The Waking Dreamer: Future

Showing posts with label Future. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 03, 2024

The Hopes and Fears of All the Years

The Hopes of All the Years

Luke 21:25-33[1]

As we begin the celebration of the Advent season, I think it may be helpful for us to remind ourselves what it’s about. In the original church tradition, Advent was meant to be a time of reflection in preparation for the celebration of the “Twelve Days of Christmas” from December 25 to January 6. The idea was that we prepare to celebrate the “coming of the Lord” by waiting quietly and patiently for Christmas to come. Lighting the candles on the advent wreath, and even using advent calendars, have been traditional ways to practice this “waiting.” Of course, these days the Advent season is filled with all kinds of celebrations of Christmas, which in our minds is over on December 26. Some people who are sticklers for liturgical correctness complain about this every year. I used to do some of that complaining myself. I’d like to think I’ve mellowed from being such a liturgical stickler!

If we think about the focus of the four Sundays in Advent: hope, peace, love, and joy, then maybe the way we “celebrate” Advent isn’t all that far off from the original intent. As we approach the end of the year, many of us may focus on the hopes we may have for the coming year. While the busy-ness of the season may make it not so peaceful to some of us, it is a time when we think about peace in our world: peace between countries, peace between different factions in our country, peace with those who may have anything against us, peace between family members. Advent is a time when we sing songs that tend to remind us of the love that we have in our lives, and the love that God has given us. It’s a time when we may go out of our way to be loving toward our friends and family. And as we seek to practice the kindness and giving associated with the season, it all reminds us of the joy we have in our lives.

I realize that much of that may not hold true for some of us. This may be a time for many of us when our hopes have dimmed and faded. We may struggle to hold onto our hope in the face of all that life continues to throw our way. Some of us may have had a difficult year, and we may simply feel weary from all the losses and disappointments we’ve had to bear. Or maybe this year hasn’t been that kind of year for some of us, but you’ve had years like that in the past. All of it can make “hope” seem like a flimsy thing to use to get through difficult times. Our past experiences may make the songs of hope we sing in this season sound hollow to some of us. So, on this first Sunday of Advent, when we celebrate the hope that the birth of Jesus represents for us, we may be wondering what good hope can do for us.

Especially in the uncertain times we live in, most of us would probably choose safety and stability over hope. As much as we may be looking forward to new things in our lives, we like to know that tomorrow will be, in all essentials, basically the same as today. We rely on the stability of the routines that make our lives familiar. But our experience of recent years may have left us wondering whether anything in our lives is really stable or secure. That’s a question that’s more than unsettling; if we’re honest, we have to admit it’s downright scary! Again, it can leave us wondering what good “hope” can do for us.

In our Gospel lesson for today Jesus addressed this question, but in a way that might seem to be coming through the back door. He was answering the questions his disciples had about the uncertainty of his times. But he did so in a way that they may have found less than reassuring. The setting of our lesson is the final week of Jesus’ ministry. What we should understand is that the political situation in Judea was unstable and even chaotic. Although the Romans maintained control through their powerful armies, there was a constant undercurrent of resentment and even rebellion among the Jewish people. All of this would boil over into an all-out war within a few decades, and the result would be Jerusalem destroyed and with it, the Jewish nation.

I think Jesus’ disciples must have been aware of what was going on. Tjhey must have sensed the tension in the air. As they were walking through the Temple, the most magnificent structure in Jerusalem in that day, I would imagine they saw the strength of the structure as a reassurance of God’s presence among them. To them it may have been a kind of promise that whatever the future may hold, God would be with them. But Jesus told them that not one of the massive stones that made up the Temple complex would be left on one another. They asked him to tell them the “signs” as a way of making the stress of an uncertain future more “manageable.” But Jesus didn’t give them any signs to reassure them.

Instead, he told them that the world in which they lived would continue to be as uncertain and as unpredictable as ever. If they wanted reassurance, they would have to look beyond the structures they had come to rely on. They would have to reclaim their hope in God. It may seem like a strange response on Jesus’ part. But I think Jesus was pointing them to something beyond what they felt they could “manage.” He pointed them beyond the safety and stability they had come to rely on in their daily lives. He reminded them that none of those things are ultimately reliable. Rather, he reminded them that God, the promises God had made, and the hope all that creates for us, are the only things we can truly rely on in this life. As Jesus told them, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Lk 21:33).

That brings us back to the hope of Advent. In our worship today, we sang the verse from the hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem” that said “the hopes and fears of all the years” were “met” in that village on the night of Jesus’ birth. I think we can easily imagine the “hopes of all the years” fulfilled in Jesus’ birth, but what about the “fears”? I’m no specialist in the history of hymns, but I would think that the idea is that the birth of Jesus relieves the “fears of all the years.” The hope that Jesus brought into this world is one that helps us overcome all our fears, especially in uncertain times. It’s the hope that God’s love for us never fails, and that’s something we can rely on when everything else around us does fail. It’s the hope that God’s promises stand forever, and that God will not stop working in this world until every promise has been fulfilled. Most of us pin our hopes on some part of our lives here and now that we want to continue just as it is. But life is always changing. It is the hope we have in God through Jesus our Savior that we can rely on through all the years. That hope remains; that hope will not pass away; that hope will see us through this year, and all the years of our lives!

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

We Shall Be Like Him

1 John 3:1-2[1]

I’ve mentioned before that one of the symptoms of the changes that are reshaping our society is that it’s hard to know whom you can trust. While I genuinely and wholeheartedly believe that there is plenty of goodness and beauty in our world if we have the eyes to see it, I also recognize that there is a lot of pain and fear as well. As much as it is true that we all have so much to be grateful for in this life, we also all have our share in the pain and brokenness of our world. Despite all appearances, especially in the beautiful family pictures on social media that make us think that everyone else has the perfect life, the reality is that life takes unexpected and unwelcome turns for us all. And when that happens, most of us find ourselves asking the question of God, “Why did this have to happen to me?”

Part of the problem is that we may look for our sense of safety from people who aren’t really able to provide it. Some of us may have felt betrayed by the person we love most in the world, whether a parent or child, a spouse or a friend. That kind of betrayal can leave us wondering if we can trust anyone or anything, even God! Some of us may have committed our lives to a career, even given our best years to it, only to find that the choices of others or circumstances beyond our control leave us empty-handed. Some of us have had our health go from something we took for granted to something that feels like it’s hanging by a thread. In these and many other ways, our experiences in life can leave us wondering if we can trust anyone or anything. Even God.

We come to faith drawn by the wonderful good news that God loves us and that Jesus lived and died and rose again to show us just how much that’s true. And in our best moments we know the peace and joy that promise holds for us, and we’re deeply grateful. But the way our lives may unfold has a way of taking a jolting turn at what can seem like the very worst possible time. Sometimes our faith is strong enough to carry us through. Sometimes, life’s sudden twists take all the supports out from under us. The shock of that jolt can leave us wondering where God is, or whether God loves us, or whether there even is a God at all. It shakes our faith to the core, and we may wonder if we can ever believe again.

