MALACHI 3:13-4:2a,5-6

PSALM 98:5-10

2 THESSALONIANS 3:6-13

LUKE 21:5-19

Sermon – 11/18/01

We’re preparing for Thanksgiving at 148 Providence Blvd. Actually, we give thanks to God every day, because thanksgiving is a way of life, not just a day, but we are preparing for the Thanksgiving Day weekend now. We’ll have dinner on Friday, given the need for Elda’s and my “kids” to spread themselves between three families, but as I said, thanksgiving is not limited to the fourth Thursday in November. Tom will be here, and all three of Elda’s children and their fiancées, in our biggest family gathering of the year.

Today, that is several days in the future, although I can almost “taste” it. Part of the celebration of festivals like this is looking forward to them, “savoring” in advance a wonderful future. What makes it even better is that all four kids are doing well: Tom in school, Elda’s kids in their careers, all in their lives beyond work – and to top it all off, we have weddings planned for next year! It seems to be contagious. Truly, Elda and I have a lot to be thankful for and a lot to look forward to.

So, at a time of year when people are often giving thanks for whatever they are thankful for and looking forward to whatever they may be excited about in the future, what the heck do today’s ominous, brooding and even scary Scripture readings have to say to us?

Malachi, chronologically the last prophet in the Old Testament, declares that the righteous will ultimately be vindicated by God and that “the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evil-doers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up.”

Jesus talks about The End of The World, the Apocalypse, when disaster will follow disaster, war follow war, false messiah follow false messiah, and persecution will beset Christians, who will be guided by the Holy Spirit and hope to be saved by their endurance.

Paul addresses a situation in the church in Thessalonica, Greece when people apparently expected Jesus’ return imminently and some, therefore, gave up working on the theory that it was silly to work hard all day if Jesus was going to return at 5:00p.m. and End The World and you wouldn’t be able to cash your paycheck. Paul exhorts people to keep working; no one knows when Christ will return, and idleness does not glorify God.

All of these Scriptures talk about the Future, future with a capital “F”, our fears for the Future, our hopes for the Future, and the behaviors we should adopt in the light of both.

Let me contrast these Scriptures and the biblical attitude toward the future with an attitude which is still common in much of the world and was very widespread before the emergence of Christianity.

My source is the August 26, 2001 Star Ledger and a powerful article by Michael Norman of Montclair, NJ about his visit to see his son, Josh, who is in the Peace Corps in the country of Togo, a west African nation just east of Ghana.

Josh told his father of rural Togo’s incredibly tough living conditions, saying that “The most important thing I’ve learned is that there are so many ways to die here.” He went on to explain, in two vivid anecdotes, how this fosters a “live for today” attitude with literally no hope for the future.

In fact, Josh adds, “There is no word in the Cotokoli language for the future. There is only a word for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Life is so hard here and so precarious that people live for today, for the moment. You take what you can when you can because there is little today and nothing beyond tomorrow.”

There is no word in the language for the future. Long-range planning is, literally, unthinkable. Hope is, literally, unimaginable – there are no words with which to imagine a better future, because there is no word for the future. “There is nothing beyond tomorrow.”

Imagine if your plan for your future and the future for those you love stopped with this coming Tuesday. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? Peoples’ plans for Thanksgiving weekend may differ, and some may be quiet and solitary (which can be just as filled with giving thanks as any packed house), but is there anyone here who can't imagine looking forward to doing something more than 48 hours ahead of time?

Whether we realize it or not, the whole concept of time as linear – the past being different from the present and the future being different still – is a product of the biblical worldview. The Bible says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”, and at The End God will create a new heaven and a new earth. In between, God offers people freedom, redemption, community, guidance, strength, love – and HOPE.

Before the Bible, people saw time as cyclical, like the days and the seasons, with nothing really changing and certainly with no Grand Design to History, and absolutely nothing giving the average person hope for a transformed life and a transformed world. Life was simply about survival day to day, just as it still is for the people in that village in Togo. No word for “the future”.

Today’s Scripture readings, which at first seem so grim and puzzling, come out of a worldview which declares that human history is going somewhere, and history’s destination is God.

Malachi acknowledges peoples’ complaints that evil-doers prosper and ignore God’s commands but declares that their time will come; when the Day of the Lord comes, the righteous will be vindicated and the wicked will be punished. That is something to look forward to, something to hope for with confidence, for there is a future stretching far beyond the day after tomorrow and it is in God's hands.

Jesus tells his disciples to expect destruction, war, earthquake, famine, plague and false messiahs, together with persecution. If any of these happen, it isn’t because God is no longer in charge or has abandoned us; it is the brokenness of the sinful world’s final breakup. During the times of trouble the Holy Spirit will guide and inspire the faithful, and ultimately (as we will celebrate on Christ the King Sunday next week) the Kingdom of God will come. That is the ultimate something to look forward to, something to hope for with confidence. Even if it does not happen tomorrow or the next day (as the dreamy, lazy cultists in Thessalonica apparently expected), it will happen, because history is going somewhere, and its destination is God.

Perhaps your Thanksgiving weekend is not shaping up the way you wish it would. Take heart; the fact that you can look forward at all means that you can act to shape your future with God’s help; no one is helpless, no one is hopeless who has faith. God not only has prepared a glorious future for the faithful, but in the meantime God has empowered us by giving us the concept of the future, and the concept of hope which enables us to look forward eagerly to what God will do next in our lives – and what we, with God’s help and in partnership with others, can do now in God’s world.

On this, the third Sunday of “Celebrate Life” month at St. Barnabas, we celebrate The Future. We celebrate the Bible teaching us there will be a future and it will be in God’s hands. Because of that, and because of God’s love and guidance for all of us here and now, whatever our circumstances in the present, we can hope for a better future, by the grace of God.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church