The opening sentence of a novel is always a great test of a writer's skill. You all know Jane Austen's opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.

You will also know:

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times -

Charles Dickens' opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities. You may not know another classic opening, in a novel that's little read these days: Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond:

'Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.

Glorious.

The problem of the tone-setting opening sentence is not confined only to novelists. The gospel writers faced the same challenge. There you are, sitting at a table on the verandah, sheltered by a thriving vine and with a view out over the countryside. You have in front of you a roll of parchment and a pen. How are you going to begin?

Mark chewed his pen, scratched his head, held the pen in his hand, frowned - and then, as if inspiration had struck like a thunderbolt, wrote:

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

It was a start. He looked at it; smiled; went indoors to fetch a glass of wine, then returned and wrote the next few lines:

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah ...

Matthew, who may have had a copy of Mark in front of him when he wrote his gospel, chose a different tack for his opening sentence:

An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

It's not exactly attention grabbing, unless you are addicted to Family History, but at least it got Matthew started. Luke began his gospel in a much more orotund, portentous way:

Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us ...

It signals importance but, for my taste, is a touch grandiose. And then there's John:

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Superb, poetic - just right for a reading at a 'Nine Lessons and Carols'.

What each of those writers was trying to do, each in their own distinctive way, was to 'locate' Jesus - trying to make sense of who he was. Mark stated it clearly: Jesus was 'the Son of God'; Matthew, with his genealogy, saw Jesus as in direct line of descent from David and Abraham; Luke had stories of angels and prophecies, of heaven coming to earth; and John located Jesus in the very being, the wisdom, of God.

It may seem rather odd to open a final sermon with all this stuff about beginnings, but all I am doing is reflecting what is true for all of us when endings loom: that is, we each think back to beginnings. When babies are born there's a sudden interest in family trees. When a child starts school, we recall our own shy and hesitant steps. When we move house, we recall the house where we grew up.

I remember vividly my beginnings here at St Albans: coming to Abbey Gate House for the very first time and walking down what seemed an endless corridor, knowing that behind the door there lurked the senior staff team - people I had never met before but who rapidly became my close colleagues and dear friends. And then, the more formal beginning, waiting on my own in Abbey Gate House on the day of my enthronement, watching queues of people waiting to get in to the Abbey; and then that long walk, led by a virger, up Abbey Mill Lane, across the orchard to the west doors - and there you all were ... amazing.

Beginnings, by the grace and love of God are full of promise, full of potential. And why? Because in each new beginning there is our Lord Jesus Christ, waiting ... waiting with love and gentleness and power to lead each one of us forward, into possibilities, into new life itself. 'I came,' said our Lord, 'that they might have life and have it in all its fullness.'

But if beginnings are a challenge, yet also filled with promise, so also are endings - and writing endings is as great a problem as writing beginnings. John, having begun his gospel with such a brilliant sentence, ends with one worthy of a schoolboy rushing to complete his homework:

But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

You can almost hear the sigh; and the chair being pushed back and the pen clattering onto the desk.

Luke had a more well crafted conclusion:

The he [Jesus] led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

Matthew, having begun his gospel so unimaginatively, ends it with a great and triumphant flourish:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Mark closes his gospel in a curiously enigmatic fashion and ever since scholars have argued about whether or not it was deliberate:

So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

What each of those endings have in common, is an attempt to locate Jesus, not in where he had come from but in where he was leading us to. Well, when Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote their final sentences and put their pens down - they did so, like all writers and artists, with a sense of relief, but also with a sense of sadness. And what is true for writers and artists, is true for all of us facing endings: a sense of relief (perhaps), but also a sense of genuine sadness. Think of that time of leaving new-made friends whom you met on holiday when you were a child and you would not see them again. Think of that time of leaving school - relief and sadness in equal measure? Think of friends or family emigrating - no relief, but acute, heart-stabbing sadness. Think of all those kinds of endings - and then think of the ending brought by death, when for those left behind the sadness is so acute, so overwhelming, the entire landscape seems to lose all sense of colour, all sense of shape.

You will not be surprised to know that whilst there is, if I am honest, a sense of relief at being able to lay down the burdens of office, the sense of loss is immense. All of you, whom we have come to know and love ... well, the loss is huge - and yet ... and yet ... and yet, what I also know is that Christ is not only deeply present in all beginnings, he is also deeply present in endings, whether those be the tiny endings of temporary goodbyes or those heart-wrenching endings of death. Christ is there, right in the midst of them.

But life is not simply linear. We do not move straightforwardly from beginnings to endings. En route there are all kinds of criss-crossings of time and place. Let me give two examples. Last Sunday, coming out of the Abbey after another wonderful service, a man come up close behind me. I turned - and came face to face with a teaching colleague I had known in Hereford when I was a curate forty years ago. The joy of seeing him and his wife was great. Then, a few days ago I was having a meal with a priest in this diocese in a restaurant, when suddenly, from across the room, I heard a young woman call my name. I knew her and her mother when she was a child in my parish, over twenty-five years ago - and that, too, was a meeting of real joy. Inside these meetings I sense, if only for a split second, the presence of Christ, of heaven breaking in, of time stopping, of the closeness of eternity.

So, there are beginnings and endings, and criss-crossings of time and place - and in each of them, the presence, the beauty and the mystery of Christ.

It is our faith and our experience that, in the sacraments, the eternal self-giving of Christ breaks through into time. It is our faith and our experience that in prayer, in relationships, in scripture and in silence, the Spirit breaks through into time. It is our faith and our experience that God the Father holds all things together - all beginnings, all endings, all of those criss-crossings - and in His mercy gives us through them a glimpse of a glory to come.

So, thank you for all the beginnings and endings and criss-crossings we have shared, for they have been, and are, part of the love of God. And now, with you, I look forward with confidence to the future, knowing that for all of us there are more disclosures of God to come, and knowing also that, through Christ in eternity, all those glimpses of God we have had in this life will come together into a moment of absolute beauty, the vision of God Himself ... and then, with the saints and with all the company of heaven, we shall sing together our alleluias.

So, thank you, my friends in Christ, for all the beginnings and endings which we have shared. The prayer of Dag Hammarskjöld says it all:

Lord,

for what has been, thanks;

to all that shall be, yes.

© Christopher William Herbert, 2008