I think our lesson from 1 John for today addresses this issue. The Elder John uses the resurrection of Jesus as a basis for reminding us that, no matter what may happen to us, God is always faithful. In a very real sense, that was also one of the main lessons of Jesus’ resurrection. Despite all appearances that his death somehow invalidated all that he said and did—as the crowds pointed out by shouting, “he saved others, let him save himself!”—the cross was not the end of Jesus’ faith in God and his life of faithful obedience to God. Death was not the final word for Jesus’ life and ministry. The final word was and is resurrection to new life. Part of the reason for that was to vindicate all that Jesus had said and done in his ministry. But part of the reason for the resurrection was to demonstrate definitively that God is always faithful. Always.

And so it is that our Scripture reading reminds us that our lives are all grounded firmly in the love of God, which has made us “children of God.” This is one of the themes of 1 John. God has not only demonstrated his love for us by what Jesus did, he also assures us of his love for us by the constant presence of his Spirit. In the face of any doubts we may harbor about whether or not we are truly beloved children of God, the Scripture emphasizes that we’re not just “called” God’s children, but that’s what we truly are. The basis for this confidence is the story of God’s love for the people of Israel in the Hebrew Bible. We may be used to thinking of it as a story of an angry God punishing a wayward people. But I think we would do better to see it as the story of a loving father who never gives up on his stubbornly defiant children. Through it all, God is always faithful to them. Always!

Our scripture lesson takes it a step further, however. As the author puts it, “we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is” (1 John 3:2, NLT) While there’s a lot going on in that statement, I would say that the point of it is to assure us that just as God demonstrated his faithfulness to Jesus by raising him from the dead, so the promise that we will share the resurrection life of Jesus is the promise that God will be faithful to us as well. Just as death was not God’s last word for Jesus, so it is for us as well. Neither will any of the pain or fear or disappointment or despair or emptiness we may have to deal with in our lives.

God’s last word for us is life. And God’s final act of faithfulness will be to bring us face-to-face with Jesus so that we see him “as he really is.” What’s more, the promise is that when we stand before the risen Lord Jesus, “we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is” (1 John 3:2, NLT)! I find it interesting that the Elder John says we don’t know exactly what that will look like. But the idea is that Jesus’ resurrection gives us at least a clue. In fact, another main theme of Easter is that very real nature of Jesus’ resurrection gives us something of an indication about what to expect about our future with God. As the Scripture says, we will be like Jesus. The promise of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that we too will be resurrected to a new life, and when that happens, we will all be changed so that we are “like him.” And the point of it all is that God is always faithful. And he will continue to show us his faithfulness all the way to our eternal life in his loving presence.

Sometimes the way our lives unfold can make us question whether we can trust even God. The path gets dark and difficult, and we may wonder whether it will always be that way. But the promise of the resurrection is that God’s last word is never death, but life.[2] I like the way Henri Nouwen frames it: “Through the resurrection, God has said to Jesus, ‘You are indeed my beloved Son, and my love is everlasting,’ and to us God has said, ‘You are indeed my beloved children, and my love is everlasting.’”[3] That first Easter is a promise that we can trust God to be faithful to love us all the way through everything in this life until we are standing face-to-face with Jesus, when we shall be like him.

[2] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2.2:29: “God Himself in His freedom has decided that [man] shall stand, that he shall be saved and not lost, that he shall live and not die.”

[3] Henri J. M. Nouwen, God’s Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring, 100-101. He adds that “The resurrection is God’s way of revealing to us that nothing that belongs to God … will [ever] get lost … . The resurrection doesn’t answer any of our curious questions about life after death, … . But it does reveal to us that, indeed love is stronger than death.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer is known for saying something similar: the promise of final resurrection is the promise that “nothing is lost, that everything is taken up in Christ” and restored “as God originally intended for it to be.” Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 170

Monday, November 07, 2022

The God of Life

Luke 20:27-38[1]

Life has a funny way of teaching us the lessons we need to learn. As much as we may try to deny it, one of life’s basic lessons is that, as William Faulkner is famously quoted, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” All of us live our whole lives under the influence of our experiences. We can either make peace with our past, accept it for what it was, and move forward with our lives. Or we can try to ignore our past, making an effort to forget the memories that can come back to haunt us. But whatever we try to suppress festers to the point that it exerts even more power over us. And when it does come out, it’s usually quite ugly.

While it’s true that we can never escape our past experiences, I don’t believe for a second that we are trapped by them. If that were the case, there wouldn’t be much point in living. Then Benjamin Franklin was right when he said, “in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” That kind of outlook is common, but it’s a prescription for a pretty hopeless view of life. From this perspective, death has the final word on everything. And that means that the human family is hopelessly trapped in the vicious circles of selfishness, hatred, poverty, violence, injustice, and despair. All that’s left is just to resign ourselves that “Life is useless, all useless,” as the “preacher” of Ecclesiastes says (Eccl 1:2, TEV). There’s not much room in that outlook for faith or hope or love.

In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus was responding in part to this kind of pessimism about life. He had been answering questions from various groups of Jewish leaders, each one intent on embarrassing him in front of the people. One question posed came from the Sadducees. They were the ruling priests who controlled the Temple. They were also the ones who cooperated with the Roman empire. And they were not above bribing the Roman governor for the privilege of serving as the chief religious leaders of the Jewish people.

As Luke tells us, the Sadducees didn’t believe in “resurrection.” They lived in a closed system, and they weren’t open to the idea that there could be anything more to life than what they already knew. The Sadducees came to Jesus and asked him about the practice of a man marrying his brother’s widow. Moses had told them to do this so that the first child would be the descendant of the dead brother, to ensure that his name would continue to live on through his offspring. This was the Sadducee’s view of “resurrection”: people “live on” through their children. Their question to Jesus was about seven brothers who in turn married the same woman. They asked him, “In the resurrection … whose wife will the woman be?” (Lk. 20:33). I don’t think they were really looking for an answer. They were just trying to make the idea of a “resurrection” look ridiculous. And Jesus with it.

But Jesus “corrected” them by recalling the time when Moses met God at the burning bush. There, God spoke of himself as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exod. 3:6). When Moses had this encounter, the patriarchs had been dead for centuries. Jesus drew the inference that this proves that the dead are raised, for he said that God is “God not of the dead, but of the living” (Lk. 20:38). Jesus went on to explain that in the next life there would be no need for ways to ensure that a dead man had descendants, because they would all be “children of the resurrection,” no longer subject to death (Lk. 20:35-36). In other words, their question was irrelevant.

I think one of the most important points Jesus was trying to make here is that you cannot limit God’s work to the past. If God is the God of life, he is also the God of the living. And that means that our future is not one that’s defined by death, but rather by life. God’s work in the world is based on promises that point toward a future with hope and life. Promises like “I will wipe away every tear,” and “they will beat their swords into ploughshares,” and “I am making everything new.” The Christian faith is at heart the hope that God has begun to do just that through Jesus Christ. Our faith insists that from God’s perspective, the final word that defines us all is not death, but life.

