BACK TO THE FUTURE: PROMISE FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT YEAR C NOVEMBER 29, 2015 BECKY ROBBINS-PENNIMAN CHURCH OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD, DUNEDIN, FL COLLECT OF THE DAY Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come. By your merciful protection alert us to the threatening dangers of our sins, and redeem us for your life of justice, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. PRAYER FOR ADVENT (from the New Zealand Prayer Book) Blessed are you, God of growth and discovery; yours is the inspiration that has altered and changed our lives; yours is the power that has brought us to new dangers and opportunities. Set us, your new creation, to walk through this new world watching and learning, loving and trusting, until your kingdom comes. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. JEREMIAH 33:14 16 The time is coming, declares the LORD, when I will fulfill my gracious promise with the people of Israel and Judah. In those days and at that time, I will raise up a righteous branch from David s line, who will do what is just and right in the land. In those days, Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is what he will be called: The LORD Is Our Righteousness. PSALM 25:1 9 To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul; my God, I put my trust in you; let me not be humiliated, nor let my enemies triumph over me. Let none who look to you be put to shame; let the treacherous be disappointed in their schemes. Show me your ways, O LORD, and teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; in you have I trusted all the day long. Remember, O LORD, your compassion and love, for they are from everlasting. Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; remember me according to your love and for the sake of your goodness, O LORD. Gracious and upright is the LORD; therefore he teaches sinners in his way. He guides the humble in doing right and teaches his way to the lowly. All the paths of the LORD are love and faithfulness to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies. 1 THESSALONIANS 3:9-13 How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith. Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. LUKE 21:25 36 There will be signs in the sun, moon, and stars. On the earth, there will be dismay among nations in their confusion over the roaring of the sea and surging waves. The planets and other heavenly bodies will be shaken, causing people to faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world. Then they will see the Human One coming on a cloud with power and great splendor. Now when these things begin to happen, stand up straight and raise your heads, because your redemption is near. Copyright notices: The Scripture text (except for the Psalm) is from the Common English Bible, CEB, Copyright 2010, 2011 by Common English Bible. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Unless otherwise noted, all other content is original and copyrighted by Becky Robbins-Penniman, 2015. All rights reserved.
2 Jesus told them a parable: Look at the fig tree and all the trees. When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. In the same way, when you see these things happening, you know that God s kingdom is near. I assure you that this generation won t pass away until everything has happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will certainly not pass away. Take care that your hearts aren t dulled by drinking parties, drunkenness, and the anxieties of day-to-day life. Don t let that day fall upon you unexpectedly, like a trap. It will come upon everyone who lives on the face of the whole earth. Stay alert at all times, praying that you are strong enough to escape everything that is about to happen and to stand before the Human One. SONG OF THE DAY: It Came Upon a Midnight Clear vv 4 and 3 For lo! the days are hastening on, by prophets seen of old, when with the ever-circling years shall come the time foretold, when the new heaven and earth shall own the Prince of Peace their King, and all the world send back the song which now the angels sing. Yet with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long; beneath the heavenly hymn have rolled two thousand years of wrong; and warring humankind hears not the tidings which they bring; O hush the noise and cease your strife and hear the angels sing! ********************************************************************************************************** Happy New Year! This is the first Sunday in Advent. We are beginning Year C. This the third year in our three-year cycle of Sunday readings. Most of the year will focus on the Gospel according to Luke. It s the beginning of the new church year, but we re also in the last month of the secular year. As we say good bye to 2015, I want to tell you I am deeply disappointed in this year. According to the movie series Back to the Future, by October 21, 2015, the Chicago Cubs will have won the World Series, and we will have our flying cars. Alas, neither promise was trustworthy. Even though the promises in the movies went unfulfilled, the movies are useful in a surprising area: theology. For me, the story helps explain what God is doing with Creation. Now, I detest sermons based on movies I haven t seen. My family and I have seen the original Back to the Future more timesthan I think is safe to admit to you. But, I can t assume the same for all y all. Luckily, the movie s title does most of the work. Briefly, the plot: A teen named Marty goes from 1985 back in time to 1955 to warn his friend, Doc, that he will be shot to death by Libyan terrorists in 1985. Marty brings 1985 thinking and knowledge with him into in 1955, which often baffles the folks of 1955, but also shapes their thinking about the future. After a short time, Marty goes back to the future, to 1985 where he came from and where he belongs.
