February 6, 2000

Douglas S. Long

North Raleigh United Church

Be Thou my vision…

…that God, and the realm of God, would be the vision we work towards

Be Thou my vision

…that God, and the realm of God, would be the lens through which we see…

…and ponder…and act.

Now there's a life's work not wasted…

I'll get back to that freeing vision a little further into this, but first, let me say a few words about a kind of 'visioning' that is far more confining and constricted.

I don't know about you, but I'm about tired of the millennial hype that has inundated the airways and media for the past year or so… and frankly I don't care whether you adhere to the millennium beginning this past January 1^st or next. Actually, I became tired of millennial madness years ago when I was in Seminary. It came to a head in one particular class I had in which I ended up somehow, accepting the challenge of formally debating the interpretation of the Revelation of John. Revelation, the last book of the Bible and one most often quoted when scenarios of the end times are mentioned.

One side, in this seminary debate, was to argue that the signs and symbols and language of John in his Revelation were all entirely literal in nature, while the other side would maintain the language and metaphor was not meant to be understood in a literal way at all… but that it was a kind of code language for insiders who understood the vocabulary.

I'll let you guess which side I argued.

And in the course of this debate I learned about millennialism… a term I had never run across prior to that… I learned more about millennialism than I ever wanted to know.

Millennialism… the idea that that there will be a 1000 year period of peace, orchestrated either directly by the triumphant Christ or his followers, in conjunction with the last days of human history as we know them.

Religious folk to the right are sharply divided, by the way, over whether this 1000 year period… not 900 years… not 1001 years… not 999… this exact 1000 year period will occur before Christ literally returns… which if you believe makes you a post-millennialist (Jesus comes after the 1000 years) …or after Christ returns … a pre-millennialist. And then, as you might guess, but I can't imagine caring, there are camps within the post millennialist view, and divisions within the pre-millennial view. Splits within splits within splits.

So is it Jesus' return and then the thousand years? … or the thousand years and then the triumphant Christ? Millennial madness.

There is a series of best sellers out now, I understand that hinge to some degree on this concept, and I have to tell you I think the entire thing is more fanciful than the literal interpretation of Alice In Wonderland. There are some folks waiting for earth shattering trumpets and a white stallion and Jesus in the sky. They are so caught up, no pun intended, in the imagery, that they miss the over-riding message. But the Biblical passages that lend themselves to such end of all time ponderings were never intended to predict specific events scores of centuries later.

They aren't about specific times and dates at all… but they ARE, these end time musings, they are about deep groundings and firm revelation…. And their message is this…

The end belongs to God.

This world may be a mess beyond belief… and it was for the early church… Rome in power, persecuting the fledgling Christian community, Jerusalem, site of the temple of God absolutely flattened to the ground… all current events when John penned his revelation…

This world may be a mess of misery BUT… the future is God's.

The Bible, you see, with the book of Genesis, begins with the most marvelous proclamation… In the beginning… God!…It a statement of faith more profound than almost any other.

In the beginning… God… I can think of only one other proclamation as profound …

In the end… God… which is exactly the point of John's Revelation.

God will have the final say.

God will have the final say. Wrap yourself around that one. I want to wrap my life around it. I believe that's what Jesus did. God will speak the last word!!

Tony Campolo says it this way to the Church today… "Hey folks, I've peeked at the end of the book… and God wins!!"

That's exactly what John proclaims in what may be the possibly the most inspiring verse in all of scripture... Revelation 11:15 'The Kingdom of this world shall become the Kingdom of our God and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever." ...to which Handel adds, Hallelujah...

There are multiple Biblical images for this (the future belonging to God) of course... It's not just something stated in John's Revelation. It is a theme that runs through out the scriptures.

trust...

Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah and the other OT prophets continually affirm that there will come a day when the temple will be lifted higher than the hills, and all the nations will stream to God, and swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks... and everyone will sit in peace with nothing to trouble them.

There will be a day when God will prevail for the good of all people.

The future is God's and it is a glorious future without war and without suffering. Justice will be present and righteousness flowing like a mighty stream…. That night may be upon us and the powers of darkness intense but there will be joy in the morning. God prevails.

Is that not an empowering vision? That's the message of the OT prophets.

…and listen to other passages from the early Church.

Paul says it this way to the church in Rome who was undergoing persecution and social alienation from those around it...

If God is for us, who can be against us?

We are free to join God in the redemption of the world...

Will anything stand in our way? Will anything intervene ?

Absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of Christ... not persecution, or peril, not sword, not death or anything imaginable...