I think that how we choose to look at all of this makes a great difference in our attitude toward stewardship. As I mentioned last week, in the Reformed tradition we believe that stewardship is not just about money, but it’s about seeing our lives as a gift from God to be invested for the sake of the Kingdom. If we choose to live within a closed system and assume that there’s only so much to go around, we’re probably not going to be willing to take much risk when it comes to our money or our lives. But if we can look at things from the perspective of God’s open future, a future in which life is the final word rather than death, then perhaps maybe we can step out in faith. If we can see the future as one in which our “labor in the Lord” is “not in vain” but rather makes an important contribution to advancing God’s purposes in our community and our world, it puts our stewardship in a whole different perspective.

We all have the choice: we can live as if the past overrules any hope for the future, and death ultimately makes life “useless.” If we choose to assume that our best is back there in the past—which means it’s gone—I doubt that we’re going to be interested in going out of our way to invest anything for God’s Kingdom. But if we choose to live based on the faith that the “God of life” is at work around and among us to make everything new, then maybe we can have the courage to stake our lives on God’s promises. When we embrace God’s vision for the future, perhaps we’ll begin to realize that we have no idea what God can or cannot do in our lives, in this congregation, and in this community!

The next step is to put our faith into practice every day through prayer, giving back what we’ve been given, helping those in need, inviting others to join us, promoting community, studying the Bible together, and joining together for worship on the Lord’s Day. When we invest our lives for the sake of the kingdom of God, it’s a big vision we’re taking on. None of us can do it alone. It will take all of us doing all we can together in a spirit of humble prayer, asking the “God of life” who is the source for everything we have to send us what we need. More than that, it will take God himself working in and through us, whose last word is not death but life!

[1] ©2022 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 11/6/2022 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.For a video recording of this sermon, check out my Pastor Alan YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/JSjQzIxI7HE

Monday, October 31, 2022

The Vision Will Surely Come

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-5; Luke 19:1-10[1]

One of the challenges facing the church today is that we live in a marketplace that is filled with very different perspectives on life. I mentioned last week that we all search for meaning, purpose, and a sense of belonging in our lives. But the fact that there are so many different options for finding that sense of meaning, purpose, and belonging makes our choices all the more complicated. We no longer live in a time when everyone shares a common vision for what life is about. It’s hard to find a way to figure out how the church can be relevant to people searching for meaning in life when the very definitions have changed so dramatically. All of that means that it’s not so easy for people to find meaning, purpose, and belonging in our world.

Part of the reason for this is there are so many different versions of what it looks like. Some people are just trying to make ends meet, hoping not to run out of paycheck before they run out of month. Others are hoping to make a mark in this world, to ensure that people remember their name for their great achievements. Some want nothing more than to raise a family that’s healthy and happy, and they devote most of their time and energy toward achieving that goal. Others are simply fighting like crazy to fend off the boredom or the loneliness that threatens to engulf them most days. Some people are trying to juggle multiple options for making sense out of life, because they’re afraid of putting all their eggs in one basket. It’s all quite a bit more than confusing.

In our lesson from Habakkuk for today, the prophet was trying to figure out the meaning of what was happening in his world as well. His problem was that Israel and Judah were being effectively dismantled by powerful empires like the Assyrians and the Babylonians. What troubled him is that this was a judgment from God. The Assyrians and Babylonians were some of the most violent people in the world of that day. It didn’t make any sense to Habakkuk that God was using such violent and ungodly people to carry out his judgment. So Habakkuk questions God’s fairness and then basically decides to watch and wait to see how God would answer.

God’s answer to Habakkuk is that even though it might seem like the events around him invalidated his faith in God as well as his hope for any future for his people, God did indeed have a future in store for them. It might not look like exactly like what Habakkuk expected, but that didn’t mean there was nothing left to hope for. God’s vision for what he planned to do in this world was still very real, and his message to Habakkuk was to write the vision so plainly that it could be read at a glance and carried by runners to all who needed to hear it. And the reason for this was the promise that “This vision is for a future time. It describes the end, and it will be fulfilled. If it seems slow in coming, wait patiently, for it will surely take place” (Hab 2:3, NLT). In spite of the people’s continual unfaithfulness to God, God would remain faithful to them.

As we’ve been working through Luke’s Gospel this year, we’ve seen a unique perspective on the vision of the kingdom of God. It started with Jesus’ announcement at the synagogue in Nazareth that the promise of Isaiah had been fulfilled: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free” (Lk. 4:18). In our Gospel lesson for today, we see that God’s “salvation” is extended even to Zacchaeus, who was one of the most despised of the despised. In fact, Zacchaeus was so despised that all who witnessed his encounter with Jesus “grumbled” about it. In Luke’s Gospel, this includes not only the crowds but perhaps also the disciples themselves!

The point of this story is that it’s a kind of “finale” to all that Luke wants to convey to us about Jesus and the kingdom of God. Luke’s story of Jesus began with the promise that the poor, the blind, and the captives were all included in God’s salvation. As Jesus’ ministry progresses, we find that the despised are included as well—Samaritans, tax collectors, and all who were considered “unclean” for any reason. Jesus encounters misfits and outcasts, those whom both society and religion had rejected as “unworthy,” and he embraces every one of them with the love of God that never fails. And in our lesson for today, we learn that this was all intentional: Jesus as the “Son of Man” came “to seek out and to save” every one of them (Lk. 19:10), especially the least and the last and the left out.

Trying to be the church in our world gets harder every year. There are so many different versions of “a meaningful life” that compete with the message of the gospel. It’s hard for the church to stay relevant when the meaning of the word “relevance” keeps changing! And as our traditional measures for how well the church is doing in our world continue to diminish before our eyes, all of this can create a crisis for us as well. Some may find it too discouraging to keep on trying. Some may think they have to go out and find a “better” church somewhere. Some may wonder whether supporting this or any other church is throwing away good money for a lost cause. But the vision of the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed and enacted in the lives of people like Zacchaeus is still just as real as ever.

As we approach our stewardship campaign, some of you may be asking whether God has a future for this church. I would answer with the words that God gave to Habakkuk: God does indeed have a vision for the future of this church, and “if it seems slow in coming, wait patiently, for it will surely take place.” God’s vision for this church may not look like what we expect, but it is real nevertheless. It’s the vision of the kingdom of God that brings salvation to all who would trust in Jesus, including the poor, the blind, and the captives; including the despised people of our world; and including especially the least and the last and the left out. That’s what motivates me to give as much as I can to support the work of this church and of the larger church in the world. This vision gives meaning and purpose to what we do, and I believe it will surely come in God’s time.

