Sermon: The Foreseeable Future, 5/24/20

Ps 68:1–10, 33–36; Acts 1:6–14; 1 Peter 4:12–14, 5:6–12; John 17:1–11

When the apostles had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’  Acts 1:6

At some point in the 1990s, I chanced upon a TV show called Early Edition.  It was a series in make-believe.  At the beginning of each episode, in a voice-over, the narrator of the showed posed the same question: What if you knew, beyond a doubt, what was going to happen tomorrow?”  In the program, the lead character Gary Hobson receives the Chicago Sun-Times delivered to his apartment door a day early, every day. Thanks to his special status, he knows the stocks, weather, sports, and accidents all before they occur. Gary Hobson is an honorable character so he uses the knowledge gained from his early edition newspaper for the good of others.

The show raises, however, some vital questions: Is it is a good thing to know what will happen in the future?  Do we really want the power to impose our wishes on others, even when it is for their good and they resist?  Should we be able to exercise power and deprive others of their right to individuality, an individuality noted in the Psalms and praised in our baptismal vows?  How would we deal with someone who, unlike the honorable character Gary Hobson, was bent on control and evil intent?

Do we really want to know the future?  Many people do.  The temptation to know the future, given what we experience in the present, especially in this particular present, 2020, would be too strong to resist.  Each day that we observe physical distancing and hunker down in our imposed bubble, I would hazard a guess that we desire to know the future.  When will the pandemic come to an end?  When will science gain the upper hand over distain for truth?  When will a vaccine be developed?  When shall our lives return to something more normal than sheltering in place?

The situation (the Babylonian Captivity of Israel) was different, but human nature did not prohibit the psalmist, in his day, from wanting to know the future: “How long, O Lord? Wilt thou be angry for ever? (Ps. 79: 5)  The psalmist engages not only in lamentation, but negotiation with God for a better and brighter future for Israel.

So, a TV show about knowing the future may be fairly new, but the desire to know what the future will bring is old as humankind.  Abraham and Sarah were assured, because of their faith in God, that the number of their offspring would be so great that no one could number them, that they would make a great nation.  The Hebrews, escaping from servitude in Egypt, went forth in the faith that they knew a land of milk and honey awaited them.

Immigrants have come, and still come, to the shore of the United States of America, because they envisage a better future than the present which they live.  Slaves brought involuntarily to this country attempted to escape, and many succeeded, because they could image a future free of chains.  Emancipated slaves and the poor migrated in previous centuries from east to west, from cotton fields and sharecrop farms of the south to the industrial north, because they could see in their mind’s eye a future that was better than the past.  The desire was there to know what the future held, but the knowledge of what exactly what was expected of them so that they might shape their behavior to attain that future, was not.  They relocated, not knowing what the future held.  Jesus responded: “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” (Acts 1:2)

The departure of Jesus, the Ascension, the removal of Jesus from the daily rounds of his disciples, cast his followers into a period of limbo, of psychological and emotional suspension.  If we moderns have empathy at all, we can most surely imagine the anxiety which that caused among this disciples, for no one likes to be thrust into the unknown. The unknown is rife with pleasant and difficult consequences, for like the apostles we wonder whether we will have the educational tools, as well as the emotional and physical stamina which we might need to deal with the unknown future.

The disciples of Jesus wanted the glorious past; they wanted to restore the kingdom of Israel.  But Jesus did not come to resurrect some past time.  Jesus came to bring something new.  They wanted to know what was going to happen in the future, but Jesus said that was not for them to know.  So there they are left, with the past gone and the future uncertain.  Like the psalmist of yore, the apostles, driven by human instinct, were negotiating the future.  And Jesus, anticipating his departure, provided them a rudimentary lesson in faith.  And, they would not be bereft of guidance in the future.  “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

The Feast of the Ascension, celebrated in the parish of my youth with solemn processions and glorious music, was never one which evoked sadness or foreboding in me.  On the contrary!  For me, Ascension, despite the possibility and probability of causing distress for some, was filled with optimism, with hope.  Jesus gave the Apostles a new purpose.  No longer was their purpose to learn and follow, rather they were now called to be witnesses, to go and tell others what they saw and heard concerning Jesus.  That was and remains The Great Commission declared by God’s Messiah.  No longer was the scope to be limited by location and time.  This was futuristic, for which no single path would suffice.  This was no minor undertaking, and it was for that reason that Jesus prayed for them, which we have come to call Jesus’ priestly prayer.

