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November 7, 2004:
The prophet Haggai begins with the same song-the glory days of Solomon's temple, the dreariness of the present-but unlike Springsteen, he adds a redemption chorus. "Don't get stuck in the past," he says, "even when the present is pitiful. Especially when the present isn't what you wish it could be. This is God we're talking about! A poor beginning doesn't mean a poor ending. Trust that God isn't done!" This reminded me of some friends in Madison. Madison is the kind of university town that no one wants to leave at graduation. It's the kind of place where cab drivers have PhDs in anthropology and physics. Scott and Martha loved their college years so much that, once they left, getting back was all they tried to do. They took their teaching credentials to a small town, because teaching jobs in Madison are hard to get. Because it was only 90 miles away, they maintained the illusion that their social and cultural lives were still in Madison. But because 90 miles really is a long way for dinner and a show, they had no social life at all, especially once the kids were born. Martha called what they were doing their "Babylonian captivity," something they were willing to do because they knew it was temporary. Madison was where they belonged. Once back in Madison, they thought, they could really start to live. It took them almost ten years of not-quite living in the little town just beyond the edge of Madison before they could finally get back. You can just about imagine how different life as a student in a university town is from life in that same town as the parents of two kids complete with allergies and sports teams and dance lessons. Martha and Scott found themselves asking, "This is it? We worked so hard to get back to Madison, and this is it? Driving and doctors and school conferences?" Neither one remembered why they had needed to be back in Madison. About this time they found the adult Sunday School class at my home church. In the class on minor prophets they could hear Haggai's message echoed in their own disappointed, "This is it?" The bargain they had cut with God meant that The Good Life-the life they thought would be worth living-would happen once they returned to Madison. They had stopped living in the present because they had been trying to return to the past. As in, back when the kids were little they loved me; if only they were little again. At least in high school as a class officer I was admired. When I was working I had something to contribute. I used to be popular, but now nobody even knows who I am. This is why we read more than one scripture lesson on Sunday. The way Haggai speaks-that "in a little while"-is eschatological language. He's talking the end of time and the coming of God's kingdom. How are Christians supposed to understand God's kingdom when we don't have a temple to rebuild, a literal king to restore to the throne? Luke's story shows Jesus unpacking that coming kingdom. The story the Sadducees tell is either silly or brutal, depending on whether you are the childless brothers or the woman. Jesus' point is not about the immortality of humans; it's about who God is. What we have now, what we understand of God's plan, is only partial and fragmentary. We can get stuck in our understanding, like Scott and Martha forgetting to be present to our own lives because we are either living in the glories of the past or anticipating some fabulous future of immortality. Staying stuck like that-either hanging onto the past or living only for the future-deprives us of the present. And the present surely requires enough courage and work to demand our full attention. The reason we read eschatology this time of year is to gives us the courage to live in the present. Eschatology puts things in perspective because it forces us to wonder about the goal and purpose of history. As Christians we believe that the goal of history is the fulfillment of God's plan, not whether or not we get to heaven. God's plan, which we remind ourselves every week as we pray the Lord's Prayer together, God's plan is the reign of God. It's coming! Believing that God's plan will out is one of the ways we make sense of the events of our lives. We live as if we really believe that God is always working for our redemption. Those of us who love God know that we are always on the verge of undreamed-of discoveries, new ways of seeing the workings of divine power, anticipating unmeasured possibilities of transformation. For us! That is eschatology. The hope of transformation so that we can live in God's reign. We can live in the present because we know that God will work the fulfillment of God's own plans for the future. We can believe God is with us in the present because God has been with us in the past. Thank God we have memories! Thank God we can get together every week to share joys and concerns. Thank God that doing so interprets the misfortunes and triumphs of our lives in terms of God's redemptive work. Judy's dead cancer. The process of Homer's dying. The getting-born of Adelia and Cortland. Sharing these things reminds us that God has been with us. Sharing helps us look back in thanksgiving-whether it looked like a joy or a concern at the time. Sharing gives us the confidence to believe that God will be with us in the future because God was present in the past. We can't always notice God's presence in the here-and-now, and we certainly can't always do it on our own. But because we have each other, because we stand as witness to God's presence in the past, we can have great expectations for the future. We can be faithful in the present because God has been with us. And we can count on that into the future. Amen. |
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