[1] ©2022 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 10/30/2022 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.For a video recording of this sermon, check out my Pastor Alan YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/XU-xHhcPxYg

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

People of the Future

Luke 20:27-38[1]

We are creatures whose lives are defined to a significant extent by time. That is a fact of life. We all have a past, and we have to find a way to be able to accept the past we have, not the past we’d like to have. We also have to find a way to live in the present, because we really don’t have any other time in which to truly live. At the same time, we need some sense of hope for the future. Having hope gives us direction in life. All three—past, present, and future, define our lives, and we have to find a healthy way of relating to them.

These days, it would seem that many people try to ignore the past and the future. There is such a strong emphasis on staying in the present moment, it would seem that we want to act as if the past and the future don’t really matter. While I agree that staying in the present moment is a good way to live, that doesn’t somehow magically make our past disappear. Nor does it erase the fact that we need a positive sense of the future in order to be able to live fully in the present. Without hope for the future, perhaps the skeptics are right: in the words of Lord Macbeth, life is “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”^{^[2]} If this is true, death is the true reality of life, and there is no hope for any of us!

In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus was responding to this kind of pessimism about life. In the context, he had been answering questions from various groups of Jewish leaders, each one intent on embarrassing him in front of the people. The particular question posed in this setting came from the Sadducees. They the priests and high priests. Their base of power was the Temple. They were also the ones who primarily represented the Roman empire. And they were not above bribing the Roman governor for the privilege of serving as the High Priest, the chief religious leader of the Jewish people.

As Luke tells us, the Sadducees did not believe in “resurrection.” They believed that this life was all there is. They believed only what the past had to teach them through the books of Moses. And they used the books of Moses as rules that strictly defined what they would and would not believe in. In a very real sense, they were people without any sense of a future. They operated within a closed system, in which life was of necessity defined by the past. They were the guardians of the past, and they used their power to maintain their view as the final word on life in the present.

And so they came to Jesus and posed a question to him that they believed would embarrass him. It is a question about the practice of a man marrying his brother’s widow. The idea was that the first child would be the descendant of the dead brother, and that would ensure that he would continue to live on through his offspring. This was the Sadducee’s view of the future: they continued to live on through their children. But they posed a question to Jesus: suppose seven brothers in turn married the same woman. “In the resurrection … whose wife will the woman be?” (Lk. 20:33). I don’t think they were really looking for an answer. They simply posed the question in order to make the idea of a “resurrection” look ridiculous. And Jesus with it.

But Jesus “corrected” them, and he did so by quoting Moses right back at them. He recalled the instance where Moses met God at the burning bush. There, God spoke of himself as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exod. 3:6). When Moses had this encounter, the patriarchs had been dead for centuries. Jesus drew the inference that this proves that the dead are raised, for he said that God is “God not of the dead, but of the living” (Lk. 20:38). In light of that fundamental truth about God, Jesus went on to explain that in the next life there would be no need for practices designed to ensure descendants for a dead man, because they would all be “children of the resurrection,” no longer subject to death (Lk. 20:35-36). In other words, their question was irrelevant.

I think one of the most important points Jesus was trying to make here is that you cannot limit God’s work to the past. If God is the God of life, he is also the God of the living. And that means that our future is not one that is defined by death, but rather by life. God does not operate within a closed system, but rather he is at work creating his Kingdom, which is “everlasting kingdom” that “endures throughout all generations” (Ps. 145:13). This kingdom where life and peace and justice and freedom reign is the future toward which God is working, and it is already here pointing us to our true future. When we align our lives with God’s truth, we become people of the future.

I think that how we choose to look at all this can makes a profound difference in our attitude toward stewardship. If we think that our best is back there somewhere in the past, I doubt that we’re going to be interesting in risking anything for God’s Kingdom. But if we can live our lives on the basis of the faith that the “God of the living” is continually at work around us and among us to make everything new, then maybe we can have the courage to stake our lives on God’s future. From that perspective, we have no idea what God can do in and through our lives, in and through this congregation, and in and through this community. When we embrace God’s future as our own, we can not only live more fully in the present moment, but we can also invest ourselves in what God will accomplish through us. Then we truly become people of the future.

[2] William Shakespeare, “Macbeth,” Act 5, Scene 5.

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Plans

Psalm 145:1-10; Jeremiah 23:1-6[1]

Over the course of the last 40 years, I’ve taken a number of personality inventories. It’s something that most denominations require pastoral candidates to do. I guess some folks must think pastors may be “crazy.” Imagine that! If you’ve ever taken personality inventories, you know that they measure things like whether you like being around people, how you process information, and how you make decisions. One of them measures whether you like structure or whether you prefer to improvise. You will probably not be surprised to learn that I like structure. I’m a “planner.” I think I’ve shared with you the fact that, at the ripe age of 31, as a new Seminary professor I proceeded to plan the next 30 years of my career. Needless to say, my life didn’t unfold “according to plan.”

If we’re honest about it, I think most of us would have to admit that our plans for our lives don’t turn out the way we envision them when we are young. I think it’s just a fact of life: we mortal beings predict the future rather poorly. And yet, we make our plans. That’s not a bad thing. I think the problem comes when we hold tightly to our plans as if our very lives depended on them. When that happens, we can behave in ways that aren’t very constructive: we can become tense, rigid, selfish, and even at times mean and bitter. Planning is a good thing, as long as we have the wisdom to hold our plans loosely.

The people of Judah whom the prophet Jeremiah addressed were definitely not living out their lives “according to plan.” They had been torn away from their homes, uprooted from their land, and forced to live in the last place on earth they wanted to be—Babylon, modern day Iraq. The temple in Jerusalem lay in ruins, and with it, their faith that God would never let an enemy army destroy them. I would imagine they felt their lives were over.

It’s not that Jeremiah didn’t warn them. Like other prophets of his time, Jeremiah confronted the people of Judah with the fact that they had been “faithless” (Jer. 3:12) toward God. They had given themselves over to the worship of false gods. They had broken the covenant with God with their blatant disobedience. In spite of that, they assured themselves that they were safe because they believed that Temple and the throne of David would protect them (Jer. 7:4).

In our lesson from Jeremiah for today, the prophet lays much of the blame at the feet of the “shepherds” of the Lord’s people. In other words, the leaders: both the religious and political leaders, both priests and kings. In this, Jeremiah reflected a theme that is found in the books of Kings and Chronicles: as the leaders went, so went the people. When the leaders did what was right in the sight of the Lord, the people did also, and all was well. When the leaders did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, so did the people, to their mutual ruin. Of course, life isn’t always that cut and dried. But in the case of Judah, Jeremiah made it clear that the “shepherds” were the ones responsible for scattering the flock and driving them away into exile.

Despite the seemingly hopeless situation, the Lord promised through Jeremiah that he would gather them from the foreign land and bring them back. He would raise up leaders who would truly shepherd the people. And most importantly, he would raise up a king who would practice righteousness, and bring safety to both Judah and Israel. In another chapter, the Lord promises through Jeremiah that “surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jer. 29:11). Although their lives had not gone according to their plan, the prophet Jeremiah assured them that God still had plans for them.

