383319

The Future Looks Hopeful

The Rev. Thomas W. Simmons

Wouldn’t it be nice to know the future?  Don’t you just wish you knew last month that the market was going to tank like it has – or better yet, how about a few years ago when the market was up around 11,000? If you knew then what you know now, would you have called your broker?

Of course, some are privileged with inside information – apparently like Martha Stewart – and get a little glimpse of the future.  Most of us don’t have that kind of info, but we sure wouldn’t mind some hints every now and then!

People have always sought such hints, because knowing the future enables you to control – or at least avoid it .  That’s power and people want it more than just about anything else. Which has made prognostication – the fine art (or some would say science) of predicting the future – big business.

In ancient times shamans rolled the bones, felt chicken entrails, read tea leaves and observed the stars to see the future.  Today people read horoscopes and spend lots of money on psychics, palm readers, market analysts, financial advisors and other fortunetellers to get a glimpse of the future. The USA spends billions on the FBI and CIA for the same.  Everyone wants to know the future!

One of my favorite forms of prognostication is science fiction.  It is a whole literary genre that attempts to peer into the future. Since I was a kid I have loved reading books by Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert and watching Star Trek, Star Wars, Mad Max, The Terminator and The Matrix, to name just a few.   

Sci-fi starts with the trends of today’s world and extrapolates their trajectory into the future.  Sometimes the future looks bright, like in Star Trek, where human technological and social progress continue unabated so we can “bravely go where no man has gone before.”

In other scenarios, like Terminator and Matrix, our technological advances get so out of hand that the computers end up taking over and enslaving the human race.

Well how do you view the future? That’s a question our Scripture passages this morning raise. As you think of the future – your future, the future of our country and the world – how do you feel about it?  Are you optimistic or gloomy? 

Jesus in our Gospel lesson from Matthew tells a parable about our world and gives us a glimpse of it’s future.  He gives us insider information, if you will.

He focuses on the presence of evil in the world – something that we are all familiar with, you know, the so-called “problem of evil.” Jesus doesn’t blame it on God, as so many people do, nor does he attribute it to merely random happenstance that “just is.” 

Instead, Jesus points to “the devil,” an enemy who stealthily sows seeds of evil in God’s good field.  This mysterious and malevolent figure is, in the Biblical story, the one who slithered into the Garden of Eden and sowed seeds of doubt in Adam and Eve, inviting them to seek independence from God. 

This is where human evil began, and before long Cain, the first son of Adam and Eve, murdered Abel his brother out of jealousy. People have been blowing things up, exploiting children, slandering, abusing power and lying to stockholders ever since. 

In our parable, the servants of the landowner lament this terrible reality.  They see the weeds growing up among the good wheat. They notice how evil people thrive and they want to take drastic action now, to eliminate the evil.

But the landowner wisely stays their hand. He instructs them to be patient and wait. Justice will come and it will be swift and sure.  The day is coming when the Son of Man will gather the harvest and separate the weeds from the wheat. He will remove “all causes of sin and all evil” from the world. Those who have afflicted others will receive full measure for what they have done.

Jesus knew the future and he lived and taught in light of it.  He endured the cross because he knew the glory to come. And he instructs us to do the same. 

And that’s exactly what Paul is doing in his letter to the Christians in Rome.  In the midst of his sufferings Paul is reminding himself and his readers of the future.  He says, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” And Paul knew suffering. He was repeatedly beaten, flogged, imprisoned, driven from city to city for preaching Christ.

He was able to endure these hardships by fixing his eyes firmly on the future as Jesus taught it. The insider information is getting around, you see?

As he looks to the future Paul focuses on liberation from bondage, not only for the children of God, but for the whole creation as well. Jesus’ loving care and redeeming power embraces all of creation.  He is not just a “personal” Savior.

Paul knows that the world is not as it should be.  We all know this instinctively. All of us recoil from evil and yearn for a world without bad people, a world in which babies don’t die and where people are free of disease, poverty and famine. 

And yet chaos, danger and death have been set loose in the world, and they strike indiscriminately and without warning.  I saw that yesterday when I met the family of a 15 year-old boy who was recently killed in a car crash. Multiply this one local tragedy by tens of thousands and that’s the toll inflicted by accidents, natural disasters, famine, drought and disease every day. 

This is the world we live in.  As Paul said, “subject to futility…in bondage to decay.”  In our hearts we know that the world is not as it should be and we yearn – as Paul says, we groan – for something better.

The Bible tells us why.  God created the world good and whole, a place beautiful and perfect and free and yet through our sin, it has fallen with us into bondage, decay and futility. 

But you know what? Paul gives us a glimpse of the future. Through the work of Jesus that bondage and futility will end.  We will be “free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last!”

Our yearning, the yearning of the earth and cosmos will be satisfied when we experience our adoption, the redemption of our bodies, our resurrection and restoration.  And just as the creation was brought low with us, so with us it will experience new life, “the glory of the freedom of the children of God.”

So, how is the future looking?  Are you bullish or bearish? There certainly is plenty to be pessimistic about. But whatever your suffering – and we all have our own sufferings just as Jesus and Paul did – I believe that our Gospel and Epistle lessons this morning give us reason for hope and that hope gives us patience.

With this vision of the future, we don’t have to be mired in our own little worlds of fear, dysfunction, futility evil and decay.  With this vision of the future, we can lift our eyes above what makes us afraid and unhappy and see the horizon.

Jesus and Paul entrusted the future to God.  We can, too.  AMEN