WISDOM 12:13,16-19

PSALM 86:11-17

ROMANS 8:18-25

MATTHEW 13:24-30,36-43

Sermon – 7/21/02

Where is History ultimately going? There are times in Western History when the answers seemed so obvious to Educated, Enlightened Opinion that the question was hardly worth asking. Educated, enlightened Romans of the Fourth Century generally assumed that the Empire would keep rolling along, impregnable – until the cataclysms of the Fifth Century led to a collapse of civilization so enormous it makes The Great Depression of the 1930’s look like a speed bump by comparison.

Educated, enlightened Englishmen of the 19^th Century had great confidence in Progress – that life, led by economic growth and technology, was steadily getting better and better, and that the Sun Never Set on the British Empire.

The restive, captive peoples under that (and other European) empires had other ideas, and the epitaph for technology as the Savior of the world was written by J. Robert Oppenheimer, reflecting on the explosion of the first atomic bomb in Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. Quoting Vishnu from the Hindu Scriptures, the great physicist declared, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

I believe we have just come through another, briefer, “fools paradise”: the 1990’s. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the end of the Cold War, America reigned unchallenged as a super power, and seemingly impregnable. One historian even seriously wrote that we were “at the end of history”. With the simultaneous stagnation of the Japanese economy and the growing popularity of some form of market capitalism and some form of elections in many areas of the world where neither had been securely established, it looked as if the so-called American Way of Life was on the way to becoming the world-wide way of life: one world, under us, with Coca Cola and McDonald’s for all. With several years of unrelenting economic expansion accompanied by an altitude-defying bull market in stocks, some talked of an end to the business cycle of boom and bust, psychologists studied the angst of “sudden wealth syndrome” affecting dot com millionaires, and too many stock market analysts said, “This time it’s different.”

How long ago that seems!

Yet one more self-satisfied secular vision of success punctured. Now physical safety and financial security look far more fragile than they did three years ago.

Of course, the 1990’s self-satisfied assumption that this was “the best of all possible worlds” ignored the realities of life for billions of people on earth, especially those untouched by any stirrings of any level of democracy: China and, ominously, all the Arab countries. The celebratory American mood of the 1990’s ignored the fact that, as Thomas Cahill observed, “More than a billion people in our world today survive on less than $370 per year, while Americans, who constitute five percent of the world’s population, purchase fifty percent of its cocaine.” And this affliction contributed to a murder right here in South Brunswick just last week. And while we mourn those who died in the World Trade Center attacks, twice that many people die every day of AIDS in Sub-Sahara Africa alone.

Yes, this is not “the best of all possible worlds”, and now this is obvious even for the writers of magazines for prosperous, educated Americans.

Indeed, we are tempted to swing to an opposite view, in reaction to the shallow triumphalism of the 90’s, to embrace anxiety, despair, cynicism and depression.

Well, people who put all their faith in the stock market, in the benevolence of CEO’s, the integrity of all accountants and the brilliant, insightful deterrence ability of American Intelligence agencies might well be embracing anxiety, despair, cynicism and depression now. But Christianity has been through all this before, and has a longer and stronger view, which we need to soak ourselves in especially when the going gets tough (like now) – and which can help us reach out with strength to those who do despair.

This analysis of history (including very recent history and current events) is mine, but the response to the problem of human over-dependence on fragile human institutions I base on the words of Paul and of Jesus in today’s Scriptures.

Paul would not be surprised by the decline and fall of empires; such changes would be merely examples of a larger process, a process infinitely more terrifying were it not for the hope that is even greater.

Paul writes that “The Creation will be set free from its bondage to decay.” In other words (bad news first), the Creation, itself is now “in bondage to decay,” the creation itself tends towards less order and less energy and unless transformed, will head toward chaotic stagnation until molecules themselves cease to move.

In other words, without God, we’re toast. And so is everyone and everything else. Lifeless. Dead. Oblivion.

BUT, Paul says, there is one force greater than entropy, and that is GOD: “For the Creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the Children of God; for the creation was subject to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. [Italics mine.] We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now: and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”

Entropy, the tendency of the creation to run down, to head toward chaos and stagnation, will be reversed – yes, and will be ended by a glorious new creation by God when God brings in the Kingdom of God at “harvest time” (to use Jesus’ expression in today’s Gospel) on Judgement Day, when history really will be ended – by God.

Freedom from decay for the creation when those who are saved by God experience resurrection and the freedom from decay that brings! This is indeed hope, hope for a whole new, greater, more wonderful world created and sustained by God, truly with freedom and justice for all.

That is The Big Picture, what goes along with the phrase we say in the Creed each Sunday, “He shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his Kingdom shall have no end.”

But there’s more – Paul’s allusion to “We ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit.” These “first fruits”, Paul says elsewhere, are like a down payment by God, the 5% or 10% experienced now which is the pledge of what is to come. We ourselves, yes right here, can receive a little piece of that advance payment by God, that token of the New World that is coming.

Paul says in Galatians 5:22-23 that “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Do these sound like fragile things to you? They are, in fact, eternal things: they will still be when the stock market, the economy, yes, and America itself have ceased to exist.

“Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Receive these “fruits of the Spirit” now as gifts from God to transform our lives – and through us, to transform the lives of others, and to prepare for the Great Day when they will flow over a world unblemished by hate, violence, disease, oppression or death. Experience these fruits and multiply these fruits and we are living in hope, in confident anticipation of the Kingdom of God, and beginning to live by its values already.

To those troubled by anxiety, despair, cynicism or depression now, let us offer these fruits: none are healthier, none can help people be stronger, for now and forever.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church