And yet, the fact of the matter was that they were going to have to live out their lives in exile, far away from anything they knew to be “home.” The people who had been taken captive to Babylon would not live to see the return to their own land. That’s why Jeremiah gave them some very practical advice. Instead of wasting their lives in grief over broken dreams and unfulfilled hopes, he instructed them to build homes, get married, and have children, and to see that their children built homes, got married and had children (Jer. 29:5-6). The lives they had may not have looked much like their plans, but they could still find meaning and purpose in the lives they were given.

Our confession of faith today affirms that there is nothing that can happen to us that “God does not bend finally to the good.” I would imagine that plenty of us have been through experiences that make that hard to swallow, let alone believe. When that happens, I think we need more than just the shallow comfort that “it’s for the best,” or “it’s God’s will.” We need to know that God will not abandon us, and our lives still have meaning.

When all of our plans have been thwarted, we need a way to hold on to the confidence that God truly is the one who “keeps faith forever.” We need something to reassure us those words mean something real to us right here and now. The real challenge when it seems that all is lost is how to see that our lives still have meaning and purpose. We need the courage to hold onto the faith that, even when our plans fail, God promises to fulfill “plans for our welfare …, to give us a future with hope.”

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Next Generation

Psalm 78:1-7[1]

There was a time when “new and improved” was the marketing slogan that would move products off the shelf. Of course, over time, it got used so much that we began to ignore it altogether. “New and improved” was just a part of the packaging. Different times bring different slogans. For a while “Next Generation” was the ticket for selling a new product. I’m not sure many of us even knew what “next generation” meant, but it seemed to convince us that we needed to “upgrade”—or at least it made us want to! I think we’re already getting to the point where “next generation” is losing its punch. There have been too many “next generation” devices that just didn’t perform well enough to justify the expense!

One arena in which “next generation” still seems to have some selling power is in the church. In fact, there is focus group of Presbyterians calling themselves “NEXT church” that has been working to to promote church renewal since 2010. Their goal is to answer the questions, “What’s next for the church? What’s the spirit calling us to? How do we be the church of Jesus Christ in the 21st century?”^{^[2]} It would seem that there are enough people trying to find answers to those questions that there is sustained interest in what NEXT Church might offer.

Our lesson from the Psalms for today addresses this question quite explicitly. In fact, the practice of teaching the “wonders” God has done to the next generation is something that the psalmist recalls as a command to be obeyed. The purpose of this command is fairly straightforward: “so that they should set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments” (Ps. 78:7). In this context, it would seem that the answer to the questions posed by various renewal groups is clear: if you want the next generation of the church to thrive, make sure to keep telling the story of what God has done. And do it in a way that is compelling so that they will “set their hope in God.”

Unfortunately, if we were to read the rest of the Psalm, we would hear from Israel’s history that telling the story of God’s wonders doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the next generation will actually “set their hope in God.” In fact, time after time, those who actually witnessed firsthand God’s “wonders” turned away from faith. The psalmist says that they “forgot” what God had done (Ps. 78:11). They “had no faith in God, and did not trust his saving power” (78:22). Perhaps the psalmist gets to the heart of the problem by pointing out that “their heart was not steadfast toward him; they were not true to his covenant” (78:37). It is a sobering reminder that even those who witness God’s wonders may not “set their hope in God.” And it is a reminder that even the faithful retelling of God’s story does not guarantee that future generations will put their trust in God.^{^[3]}

In spite of a history of unbelief on the part of Israel, generations later, the psalmist continues the tradition of telling the story of God’s saving wonders so that future generations would trust in God. In fact, he envisions the effect of telling the story not only on the children of the present day. He believes that each generation has to the responsibility to recount God’s wonders “that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and rise up and tell them to their children” (78:6). It seems clear that that faithfully telling the story would affect a generation not yet born. And beyond that, continuing to tell the story would lead that future generation to pass it on to their children. Even though the psalmist is well aware that not all will embrace the story of God’s wonders with faith, he continues to tell the story nevertheless.

It seems to me that as each generation of the people of God faces new challenges and seeks new ways to be faithful to the gospel, this never changes. Telling the story of God’s saving wonders always has been and always will be vital to the life of the church.^{^[4]} While I remain interested in the ideas generated by movements like NEXT church as much as anyone else, I believe that a foundational part of the answer to the question of how we are to be the church of Jesus Christ in the 21^st century must include a commitment to telling the story of God’s wonders to coming generations.

As I mentioned last week, I would say if you are searching for a reason to motivate you to contribute to the work of Hickman Presbyterian Church, this is another place to start. While on the one hand I think we must entrust our children to God’s grace and love, we support the work of the church with our tithes, our time, and our talents to ensure that we are doing everything we possibly can to lead them to “set their hope in God.” We offer our service, our faithfulness, our telling of the story, as well as our contributions in order to plant the seeds of faith in the next generation.

[2] Gregg Brekke, “What’s next for NEXT Church?” Presbyterian News Service, September 9, 2016. Accessed at https://www.presbyterianmission.org/story/whats-next-next-church/ .

[3] Cf. J. Clinton McCann, Jr., “The Book of Psalms,” New Interpreters Bible IV:993.

[4] Cf. James L. Mays, Psalms, 256: “remembering and telling are essential to the existence of the people of God.”

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

New Sight, Fresh Vision

Habakkuk 2:1-4[1]

There are times in life when it seems like “God is in his heaven, and all’s right with the world.” In everything that really matters things just seem to line up. It all works smoothly and life makes sense. But there are other times when it can seem like everything has come unraveled. You find out you’ve been “downsized” at work. Or the diagnosis is a frightening one. Or no matter what you try, it seems like nothing goes right at home. In those difficult times of our lives, one of the challenges we may face is that our problems persist for so long that we begin to believe it will always be this way. We lose sight of hope, and just put one foot in front of the other to keep moving. Or we may be tempted to just shut down altogether.

Unfortunately, we are living in a time when church life can seem that way. Estimates on the number of churches that close each year range from five to ten thousand. The numbers of pastors who drop out of ministry aren’t much better. It’s no secret that it’s a difficult time to be the church, especially a neighborhood church with a particular identity like “Presbyterian.” When you look around and see dwindling congregations and younger families seemingly going elsewhere (or not at all), it can be pretty discouraging. It’s easy to lose sight of hope and wonder what future this or any other church has.

In our lesson from Habakkuk for today, he was dealing with a crisis of faith and hope as well.[2] It’s hard to know for sure, but it seems clear that Habakkuk carried out his prophetic ministry during the time when Israel and Judah were being effectively dismantled by powerful empires like the Assyrians and the Babylonians. By comparison, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were tiny and had little hope of fending off these ruthless invaders. We know from other sources that they tried to make an alliance with Egypt, the only other major world power of the day. But that didn’t protect them from being conquered and sent into exile.

