but sadly, it is too often, simply a being born again to the same old thing we did before – lacking new life, energy, momentum, and possibility.
Jesus says to Nicodemus, “No one, can see the Kingdom of God unless one is born again.” To see the “Kingdom of God” is just another way of talking about experiencing and participating in the dynamic reality of God’s life and will in the present moment. What we have become confused about is that Jesus was talking about being “born again in this life, not some life to come.
If anything, transformation should be about being birthed anew in the present moment so there can be new possibilities and opportunities now!
I think this was what Jesus was trying to help the Pharisee Nicodemus understand. And just like Nicodemus, this is so relevant for our individual lives.
Let’s be honest, we are not that bad at beginnings, are we? You and I love to do something new or get a chance to begin again.
But it is the endings that are much different. Endings have a history, they have baggage, they come with a comfortability with the way things are currently and to end them would mean that scary word - change.
Folks, endings can be devastating and difficult (even painful) for a variety of reasons, most of which we never identify because we’re too caught up with the ending and not what is behind why something is ending or needs to end.
Too often the ending becomes all that we can see – thus the ending becomes an end in itself, which leaves us grieving and lacking the ability to see the new beginning being birthed.
I have learned over my many years in ministry that most people struggle with not being able to comprehend that an “end” is almost always an opportunity for a new beginning.
When I used to teach at Huntington University, I taught a capstone class that was to prepare students for an ending – that being their undergrad college career. We did a lot of examining where all they had been over the last four-plus years. As well as what they had learned, and how the experience had affected them.
Early on I would dedicate a class to evaluating what they would want to change about their college experience. Most would start with a phrase like,
“If I could go back and be a freshman again…I would do...” or
“If I would have known this…I may have chosen to respond this way…” or
“I didn’t realize it was me that needed to change…”
I would take that one experience and turn it around to discuss stepping out of the bubble of college life. How this ending would be an opportunity to make new beginnings as they step out. It was always an amazing discussion, often tears were shed, but hope was instilled in them that a new beginning was possible.
What if we at First Friends considered taking this year as a Capstone Class for our journey together as a community of faith?
Maybe we could look back on just the past 65 years since we moved into this building and ask ourselves, where have we come, where are we currently, and where do we want to go?
I sense we might realize we need to bring some things to and end and find and embrace new opportunities to be birthed anew.
If our Weighty Friend, Dan Rains left us with one major piece of wisdom about endings, it was that the end always begets new beginnings of some sort.
I have really been thinking about this and asking myself how I can learn to see a beginning being formed in whatever end I experience? I believe to do this as a community, it must first start with a personal exploration.
Craig Lounsbrough in an article titled “The End is Only a Beginning in Disguise” has some answers to help us.
He says, to see those new beginnings out of our endings, we must first admit we do not want to lose something.
Craig says,
Quite simply, we tend to hate endings because many of our endings involve things that we don’t want to lose. Sure, there are many things that we’re glad to get rid of, but many times some ‘thing,’ or some person, or some life-phase played such a role in our lives that we can’t imagine going on without it. Or we feel that its end has come far too soon, and we are bereft of everything we could have gotten out of it, or it out of us.
What we end up doing is seeing the loss within the agenda that we had created for that thing, or that person, or that life-phase, and we’ve not recognized a larger agenda that’s simply playing itself out so it can play other things in.
Second, Craig says we fear that whatever we’ve lost can never be replaced.
There’s an immediate sense that losing something demands that it be replaced. There’s that sense where we don’t want to disturb the continuity of our lives and the rhythm that we’ve created. Things have been disrupted, sometimes dramatically so, and we want to stop the disruption by immediately replacing whatever it was that we lost.
What we tend to miss is that replacement only serves to perpetuate the repetition of the past, where creating space for something new creates space for something fresh. And it is out of something fresh that this journey of ours is so often refreshed.
Third, Craig says we like to glorify the end.
Since we have to tolerate endings, we want them to be good and even glorious. We want an end to have some meaning to it, that whatever is ending was meaningful and possibly spectacular while it was around.
We can’t hold on to that which we’re losing, but we can make the end grand and glorious to the point that the memory of it will always stay with us. There’s nothing inherently wrong about bringing something to a close in a manner that’s respectful and celebratory, unless this becomes our one and total focus.
Fourth, Craig says we fear that an ending might be a failure.
What if whatever it is that ended wasn’t really supposed to end, but it did because somebody screwed up somewhere? What if this really wasn’t the time? What if this loss really was grossly premature and achingly unnecessary? What if this loss was due to my stupidity or poor timing or lack of insight or lackluster commitment? What if this loss was the product of someone’s blatant failure?
Sometimes losses are so unexplainable and seemingly irrational that we think this way. And it may well be that the loss did not have to happen, and maybe should not have happened at all.
Yet, life is big enough and has ample room to take the most tragic mistakes and weave them into the most wonderful of opportunities if we let it do so. An ending is only a failure if we choose not to tease out the manifold lessons in the ending.
Fifth, Craig says we fear that there will be no new beginning.
So, what if this is an end and nothing more than an end? What if nothing emerges from whatever it is that we’ve lost? What if life doesn’t go on, or there are no opportunities beyond this, or it all dies here?
We often wonder will the road run out, will an irrevocable end eventually come, and will there be no place to go because the future simply won’t exist and the past is forever gone.
Yet, it is looking at the nature and fabric of life, and in the looking realize that things always find a way to go forward because there is always a place to go forward to.
As we look at the endings and beginnings of our own lives and how we respond to them. I sense we will begin to understand the need for this coming and going. Or this emptying out and filling up. Some may label it an uprooting and a planting.
As fall is upon us here in the Midwest, we are going to see visibly this ending in nature. I am already seeing it in my backyard. It is part of the cycle of life. The coming of spring heralds a resurgence arising out of the debris and decay of fall – what we might even call a resurrection.
As Craig says, “It is a message woven into the most intimate fabric of creation where nothing ends because an end is only a beginning in disguise.”
So over the next several months, I want us to really think about the endings in our personal lives, as well as in this Meeting.
Are we preparing ourselves for something new to be birthed amongst us?
What new beginning might we have the opportunity to embrace if we prepare ourselves?
And how are we responding to the endings happening around us?
Are we holding on to them?
Are we fearing them?
Are we glorifying them?
Are we seeing them as a failure? Or…
Are we worried there will be no new beginnings?