Happy New Year from the Rector – A fresh start!

‘The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God’

Mark 1:1

Here we are at the beginning of a new year with all the hopes, fear and concerns that presents, but I find the opening of a fresh year brings a new opportunity to celebrate the Good News of Jesus.

I love fresh starts, and thank God he is in the business of granting them to me. Each Sunday when I pray with you the words of the Confession, I lift my head sensing the careful and bountiful mercy of God; yet another fresh start. The reality of sins forgiven fills me with peace and that deep feeling of the loving nature of God.

From Christmas, as it will have been for many of you, there will be an extra stain somewhere in the dining room carpet from yet another festive spillage, but the great news for the carpet is Carpet Max 2000 – a great stain buster – and the great news for us is that Christ is all about new beginnings. In Christ the stain of sin is wiped from us, and he presents us spotless before God. Now this is Good News.

Sin ultimately separates, and breaks relationships in both the physical and spiritual spheres of our experience. A lie told in a family can destroy the unity; a spite held in the Church can cause it to lose sight of Christ; sin separates us from God. So sin must be taken seriously.

This term we are going to look together in both our congregations at Mark’s Gospel, where we will see the purpose in Christ’s coming, to be the salvation of all mankind; and where we will discover again that his coming is good news for all of us who need God’s grace, God’s mercy, and God’s work in our lives, to make us fit for the Kingdom of God.

Spiritual fresh starts are needed by everyone, and Christ provides us with the way, the truth and the life. Christ is the source of the fresh start that will count right into eternity. Let us seek his way for 2012.

Rev Willie Nixon.