One of Habakkuk’s problems was that he found it hard to reconcile the fact that this was a judgment from God. The reason this was a problem was that God was using the Babylonians, a people who were far more violent and unjust, to carry out this judgment. That didn’t make any sense to Habakkuk. He doesn’t come right out and say it, but it seems as if Habakkuk is disappointed with God because right and wrong appeared to have been turned upside down. From his perspective, what was happening meant that “judgment comes forth perverted” (Hab. 1:4). Later in the same chapter, Habakkuk asks God rather pointedly, “why do you look on the treacherous, and are silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they?” (Hab. 1:13). We might debate with him as to whether Judah was truly “more righteous,” but that’s the way he saw it, and because of that he had a serious problem with God.

So Habakkuk poses his question to God and then basically decides to watch and wait to see how God would answer his complaint. I find it interesting that Habakkuk doesn’t mince words here: he’s complaining about God’s justice and fairness and he knows it. That’s something we might think ought not be done, but Habakkuk was not the only prophet to complain to God. While we might be tempted to think of “complaining” to God as an act of unbelief, that’s not necessarily the case. If you think about it, it may take more faith in God to voice a serious complaint than to keep silent.

The interesting thing about Habakkuk is that God does indeed answer. Although there are other times and places in the Bible when God gently (or not so gently) chides the complainer, there’s nothing like that here. God simply gives Habakkuk an answer: “there is still a vision for the appointed time; …. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay” (Hab. 2:3). God’s answer to Habakkuk is that even though it seemed as if the events around him invalidated his faith in God as well as his hope for any future for his people, God did indeed have a future in store for them.[3] It might not look like what Habakkuk expected, but that didn’t mean there was nothing left to hope for.

In fact, although it’s not obvious on the surface of things, it would seem that part of God’s answer is that the proud and arrogant people who had conquered them would not last. In our lesson this comes as a hint: “their spirit is not right in them” (Hab. 2:4). In the next verse, it’s more straightforward: “the arrogant do not endure” (Hab. 2:5). Although the proud and arrogant seemed to have all the power at the time, God assures Habakkuk that their power would come to an end. And his people would indeed have a future.

At times when you look at our world it’s easy to become discouraged. It can seem like all the wrong people have all the power in our world, and they use it to their own advantage. With that in mind, many may say that the church has become irrelevant in our culture. But just as it was in that day, so now God still has a future for his people.[4] And the path to that future is found in our lesson as well: “the righteous live by their faith” (Hab. 2:4). Perhaps a better way to put it is that God’s people endure through their faithfulness to him and to the gospel of new life through Jesus Christ. That is the vision that has inspired generations of servants of God—right here in this church as well as elsewhere. And it’s that vision that continues to point us toward the future. As we gain new sight of this future, it can renew in us a fresh vision for our lives in the present.

[2] Cf. Ralph L. Smith, Micah–Malachi, 107: “Habakkuk, like all of us, was living ‘between the times,’ between the promise and the fulfillment. Habakkuk was to wait in faith for God to act.”

[3] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.3.2:913: “How much need faith has of hope may be seen from the innumerable temptations which assail and shake those who would cling to the Word of God, from the delay of God in the fulfilment of His promises (cf. Hab. 2:3), from the hiding of His face, from the aperta indignatio [revealed indignation] with which He can sometimes startle even His own people, from the scoffers who ask where is His coming, who argue that all things remain as they were, and who can so easily insinuate their doubts into ourselves and the world around (2 Pet. 3:4)!”

[4] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 85, where he reminds us that our hope is based on a promise, one which contains a fundamentally different view of reality, and in fact not only “announces the coming of a not yet existing reality” but also to some extent “goes beyond what is possible and impossible in the realistic sense” by anticipating the fulfillment of the promise already in the present. Cf. also similarly, Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 295.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Alpha and Omega

Revelation 1:1-8[1]

The central affirmation of Easter is that by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, God has once and for all vindicated him as Lord of all. But you and I live in a world in which we are surrounded by images and messages that contradict that central element of our faith. Between Hollywood and Washington, DC and Wall Street, the combined effect is to make it clear that Jesus is essentially irrelevant in our culture. The “lords” of our society are those with the most money, or the most power, or the strongest celebrity appeal. And they don’t typically promote the ideals that Jesus taught. The movies we watch, the athletes we cheer, the advertisements on TV, even the music we listen to proclaim the message that the survival of the strongest and the wealthiest and the most attractive is the true reality in our world.

It may be hard for us to recognize this because it has so thoroughly worked its way into the fabric of almost every aspect of our culture. If you ever find yourself in the Mall, compare the images of people that the stores use to sell their products with the actual people around you. There’s not much similarity. In fact, the “appearance” that our culture promotes couldn’t be further from who we are as a people. But we’ve gotten so used to seeing people with perfect teeth and hair and eyes and bodies trying to sell us everything from cars to clothes to prescriptions that we don’t even notice the subtle message that conveys to us: if you don’t look like this, or have this kind of wealth, you don’t really count.

This was the context into which the Book of Revelation was written. The Christian faith was definitely a minority in the Roman Empire. Christians would either rise before dawn or stay up late at night to worship Jesus as Lord. There was no such thing as a weekend or a Sabbath day in the Roman world. Every day was a work day. And as those believers made their way to homes to worship Jesus as Lord, all around them were images that proclaimed that Zeus was lord, or Caesar was Lord.[2] They, too, lived in a world that was dominated by images of the “powers that be” that contradicted the heart of their faith and the teachings to which they had devoted themselves, sometimes at great peril to their lives.

It is to that setting that the Book of Revelation was addressed. This unique part of the Bible was not written to enable the “fortune tellers” of our age to predict the coming of Christ or the end of the world. Rather it was written to the Christians of that day, living in a world that contradicted their faith.[3] One of the major purposes of this part of Scripture that so many of us avoid was to provide struggling believers with images of a different reality, a reality in which God is the one who rules over all things with “wisdom, power, and love.” Unfortunately, It’s easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees in the Book of Revelation. Much of the symbolism seems strange to us. But at the heart of the book is the message that, despite all appearances to the contrary, God’s rule is the true reality in this world, and one day God’s rule will be fulfilled as God completes the work of making all things new.[4]

In our lesson for today, the Scripture simply hints at this by referring to God as “the Alpha and the Omega,” the one “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”[5] As you may know, Alpha and Omega are the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet. So naming God as the “Alpha and the Omega” is another way of saying that God is “The First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” In other words, we can count on the God who created all things in the beginning to make all things new in the end.[6] It’s an affirmation that we along with millions of other Christians sing every Sunday morning: “as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, Amen! Amen!” The God who rules over this world will be the same God at the end of all things as he was at the beginning and is now: a God of infinite love.

The other affirmation in our lesson for today is that God is the “Almighty” one. This resonates with countless statements in the Hebrew Bible about the God who is the “Lord of hosts,” or the “Lord of the angel armies”.[7] The idea is very similar to another image in the book of Revelation: God is the one who “sits on the throne,” ruling over the whole universe.[8] The purpose for this is to make clear that that God is the one whose rule is ultimately true. Despite the fact that the Roman Empire proclaimed itself as the ultimate power in the world of that day, and even demanded worship of those under its influence, the book of Revelation insists that this is an illusion that will one day be swept away.[9] And, of course, Rome’s claim to power was indeed swept away centuries ago.