...The future is God's and God has claimed us to be a part of it.

What could be more empowering? More inspiring? Why hesitation?

If we know the future is God's… if we believe that… then how could there be any waffling in what we do? Why any indecision or doubt?

Is it that simple?

Well… no. No it's not.

6 or 7 years ago I was watching a movie with Jordan, my son, when he was then 6 or 7 years old... (Now Jordan doesn't like me to tell stories to all of you about him but trust me Jordan, this one's O.K. …and true.)

We were watching a dramatic story and the suspense was building. The evil forces were closing in and the heroine in grave danger.

The phone rang and I stopped the video... (what did we do before we could do that?)

It turned out to be a phone solicitation which translates around our house these days into a very brief conversation, but I took the opportunity to ask Jordan how he was doing, with this frightening movie.

"Sorta scared," he responded..

'Just sorta,' I said, 'I thought you'd be more than 'sorta' scared"....

'No,' he explained, 'because I've seen this before and I know how it ends...'

'Well, if you know how it ends, why are you scared at all?'

'Because,' came the reply, 'we aren't at the end , we're at the now.'

We are at the now. We may gain glimpses of the realm of God, but there is plenty of chaos still around us too.

No lasting peace accords in Ireland or Bosnia or Grozny or the Congo… pick your continent..

We still have hunger and poverty, racism and homelessness in our own land of peace and plenty. …not to mention personal crises of relationships gone sour and jobs that disappoint us and children or parents or both that are more than a handful.

The future is God's but we are at the now.

I would never counsel you to turn your eyes away from that which is troubling, but I would also never want to encourage you to believe that that is all there is to see.

Someone asked me once if I was an optimist or a pessimist. I said I was a Christian.

"That's a stupid response," they countered and stalked off.

I would have continued the conversation, but they didn't give me the opportunity. Maybe I sounded too pious. I still would want to answer the same way... as a Christian I think we see with intense feeling the suffering and the problems in our world (which can lead to pessimism) but as Christians we know also there is more to the story. (ah... in the end…)

William Sloan Coffin says it this way,

I think there are signs and portents of this realm of God, this future already breaking in among us. Signs near and far. I believe the future can be the now.

Eighty years ago… who would have believed that a woman would be allowed to vote in this country… (We forget that such basic rights are a recent gain in history.)

Signs and portents in the present that the future is God's…

20 years ago… who among us would have believed the Iron Curtain would be shattered so completely?

Signs of God's future…

Ten years ago, when Apartheid was very much alive in South Africa… Ten years ago who among us would have believed that the imprisoned Nelson Mandela would not only persevere the punishment of jail but soon be President of South Africa?

The future is God's and it's breaking into the present? Signs and portents? I don't have to look any farther than … right here… to believe there is a present in-breaking of God into history.

12 months ago you couldn't have convinced any of us that we'd be in a community of promise called North Raleigh United Church, challenging each other to love tangibly and doing just that.

Therefore, because it is God's endeavor, I believe that we will continue to grow into this community of faith and love

And because I believe it is part of God's future…women will continue to gain footholds of equality among us until one day we will elect

a female as president of the US

and one day there will be an African American president of the US

and, perhaps a stretch more idealistic than any, the US will one day function not as a super power of the world but participate in the equal sharing of power in the world.

I believe this, because I know the future is God's.

In God's future, our personal relationships will be full of compassion and caring and

meaning… and we will not take each other for granted.

In God's future, the death penalty will be abolished, militarism destroyed, racism

eliminated, and sexism abrogated to a footnote in the annals of history.

In God's future, peace through strength will give way to peace through justice,

poverty will be outlawed, and marriages made legal for any two people who speak their vows of love to each other,

In God's future, there will be education available to all, economic parity among the races,

food for all children, and water for all who thirst...

In God's future there'll be love, peace and contentment, there'll be joy.

When Helen Keller was asked if she could think of anything worse than being blind she quickly responded... 'Yes! Being able to see and having no vision.'

-If the future is God's then anything we do that does not conform to that future needs to be called into question...

-If the future is God's then we need to claim it and work towards it...

-If the future is God's then the church ought to be about the business of ushering the present into that future...

How do we work towards such a future?

Well, here, I say… we live out our wonderful covenant. There's vision enough there to keep us occupied for about a millennium… or at least a lifetime.

We are the people of God's future... Let the reign of God be proclaimed... to the glory of God.

'If God is for us, who can be against us?'

'The Kingdom of this world shall become the Kingdom of our God and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever."

…Hallelujah!

Amen.