Stretching Backward, Straining Forward

1 Peter 2:11, Philippians 3:14, Amos 5:24, Matthew 6: 10

 

          “Breaking news! Tune in at six.” How often do we hear that? It’s just one of the catchphrases of our times. First there were stars. Then they became superstars. Now it’s not good enough or timely enough to get just the “news.” Now we must have “breaking news.” So how come if it’s breaking we have to wait ‘til six? Will it still be breaking then? Once it’s broken, is it downgraded to just news? Or history?  I mean, the minute it breaks, it’s history, isn’t it?

          That’s one of the troubles with living in the present. In one sense, we have absolutely no choice. The present is all we have to live in, and yet the minute we do, it’s gone. So now we need more breaking news. There really is no time for the present. We are hungry for what’s next, and yet we fail pretty miserably to be expectant about the future. In this CNN world, we move from one present to another without time for absorption of what it might actually mean. There are even commentators to tell us what we have seen or heard so that we don’t have to think; we can just get the gist of what happened and get ready for the next installment. This is the world in which we live as Americans.

          And yet, we Christians live in another world at the same time. We live in a world where we call on the past to help us define time. Our very numbering of years sets off our history as either before or after Christ’s arrival. Our God, who stands and lives outside time, broke in on us and inhabited time, and history clearly records that. Since Christ was resurrected on a Sunday, we changed our habits to make Sunday our day of rest, taking the first day of the calendar week and making it our last day of the week in practice. As Christians, our time revolves around a person, a man, who lived and breathed and carved out a block of time in the history of the world when he walked among us and ate and drank with us and taught us in real time, just as surely as D-Day or Independence Day or Bastille Day are real time. Even the Apostles Creed locates Jesus in time. It was the time of Pontius Pilate and Herod and the Roman Empire.  

          The church is a Savior oriented people gathered for the worship of that Savior who not only came and came in real time, but also promised to come again. So we look back often. We make it a point to remember. We do so in particular with our celebration of the Lord’s Supper as a sacramental reminder of not only what happened, but what is promised. We also look back through our observation of the liturgical year, from the epiphany to Pentecost, from transfiguration to Christmas, from advent to Lent. James K.A. Smith says that “the rhythms of Christian worship and the liturgical year stretch us backwards. They are the practices of remembering.” The Church is the chosen people of God who look back in order to look ahead.

          But we are far from done when we complete our exercises in remembering, for Christians are a people who use the past to remind them of the future to which we strain. Our Savior promised us that future; at least he promised it to those to whom he calls his people. 1 Peter 2: 9 reminds us that we Christians are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession…” Peter is referring not to the Jews, but to us, Christians, those elected by God to populate his church here on earth and his kingdom when he returns.

          Christians are “tweeners.” We live with the knowledge created in remembering and in our traditions, but we do as Paul in Philippians 3: We “press on toward the mark of the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ.” It is not enough to remember. Indeed, we remember only as a tool to instruct and to guide us to where Paul presses.  We look toward a future where the prophet Amos tells us that justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream [Am. 5: 24]. We learn the Lord’s Prayer and we claim “thy kingdom come” as our marching orders and our hope, our expectation, for the future.

          Marking time. I used to mark time in marching band. Marking time is marching in place. In ROTC, I marked time on the drill field. Marking time is in one sense the practice of staying ready to move. It’s funny. I did all my marching before the military. I don’t think I marched ten steps while in military service. But the point is this: marking time is something that Christians are familiar with. Sometimes we have to mark time. We mark time by waiting for the Day of the Lord. We mark time while we pray for guidance, for illumination, for understanding. We mark time while our prayers are answered in God’s way instead of our own. Marking time for a Christian is like the Geico commercials. It’s what we do, because we are called to be ready. Three times in the New Testament we are warned that “the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” [1Thes. 5:2-4, 2 Pet 3: 10, 11, Matt 24: 42-44].

          But marking time is only one piece of the Christian walk. There is so much more to the Christian life than marking time and waiting for the future. We are called to be followers of Jesus, to be his disciples, to be his hands and feet in a world that is so desperate to find its way. As Christians we look forward not only to the end of the world, but to the end of the world as we now know it. When we worship, we begin to experience what the writer of Hebrews tries to describe. We share in the Holy Spirit. We taste “the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the age to come” [Heb. 6: 4, 5].

          So we look around at our broken world and we long for the future. We turn on the “breaking news” and hear of the sickness of our times as people are robbed and murdered in their homes, moviegoers are shot in theaters, even worshippers are gunned down in church. We wonder sometimes if we do not live in a world gone mad where violence and selfishness is the order of the day.

          As Christians, we know that the answers do not lie on the six o’clock news. Nor do they lie on the lips of those politicians who promise us deliverance from such dysfunction if only we will trust them with our vote. As Christians, we know that the answers will continue to include violence and hardship and suffering and trials. Such is the way of the world and such it will remain until Jesus returns. So we echo the plea of John in Revelation crying “Come, Lord Jesus.”

          But there is other breaking news. There are stories such as the intervention with a terrorist on a French train last week by Americans Anthony Sadler, Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos, Brit Chris Norman, and French-American Mark Moogalian. We have all heard how they charged a terrorist and probably saved many lives. The world is full of these good and heroic stories, but seldom do they make “breaking news.” Most of us will not have to risk our lives. Most of us will just be called upon to be kind, to take time, to lend a hand. In doing whatever it is we are called upon to do, we help not only to preserve, but also to usher in, God’s kingdom here on earth. This is how we as Christians want to come to each and every day. We want to celebrate our opportunity to help, to be in concert with God’s will for us, to “taste the heavenly gift and share in the Holy Spirit.”

          So we stretch and we strain. We as Christians are a stretched people, reaching back into our history to discern that which Jesus teaches us by his life, death and resurrection. And we strain, as Paul did, pressing on toward the mark…the upward call of Jesus Christ. We are citizens not only of our country, but of a kingdom as old as creation, as perpetual as forever, and as new as the Holy Spirit in our hearts.