Remember the Future

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost - August 12, 2007

In the Gospel

We can summarize a theme of today's lessons in the slogan:

Remember the future!

We have been working on aspects of this idea several times in recent months, and now we pull it all together.

It sounds a bit ironic.

Ordinarily we think of remembering the past, not the future, but Christians are called precisely to this unusual exercise.

This is what sets us apart;

this keeps us going.

Part I Let's imagine a time in Israel's history , perhaps in the time of one of the later kings,

when things are not going well,

when some are sensing that the nation might be overrun by foreign invaders,

and when the prophets are thundering about evils in their society, both as individuals and in the nation as a whole.

In the middle of the mess, someone remembers the old story of Abraham, their ancestor in the faith.

Things had looked grim for him, all those centuries earlier:

--He was an old man, and without a son.

--He had servants who might legally have inherited his household, but no children to carry on the family name.

--More pointedly, Abraham and Sarah do not have the son that had been promised to them by God many years earlier.

Abraham is of course concerned about this, but God reassures him:

Look at the stars; your descendants will be as numerous as these stars.

Abraham was to look ahead to the fulfillment of the promise, and get on with living in the present.

--He was not to hanker for the good-old-days back in the hometown of Ur.

--He was not to mope about his messy present-day situation.

--But he was to live holding onto the promise of God and having it make a difference in his present time in what he said and did.

--He was to remember the future, and to be guided and emboldened by it!

Part II The parable that Jesus tells works this same way.

How happy the servants will be when the householder comes home from the feast and they are ready to greet him.

In those days before refrigeration,

it was the custom to distribute the leftovers from a feast to the whole household, to the neighbors, and as far as it would go,

so that there would not be waste,

and so that all in the community could share in the festivities.

The servants in the household are to wait expectantly for the master to bring the goodies, because they would all get a share.

To this point in the story, Jesus' audience would be nodding knowingly and approvingly: this was common, accepted practice.

But then Jesus adds the next bit of the parable:

--That the householder came back from the party and asked his servants to sit down, and he served them the treats that he had brought from the feast.

--How unexpected and wonderful this is!

--What a different kind of household it is; like nothing Jesus' audience had ever experienced.

--This is a household operating on a very different basis, with a special kind of sharing and mutual care and respect.

--This is a household governed by the anticipation of a future that is marked by freedom and the experience of love, graciousness, and giving.

Part III And now, to us.

When we look around, we have lots about which we can be morose:

--wars and rumors of wars.

--political turmoil in so many places around the world and right here at home, too.

--disease and starvation in various places.

--destruction in the bridge collapse in Minnesota and the cowardly attacks on police stations and crowds of shoppers in Iraq.

If we want to look at the past and make a list of all of the problems that plague us, we can be busy a long while.

But that is not why we are together here today.

Let's list what happens elsewhere:

We can examine the past in history class.

We can be nostalgic about the past at a family reunion.

We can complain about the past in a letter to the editor.

We can examine the present in a civics class.

We can celebrate the present in a pep rally.

We can complain about the present over the backyard fence.

Although some examining, nostalgia, and complaining may happen in the church, they are not our distinctive activities.

We are to remember the future,

and not just any future,

but the specific future promised to us by means of Jesus death and resurrection.

We start to recognize it beginning with Baptism.

--a “fellow member of the body of Christ” we call a person right from the moment of Baptism, even when that person may be an infant.

What can this person so new to the faith do? --eat and cry

Someone may express annoyance or jealousy:

“I and my family have been here a long time,and maybe I deserve some recognition by Jesus.

Why is this little one to be regarded on an equal basis with me?”

When we remember the future, we won't be saying things like “She's only a beginner!”

Persons have value not because of what they have said or done to this point, but because God has an valued place for us in the final outcome of all of this creating that he has been doing.

That newly-baptized child and all the rest of us are important because of what we shall become in the fullness of time.

This is a very different kind of measurement than is used elsewhere in the world:

produce or you're out.

It makes a difference in how we treat people at both ends of life.

We know how the very young and the unborn are held in disdain by some.

Others are saying that the frail aged are useless and can be thrown out.

But the church properly says:

Deal gently with both the very young and the very old, for they, too, have a place in the outcome promised by God,

when all infirmities shall be overcome

and they, too, are part of the new heaven and the new earth.

If remembering the future makes a difference for those just beginning the walk of faith and those nearing its end, there is also a difference for us living in the middle of things.

The thing that we hear all too often is

“We've never done it that way before.”

The true questions for us are:
1 what kind of people and community does God want us to be at the end?

2 what can we do that will model and practice that heavenly life now?

In the coming months we'll be implementing more of the ideas that have been generated through the “Mission at the Crossroads” process.

The comment “We've never done it that way before is valid only as an observation, not as an objection.

What does God want us to be at this time and in this place?

Will a particular proposal help us to live a little closer to that?

We join Abraham and Sarah and the servants in Jesus' parable in living by

remembering the future,

and knowing that even now the Lord Jesus comes to us, his unworthy servants who have such a hard time staying awake and watching, and invites us today to a sample of that final feast where Jesus is host, and server, and surpriser!

We can of course foolishly turn down the gift, turn away from the One who is bringing his future into our present; but we are here today

to encourage each other to anticipate and to hold on!

Have no fear, little flock, for it is the Father's good pleasure

to give you the kingdom. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.