We live in a world that is dominated by those who make claims that can seem just as false as the claims Rome made in ancient times. In the face of those claims the Scripture reassured the Christians of that day that God is the one who would have the last word. I think the message of Revelation for us today is the same. It stands as a reminder that we too can trust that God will see to it that his will is done on earth as it is in heaven. That means all those who (falsely) claim to wield power over the world in the present time are only deluding themselves. Their power may seem very real here and now, but ultimately, just as God’s rule had the first word at creation, so will his rule have the last word in the end. As God was in the beginning, so he ever shall be: the Alpha and Omega.

[1] © 2016 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 4/3/2016 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE. An audio version of this sermon is available at http://www.hickmanpresbyterian.org/.

[2] Cf. Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation, 17: “Civic and religious architecture, iconography, statues, rituals and festivals, … all provided powerful visual impressions of Roman imperial power and the splendor of pagan religion. In this context, Revelation provides a set of Christian prophetic counter-images which impress on its readers a different vision of the world … . The visual power of the book effects a kind of purging of the Christian imagination, refurbishing it with alternative visions of how the world is and will be.” Cf. Craig R. Koester, Revelation, 132: “John’s message ran counter to the public rhetoric of the Roman era, which celebrated the peace and prosperity that the imperial rule had brought. According to the dominant discourse, Roman rule was invincible and benevolent.”

[3] Cf. M. Eugene Boring, Revelation, 40, where he argues that the point of apocalyptic documents like Revelation in the ancient world was not to answer the question “Will there be an end of the world?” but rather “Is God faithful?” He says that they “lived in impossible situations, … when children saw their parents imprisoned or killed because their faithfulness to their confession of Jesus as the only Lord made it impossible for them to yield to the imperial religion … .” In that situation the question was “how can one still believe in the faithfulness of God?” He continues, “It was the honor and integrity of God as God that was at stake, not just human selfish longing for golden streets and pearly gates.” Cf. Koester, Revelation, 132, where he reminds us that the setting was actually somewhat complex: “Readers who were overtly threatened would be aware of the challenges and needed encouragement to persevere, but those who were complacent or accommodating would not have sensed the problems. John would need to challenge them to see issues of which they were unaware, while calling for commitment that would set them at odds with the dominant social, religious, and economic patterns of the cities where they lived.”

[4] Cf. Bauckham, Theology of the Book of Revelation, 40: “The whole of Revelation could be regarded as a vision of the fulfillment of the first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Your name be hallowed, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt. 6:9-10). John and his readers lived in a world in which God’s name was not hallowed, his will was not done, and evil ruled through the oppression and exploitation of the Roman system of power. But in chapter 4, he sees in heaven, the sphere of ultimate reality, the absolute holiness, righteousness and sovereignty of God. From this vision of God’s name hallowed and God’s will done in heaven, it follows that his kingdom must come on earth.”

[5] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 1.2:53, where he points out, as many do, that “the one who is and who was and who is to come” is very likely an interpretation of the revelation of God’s name in Exod. 3:14; “I am who I am.” He says, “From the fact that God is He who exists and therefore is the Living One in the supreme sense and therefore the Almighty, it follows that He is not only this, but, as this, also He who was and He who cometh, Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. And vice versa, by the fact that He is the first and the last, it is indicated that He is truly He who is. the Living One, the Almighty.”

[6] Cf. Bauckham, Theology of the Book of Revelation, 27: “God precedes all things, as their Creator, and he will bring all things to eschatological fulfillment. He is the origin and goal of all history. He has the first word, in creation, and the last word, in new creation.” Cf. also Koester, Revelation, 220: “Revelation recalls texts that stress the singular lordship of Israel’s God: ‘I am the first and the last, there is no other god but me’ (Isa 44:6; cf. 41:4; 48:12).” Cf. further Jürgen Roloff, A Continental Commentary: The Revelation of John, 28: “the God to whom [John] bears witness is the living and historically active God.”

[7] Cf. Bauckham, Theology of the Book of Revelation, 30: the designations “The Lord, the God of hosts” and “the Lord of hosts” are used especially in the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible to indicate “Yahweh's unrivalled power over all things and therefore his supremacy over the course of historical events. … The Greek pantokrator (‘almighty’) indicates not so much God’s abstract omnipotence as his actual control over all things.” Cf. Koester, Revelation, 220: “Revelation, …, refers to God as pantokrator, ascribing to him power over all things. In Revelation God’s supreme might is expressed in his acts of creation, judgment, and righteous rule (Rev 1:8; 4:8; 18:8; 19:6; 21:22; 22:5-6).”

[8] Cf. Bauckham, Theology of the Book of Revelation, 31, where he emphasizes that the vision of God on the throne provides one of the major starting points for the whole book: “the vision of God’s sovereignty in heaven.” He continues (ibid.), saying that this “makes it possible for John to enlarge his readers’ perspective on their own situation by setting it within the broader context of God’s universal purpose of overcoming all opposition to his rule and establishing his kingdom in the world.” From the perspective of Revelation, God’s sovereign rule is “the true reality which must in the end also prevail on earth.” Cf. also Roloff, Revelation of John, 29: “whereas human rulers like to claim total dominion over the world and have themselves celebrated as rulers of history, …, in truth it is God alone to whom dominion over the world and history belongs.”

[9] Cf. Bauckham, Theology of the Book of Revelation, 34: “The Roman Empire, like most political powers in the ancient world, represented and propagated its power in religious terms. Its state religion, featuring worship both of the deified emperors and of the traditional gods of Rome, expressed political loyalty through religious worship. In this way it absolutized its power, claiming for itself the ultimate, divine sovereignty over the world.” By contrast (ibid, 35), Revelation sees the “the view of the Empire promoted by Roman propaganda” from “the perspective of heaven, which unmasks the pretensions of Rome. Revelation portrays the Roman Empire as a system of violent oppression, founded on conquest, maintained by violence and oppression. It is a system both of political tyranny and of economic exploitation.” Cf. also ibid, 39: “it was the Christian vision of the incomparable God, exalted above all worldly power, which relativized Roman power and exposed Rome’s pretensions to divinity as a dangerous delusion.”

Wednesday, May 06, 2015

Looking Beyond What We Can See

1 John 3:1-7[1]

We are, from my perpective, a forward-looking people. We’re continually looking toward what is going to happen. Of course, a healthy appreciation of our past is important for finding peace in life. And the ability to enjoy the present moment also contributes to our happiness. But essentially, it seems to me that we are constantly looking to what is coming up. We have planners and calendars and apps on our phones to keep us aware of what’s next. I think we can see this phenomenon when we take a trip we’ve never made before. Every stage of the journey is new. We’re always looking to see what’s around the bend. I think that’s the way many of us are in life. It’s almost like we’re all kids in the back seat of the car asking God, “are we there yet?”