His friend, Doc, heeding the warning from 30 years before. is wearing a bullet-proof vest when the terrorists, in due time, show up and try to kill him. Bahda bing! Happy ending. I think this bit of Hollywood silliness rather nicely illustrates an obscure bit of theology known as eschatology, which concerns the end times, eschaton being the Greek word for last or final. We live our days with the assumption that the future is completely open as we perch on this beautiful blue marble floating silently in space. We try to predict and control our future, but we re kind of lousy at it. The best we can affirm in our limited human power is that every choice we make in every day has consequences for those around us now, and for our children s children s children. The primary idea of eschatology is that the future is different for God. Theologians have differing opinions, but my beloved mentor, Walt Bouman, taught that, because God is not created, God is outside time. God is more verb than noun, and is not a thing among many things. God isn t an old man with a beard living somewhere upstairs waiting, like we do, in the chaos of the mystery of the unknown. Because God IS reality, God IS purpose, God is presence, God IS beingness itself, God CAN control the future. The eschaton is when and where God s purposes for Creation are totally fulfilled. Because there is no difference between God and being and future. God IS the ultimate future, the last days, the end, and thus, in God, the final reality, the eschaton, is already present. Time does not bind God. The last things are already present. We are limited human beings, however, who must live in and with time. We experience a tiny, time-limited sliver of God s beingness. All human religions explore what kind of being and presence God is, and what ultimate reality God is all about. It kind of blows my mind that, in this vast universe, God deeply cares about our human yearning to know the ultimate. I guess, though, that since God created us, I shouldn t be so surprised. I care about what I ve created, from children to socks. In response to our yearning, over the eons, God has given us many clues as to what God is up to, what God is like. Humanity s first window to God s nature is Creation itself, the gallimaufry of stars and planets, rocks and continents, clouds and seas, plants and animals in our Judeo-Christian heritage, it s all that stuff humans wrote down in the first chapters of Genesis. Nature is our first Bible about what God is like. The second clue is humanity itself. Not just our miraculous bodies, but our ability to imagine, to create, to wonder, to self-reflect, and even our sense of time, as we peer into the future and ask what could be. Animals don t have this awareness of time. They to live in one of four states of now : lonely and not lonely, full of food and absolutely starving. My cat lives perpetually in the latter state. Meow, meow. 3
The nature of humanity is the second Bible about what God is like. I believe that God s biggest gamble in creating human nature was to give us free will, the ability to recognize good and evil, and to choose either as we plan the future in which we decide to live. This capacity is also described in Genesis, isn t it? We have the true freedom to be saints or sinners, heroes or humbugs, lovers or leavers, noble or nasty. Most people manage to be all of those at some point. Our free will eventually ushered in our current human condition. On the one hand, we have amazing technology that houses and feeds billions, and cures horrible diseases that doomed previous generations. However, this same free will developed into competitiveness and greed, until we sincerely believe that one group has the right to dominate another, that violence and waste are acceptable tactics to getting our way, and hatred infects our thinking and treatment of each other. Remember how the Gospel reading our day describes our epoch: Dismay among the nations, confusion, people fainting from fear and foreboding, anxious about day-to-day life, and then drinking to cope with it all. That reading wasn t about some far off future, it s about human existence and absolutely nails what human life has so often been like since the dawn of what we like to call civilization to our day, 2,000 years later. It was in our despair and brokenness what some call sin that some humans not all, to be sure searched for the third kind of clue about the nature of God. People found it in divine words of potential, of hope, and of promise. To Abraham, God spoke of the promise that Abraham and his family would be a blessing to a broken but precious world. To Moses, God spoke of the promise of freedom from tyranny, liberation for all people. To prophets like Jeremiah, God spoke of the promise that, in the end, God s intent for creation will prevail: Creation will be healed and restored and justice will reign, everything will be the way God intended it to be in the first place, without human sin messing it up. When? Well, as I said, for God, it is already true, because justice and righteousness and wholeness are God s very nature. God s future is already God s reality. How do we know that? From the fourth clue about the nature of God: As Christians, we claim we know God s reality because of Jesus. Much like Marty McFly, who brought the reality of 1985 back into 1955, God came from God s current and future reality of the Reign of God, a Reign of divine power and splendor, and brought the reality of that kingdom into the very middle of human history. We believe that, in Jesus, God invaded the present with the future, and the Reign of God came near. 4
5 The Reign was, actually, always near, as the reality of God is present in all times and places. But, in Jesus, that Reign, that reality, was completely present, knowable, touchable, healing and restoring, welcoming outcasts and sinners. Living from God s reality, Jesus shaped our thinking about the future. and set multitudes on fire with the passion to live God s promises, even in the midst of dismay and confusion. However, Jesus promises threatened those who benefitted from tyranny. Those invested in the human structures of domination struck down the presence of God in their midst. They thought they could put a stop to such foolishness. It didn t work. Jesus went back to the future, to the Father and Holy Spirit, where he came from and where he belongs, where our Triune God lives the reality of a healed, holy Creation. and, to this day, makes the presence of that Creation real to us in bread and wine, in compassion and community, in healing and hope, in strength to live without anxiety in the midst of disaster. Mr. Rogers, the beloved children s TV personality and Methodist minister said that, as a child, the turmoil of the world scared him greatly. His mother would say, Look for the helpers. Whenever something terrible happens, look for the helpers. There are always helpers. In my view, these helpers are a sign of God healing Creation. Just like 1955 turned into 1956, and 1956 into 1957, until time caught up with 1985, so one day will all Creation catch up to the power and splendor of God s current and promised reality. Advent is the time when encourage and strengthen each other to stand up straight, to lift our heads, and prepare for the day when Christ will bring all of Creation back to the future, and we will stand, at last, before the Human One. Will we stand there with eager joy or shuddering regret? All I know is that if we do as Paul says, increasing and abounding in love for one another and for all, we will be the helpers God is always looking for, and we will have made great use of the time God has given us.