There are times we long for the past, sentimentally remembering only the good parts, but we know the past is finished, not to be recreated.  There are times we are uncertain of the future, not knowing what will come or when.  Parishes with interim clergy know this feeling, as do communities that are growing or declining, and changing rapidly.  Those who have been furloughed from work know the feeling, as do those who are watching their children grow and change before their eyes.  There are many times we know that something new must be coming, but we just are not sure what it is and when.

On this Sunday after the Ascension, when we in our liturgical practice give formal notice that the Risen Christ is no longer physically with us, I want to share with you a thought regarding the Sacrament of Baptism, which because of our mandate of physical distancing we are not able to celebrate.  But it is that Sacrament which give us authority and strength to look toward the future.

Through our baptism, we are like those early disciples, for through our baptism, we are given the same power, the same charge, and the same purpose.  Like them, we cannot have the past again and may not know what the future holds, but we do know how we are to live in the present.  We cannot control the times and the seasons.  Would that we could!   However, such power is not ours, it belongs to God.
What we are given is not the past, also not the future, but the present.  A bit of wisdom comes by way of Bill Keane’s cartoon “The Family Circus.”  There the little Dotty says, “Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift.  That’s why it’s called the present.”  As people of faith, we can be confident in the future, because we know it is in God’s hands, thankful for what God has given us in the past.

My first recommendation is not to think of the sacrament as a rite of passage.  Second, contrary to the ideas, which framed the fears and abuses of the Middle Ages, that we must baptize, in order to ward against being lost in some intermediate realm where we will linger until God sorts out what God want to do with us in eternity, the Sacrament of Baptism is about the present.  Baptism is a celebration of life.  Third, baptism anticipates the future, but it is at the same time about living in the Here and Now.

Fortified by our own baptism, we can look with confidence to, not into, the future and ask ourselves, in faith and without denying the faith which has sustained us and shaped our liturgies, our worship of the Eternal Triune God, the question: What form shall our expression of faith and our adoration of God take, when our mandate of physical distancing has been lifted?  Just as the Apostles were confronted with change, so may we also expect change.  I come to  you today not with an answer, but supported by the same faith in an all-knowing God which supports us all, am confident that we shall emerge from these days and months of uncertainty into a new life in faith.

Our baptism places us under the mandate of The Great Commission which is no other than to pray and so to live that others will come to know the presence of the love of God in their own lives.  The Great Commission can appear daunting.  Who is anxious to go globetrotting to spread the Good News?  And, thus, we dare not do anything for fear of offending.  Well, as you have come to expect from me, I pose questions: Did prior participants in the Boston Marathon—this year postponed because of COVID-19—emerge in life as fully trained, full-blown runners?  My suspension is that, as all humankind, they turned themselves over in their beds, crawled, took a first step to the glee of parents, walked, ran and ran still more, and all with the assist of others along the way.

So comes my second question.  What is to prevent us from living out the Great Commission in our own world, here and now, not postponing our actions for some future date and place?  What prevents us from greeting a stranger who moves into our neighborhood with a smile, with assisting someone in a supermarket who may have dropped something, or offering to drive a friend to a medical appointment?  Too young myself to have participated in the WWII CARE Package brigade, what is to prevent us from promoting a similar action in our own time?  What prevents us from praying privately for someone, or if we dare, to inform her/him that you will pray for him/her?  I have witnessed the glow—not an artistic museum halo—that people doing good, showing the love of God, appear to have about them.

Jesus said the times and the seasons are not for us to know.  The words, spoken by Jesus as recorded by John and read on this Ascension Sunday during our pandemic, strengthens us in our decision to follow the Risen Christ.  We are, despite temporary setbacks, part of a great movement and we have logistical and strategic support.  “All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them…Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”  (John 17:10ff.)

Jesus’ words free us from trying to manage and control our every minute, but they do not give us license to squander the gift of time we have been given.  God gives us today.  God gives us the present, and more than that God gives us power and, through baptism, purpose.  The good news is that we have not been left to flounder, for we have the power of the Holy Spirit which guides us and which helps us live up to our purpose, to be witnesses for God through Jesus Christ.  That is our response to the Great Commission.

Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Clarence E. Butler

Images:

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