I know that we can get so lost in looking forward that we can forget to enjoy today. But I think there is an inevitable aspect of life and even faith that points us toward the future. Unfortunately, for some of us, if we think the future holds only more of the same, it can leave us not feeling very enthusiastic about what’s around the bend, to say the least. Some of us may dread what’s coming if it’s just going to be the same song, another verse. But I think our problem here is that our sight is limited. We really have no idea what today will bring, let alone tomorrow. So we may need to look beyond what we can see if we want an adequate view of our future.

I think our lesson from 1 John for today addresses this issue for us. The Elder points us forward to a future that is far better than anything we can imagine based on our experience. The foundation for that future is the love of God, which has made us all “children of God.” In case there are any doubts about that, he emphasizes it by saying, “and that is what we are” (1 John 3:1).[2] On the basis of that present reality, the Elder then points us forward to our future. He says that when we stand before the risen Lord Jesus, “we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1 John 3:2)! I find it interesting that the Elder says we don’t know exactly what that looks like at this point.[3] But it seems to me he at least alludes to Jesus’ resurrection as a clue as to what our future looks like.

In fact, that’s one of the main themes of Easter in the Scriptures. The very real way the risen Jesus appeared to his disciples gives us something of an indication about what to expect about our future. As the Scripture says, we will be like him. The promise of the resurrection of Jesus the Christ is that we too will be resurrected to a new life, and when that happens, we will be like him.[4] But there’s more to the Easter promise than our own radical change. Believing in the resurrection of Jesus points us not only to our new life, but also to the renewal of all things in a whole new world! God has a lot more in store than just making it possible for the chosen few to “go to heaven when we die.” The promise of salvation is that God is working to restore all creation to the point where everything is “very good” once again. The Good news of the Gospel is this: “Now I am making the whole of creation new” (Rev. 21:3, The Jerusalem Bible).[5]

I don’t know about you, but I have to say that’s something to look forward to! It may seem outrageous at first glance, but it’s no more outrageous than believing in the resurrection of a crucified Messiah! As we celebrate that faith on this Third Sunday of Easter, it’s important to recognize that the resurrection is not simply something that happened a long time ago to Jesus of Nazareth. Easter points us a future in which God will restore everything that is and ever was to the way it was meant to be (Eph. 1:10; Col. 1:20). The resurrection opened the door to God’s new creation that is already breaking into this world and transforming us all.[6] One of our confessions puts it this way: “It is the will of God that his purpose for human life shall be fulfilled under the rule of Christ.”[7] And the promise is that God will not rest until the “whole of creation” is made new!

I realize that some of this may be difficult for us to take in. We are dealing with matters that are way beyond our normal life experience. In the face of the challenges life throws us it’s hard enough to hold onto our faith that Jesus was raised from the dead and is present with us here and now. But it may strain our imagination to believe the promise that Jesus’ resurrection points to whole new creation in which everything is restored, everything is set right, everything is made new. And yet, we really shouldn’t be surprised at this. There are many aspects of our faith that call us to look beyond what we can see.

The same is true with Easter: it challenges us to look to the hope and promise that Jesus’ resurrection points us toward. It goes beyond the hope that “my” eternal destiny will be secure. It even goes beyond the assurance that all those who identify with Christ by faith will be brought safely home to him. The resurrection of Jesus points us to a future in which we will all be radically changed so that we will “be like him” (1 John 3:2). But more than that, it points us to a future in which everything and everyone will be restored to the way we were meant to be.[8] The “whole of creation” will be made new. In order for this aspect of the Easter message to become a reality in our lives, I think we all are going to have to be open to looking beyond what we can see.

[2] The fact that the Elder says God has “called” us his children should not be interpreted as being true in name only, for the Elder says that believers truly are his children (cf. Raymond E. Brown, Epistles of John, 388 for other instances when “calling” and “being” coincide).

[3] Cf. D. Moody Smith, First, Second, and Third John, 78: “The uncertainty implied by our not knowing what we shall be (v. 2) is more than offset by the assurance that we are already (‘now’) God’s children. … the uncertainty leaves the believer in a state of hopeful expectation: ‘We shall see him as he is.’” He adds (p. 80), “For our time and our knowledge, the most important fact about the eschatological future is its Christocentricity. That is, what we shall be will be modeled after who Christ is, and even that can only be fully known when the time comes.” Cf. similarly, Stephen Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John, 145; and C. Clifton Black, “The First, Second, and Third Letters of John,” New Interpreters Bible XII: 409.

[4] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I.2.117: “If according to 1 Jn 3:2 we are now children of God because Jesus Christ the Son of God has had mercy on us and adopted us, we know that in his revelation to come our own being will be revealed. If we confess that Christ is risen and risen bodily, we must also confess to our own future resurrection. If for any reason we wish not to confess it, according to 1 Cor 15:13 this is tantamount to denying his resurrection also.”

[5] Cf. Emil Brunner, Eternal Hope, 60-61: “the life of the world to come is a present reality, but a hidden reality, waiting for the future disclosure … . … the fellowship of faith lives both in rejoicing over the newness of its experience and in longing and sure hope of that which is yet to come. … all genuine Christian faith is revolutionary existence. Above it stands as motto the apocalyptic word, “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21.5). … The true Christian revolution is essentially a consequence and an accomplishment of the fundamental revolution which God alone can accomplish.”

[6] Cf. N. T. Wright, Simply Christian, 92: “Christianity is about the belief that the living God, …, has accomplished all this—the finding, the saving, the giving of new life—in Jesus. He has done it. With Jesus, God’s rescue operation has been put into effect once and for all. A great door has swung open in the cosmos which can never again be shut. It’s the door to the prison where we’ve been kept chained up. We are offered freedom: freedom to experience God’s rescue for ourselves, to go through the open door and explore the new world to which we now have access. In particular, we are all invited—summoned, actually—to discover, through following Jesus, that this new world is indeed a place of justice, spirituality, relationship, and beauty, and that we are not only to enjoy it as such but to work at bringing it to birth on earth as in heaven.”

[7] Cf. The Book of Confessions, “The Confession of 1967,” 9.53 (p. 296): “God’s redeeming work in Jesus Christ embraces the whole of man’s life: social and cultural, economic and political, scientific and technological, individual and corporate. It includes man’s natural environment as exploited and despoiled by sin. It is the will of God that his purpose for human life shall be fulfilled under the rule of Christ and all evil be banished from his creation.”

[8] Because we have the hope of a new life in a new creation, we have the courage to carry out our mission in the present world. Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 337-38: “The expectation of the promised future of the kingdom of God which is coming to man and the world to set them right and create life, makes us ready to expend ourselves unrestrainedly and unreservedly in love and in the work of the reconciliation of the world with God and his future. …Faith can expend itself in the pain of love, … and assume the form of a servant, because it is upheld by the assurance of hope in the resurrection of the dead.”

The Waking Dreamer