God Holds the Future

According to theologian Paul Duke, Jesus didn't have to be a clairvoyant to make predictions about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Duke maintains that every temple is a doomed house. Every structure and system for housing the holy will wear out its use, will disappoint and die. In the beginning the temple is a tent, simple and supple with room for the Spirit to billow through. But sooner or later we try to manage the mystery. The thing calcifies, thickens, encrusts, fills up with bad furniture – builds itself to an unwarranted weight until it has to fall.

Walter Brueggemann once said that the task of the church is to always proclaim the vision and vocation of God’s reign. Always. But at the same time always be patient with one another as we fail to live up to that vision and vocation. Always.

I wonder if what Duke is talking about is when that balance is off between being prophetic – allowing the mystery of the Holy Spirit to move in and through us – and being weighed down by the status quo – trying to harness that divine breath to achieve security and assert our own control. Perhaps that is how we fail to live up to the vision and vocation of God’s reign – we try to manage it instead of trusting it will happen.

The balance for the preacher is how to encourage patience and care for one another as we fail to embody God’s Spirit – to forgive our despair and our desire to keep everything familiar – at the same time as we proclaim the good news – as we announce that things will not always be as they are today – as we declare with confidence that God holds the future.

When The Presbyterian Church in Canada was wrestling with remits regarding human sexuality some years ago, there were some congregations in crisis because they feared what would happen if a more just and open policy was adopted. Others were in crisis because they were concerned that change was not happening fast enough or far enough. In both cases, congregations were seeking to manage the mystery of God’s desire rather than trusting that God would be holding the future no matter what was decided.

When facing the uncertainties of the future, many of us will say that since there is nothing we can do about it anyway, the best thing is grit our teeth, press forward, and hope for the best. It’s all rather random anyway and so, in the meanwhile, we’ll live life while we have it and let the chips fall where they may. Perhaps we are not even aware of the fatalism that colours our perceptions of the present and the future. Have you heard of the person who declared, “I am not a fatalist! And even if I were, what could I do about it!?”

Surely, we can do something. Have we as “the church” given up – leaving everything in the hands of fate? Or are we convinced that we could fix it all – that, ultimately, control is ours for the grasping and we need to take charge of every situation – dominating every facet of our lives and our world?

At First you have a welcome statement and a land acknowledgment that seeks to clarify who you are as a community of faith – or, more honestly, who you hope to be. You want to be welcoming and affirming of diversity – caring for the vulnerable and respecting creation. You try to embrace both intellectual and spiritual insight. You strive to be a safe place for everyone of every race and colour, trans or cisgender or queer. You have the statement but are you able to allow the Spirit to inspire and enliven those words? First may think their identity as a congregation is nailed down, but who knows what God has in store for your future.

Some Christians, past and present, attempt to do an end-run on fatalism by claiming that they know already precisely what the future holds. They’ve turned passages like Luke 21 – and entire biblical books like Revelation – into a kind of giant secret code that, if we can just crack it, will spell out in neat and precise detail the future’s exact timeline. I think it is this effort to control that builds the temple to what Duke calls an unwarranted weight – bringing disappointment and death.

In our scripture Jesus foretells the destruction of the temple, warns against being misled by alarmists, and anticipates dreadful times in which his followers must bear witness and endure. Although there is no denying the forward, future bent of this passage, in the end Jesus is not interested in telling us precisely what the future holds but rather who holds the future. And when you know who holds the future, you know who holds your every moment in the present time as well.

This passage is part of the apocalyptic literature found throughout the Bible. The word apocalypse means an unveiling or a disclosure or a revelation. It is the kind of writing we find when times are tough, and the only hope is for God to break in. Times were tough when Luke wrote his gospel – Jesus had not returned, the temple had already been destroyed, Stephen had been martyred, Peter and Paul had been executed, everyone had lost hope. They needed God to set things straight. Luke is recounting the present reality for believers in his generation. They are told not to be terrified, but to remember the one who holds the present and the future.

And what about us? How do we hear these words from Luke? Maybe we read these words and nod our heads knowingly, thinking that history is drawing to a close. All you have to do is hold a newspaper in one hand and the gospel in the other. “Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.” That seems to be happening all over the place – check. “There will be great earthquakes.” All the earth is shuddering under the weight of climate change – check. “In various places famines and plagues.” Check – check – check. It seems that Luke’s account of the present moment is true for us also.

Many of us are overwhelmed with the circumstances of life and are just trying to hang on by our fingernails – cancer, grief, disappointment, shattered hopes, and the plain exhaustion of trying to stand for good in a world where racism, sexism, profit, greed and xenophobic nationalism have built a world based upon badness and meanness. Add to all that terrorism, planet devastation, homicide, natural disaster, wars and rumors of wars and it’s surprising that anyone shows up in church at all!

The end doesn’t seem to be as far away as it used to be. The tension is not so much over preaching the coming end and destruction of our way of life as it is in preaching the coming of the new creation in Christ. Bad news seems easier to believe – it’s the gospel that challenges our imagination.

We try valiantly to wrestle the world into submission – to place it under our control – to fix everything. We concentrate on population control, birth control, climate control – we try to control the drug trade, the sex trade, poverty and homelessness. And even as we seek to manage and manipulate and prepare our defense in advance another mini apocalypse takes place, and the reality of the present moment is revealed.

By the time of Isaiah 65 a handful of exiles have returned to Jerusalem after a generation in Babylon. The city they yearned for, cried over, and prayed they would someday return to, turns outs to be a pile of rubble covered in weeds. What’s the use of hoping when it all turns to naught?

What’s the use of standing against climate deniers and antivaxxers –? They’re going to keep ignoring science anyway. Why bother holding bigots and blowhards to account? They consistently justify their position. What’s the use of fighting cancer? It’s just going to come back. What’s the use of feeding the hungry and those struggling on the streets? They’ll return back hungry the next day and the next and the next… What’s the use of standing against systems and powers and principalities?

Somewhere between giving up and taking control is where good news is found and flourishes. To a people habituated to bad news, sad news, and maddening news – there is good news: it doesn’t have to be like this! Isaiah says: God is about to create a new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind… there will be no more infant mortality; instead, there will be adequate housing, and everyone will have their own gardens and eat from them instead of growing food for someone else… and the wolf and the lamb shall feed together…

It must have been difficult for the disciples to conceive that Herod’s great temple – one of the wonders of the world – would be torn down, stone by stone, until it was nothing but a heap of rubble. Such a thing was unimaginable. The temple, the very center of national life and pride, the very seat of God, destroyed? Unthinkable!

Is this what is happening to the church in our own time? Do we need to give up because the church as we have known it is crumbling? Do we need to work harder and faster to maintain things as they are?

I don’t believe so because Jesus isn’t talking to just anyone whose temple happens to fall down, but to those with the courage to leave the ruins of old systems and bear new faith and the persecutions that go with it. The church is not so fragile as we might think. They say that the church is what you have left when the building burns down and the preacher leaves town – the church is you.

The disciples ask about when the temple will fall – when the end will come. And Jesus says, “Don’t be terrified…” God intends for us – for this world – to be better – to do better. God’s future is out there and it’s coming.

We’ve somehow got to keep before us the gap between our current reality and the world that God promises – between the bad news and the good news. The good news is that in Jesus Christ the end has already come. Our vocation and vision are to live out “the end” now. Here and there – sometimes in small and quiet ways – sometimes in bold and disquieting ways. Always persistent, the church is to embody the practices that Isaiah foresaw. It’s not all here – it’s still coming. Do not fall into despairing fatalism or anxiously strive to anticipate and control what is to come. In Christ there is salvation and hope – God holds the future – an amazing and unmanageable mystery. Amen