November 14, 2004
By Jack Price

The future is now.  This was the motto of coach George Allen when he came to the Washington Redskins.  He believed the future is now and so traded draft picks for veterans.  Many criticized him for mortgaging the future in order to win now.  For the Redskins of that era, it had been so long since they won anything that there was not much of future to mortgage.  Such a philosophy works sometimes and sometimes it doesn’t.  For the Redskins, it changed an entrench culture of losing, changed everything, at least for a while.

George Allen’s motto, the future is now, is not a complete life philosophy, but it is an important component.  The only time we really have is the future as it breaks into the present.  We have just the present moment as it is moving into future.

There is a television commercial for an investment company with the message, “You can’t predict, but you can prepare.  In dealing with life, especially as the future unfolds, the bottom line is this:  in what, in whom, will you trust?  In many ways, this is the message Jesus was giving to his disciples in today’s gospel lesson.

This passage is a great example of biblical paradox.  The Gospel accounts were written a generation or two after Jesus’ life and death.  Stories about the temple and its destruction would be future events in Jesus’ lifetime.  In the reality of the gospel writers and gospel readers, it was a fact of history.  The temple was destroyed by fire some ten years before Luke’s gospel was written in the form we now have.  For those hearing Luke gospel for the first time, the only stone upon stone left standing was the west wall of temple.  It still stands today in Jerusalem and is now called the Wailing Wall.

Talk of the temple being destroyed kindled in the Jews of Jesus’ time strong feelings of anticipation for the coming of Messiah to validate their faithfulness.  For many of them, it meant pay back time – the time to avenge their treatment at the hands of the Romans and others who had treated the Jews badly

Messianic expectation also brought fear of persecution, tribulation, and condemnation.  Today, there is some of the same anticipation and fear in response to a second coming of Messiah -- rapture of the faithful; and judgment, condemnation, and payback for the faithless.  There is fear at the prospect of judgment, condemnation, and the prospect of being “left behind”. 

What does Jesus in response to the anticipation and fear?  He says, “Don’t be led astray”.  In the meantime, life happens and will continue to happen.  Wars and earthquakes continue.  Famines and plagues and even heavenly portents continue to happen. 

Then, Jesus gives his followers some curious advice.  First, don’t prepare any defense in advance.  Your best defense will not be in any prepared argument.  Your goal is not to win a debate.  It is not to win a victory by arms or even to win an election.  Jesus promises his disciples, the first century church, and words and wisdom that cannot be withstood and cannot be contradicted.  They are to trust the experience and validity of their own experience of God.  Jesus reminds us that the witness of our living speaks so loudly that people cannot hear what we are saying.

Jesus’ second piece of advice is to prepare for conflict.  As a result of spirit-filled living, there will be divisions with families and in societies and nations.  How can we face these?  The only way is just to hang in, to endure.  Christian witness is truth telling and truth living.  We endure by being true to our experience of the living God and by trying to avoid being controlled by fear and the need to control.  The goal of faithful witness in words and deeds is the transforming of others by the Spirit of God.

How do these words of Jesus speak to us today?  He spoke against the backdrop of a coming crisis, one that the gospel writer had also witnessed.  We need to hear these words in the context of the crisis of our own day and time.

The recent presidential election tells us that, as a society, the United States is pretty divided.  It’s not as simple as red and blue states on the election map because the red states are actually 45-48% blue and the blue ones are 45-48% red.  In other words, we are a nation of purple states!

The Christian church is also divided.  While divisions are really nothing new for the Church, this one feels particularly deep and troubling.  Perhaps it feels that way only because it’s the one we are experiencing.  It just feels that, as the body of Christ, we are in kind of a mess right.

In the spirit of this time of division, let me remind you that your association with Crossroads Church identifies you with a group of people who believe in God as welcoming and inclusive, a God that cannot be fully contained by any religious system.  This community of faith recognizes that God’s gifts forgiveness, freedom, and faith are all unearned.  Their purpose is not to make us feel guilty, but to enable us to love fully, in the way Jesus loved.

I am very concerned about the deep divide we’re experiencing in the Christian Church.  It’s frustrating and scary.  In all honesty, probably some of the fear has to do with the realization that the part of the divide I am not on is the part with more power and influence these days.  It feels pretty powerless.  I am aware of some fear.  Perhaps you feel similarly?

What can we do?  Perhaps we can learn something from Jesus.  First, it’s important to be clear about what you’re afraid of so as not to be led astray by hidden fears. (share some congregational fears).

Second, what choices does your faith offer you?  (ask congregation to share)  Our faith tends to be future oriented.  We talk a lot about heaven and being with God after this life is over.  At the same time, a lot of our fear lives in the future.  We encounter it by living in the future rather than in the present.  Jesus, by words and actions in the gospels, encourages us to live in the present.  We can counter the power of fear by living in the present and taking action in our lives – by doing faith and using faith.

I need to remind you, at least from time to time, how blessed I am to be among you, to serve as your pastor.  One of the ways I am blessed in my work is to meet with many of you at least every couple of weeks in a small group setting.  There are the house church groups, Young Adults Topics, Sunday School, and several work group meetings. 

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve spent a lot of time in this groups debriefing the election.  Now it may surprise you that many of the participants felt a sense of loss regarding the election results.  We struggle with the task of being church, of being Christian, in such a time.  One of the points of consensus was genuine fear because, regardless about win or lose in the election, there is a clear division within the body of Christ.  It’s not new, but it has never been clearer or more public.

We talk a lot about what to do?  Through these discussions, we developed what may be a helpful plan of action for each of us and for all of us.  The first action is prayer.  Your prayer and mine can open a space for God to work.  Prayer can clarify within ourselves our passion and direction for life.  Through prayer, we can discover in what, in whom, we trust.  As theologian Walter Wink reminds us, all the significant struggles of life are won inwardly through prayer before they are ever encountered outwardly.

            The second action is sometimes an inaction.  It may not be necessary to seek our confrontation on every issue.  Jesus encouraged his followers not to back away from bearing faithful witness.  The same is true for us.  At the same time, we need not seek confrontation that is self-serving and, really, a power struggle.  Arguments tend to keep divisions inflamed.  It’s important to allow time and space for healing.

            The third action is to value others as fully human.  Avoid stereotyping anyone as a liberal or conservative, as a fundamentalist or a humanist.  Rather, listen to their story.  Value your own truth and hear their truth as valid, too.  Walk in their steps.

The fourth action is again prayer.  Through prayer, send everything to God:  all concerns, all desires, all hopes, all worries, and all fears.  Don’t keep even one.  This requires true faith.  When you send everything to God, then wait.  This also requires genuine faith.  Wait for God to send you back that narrow slice of concern, desire, hope, worry, and fear that exactly corresponds to your giftedness, your passion, and your call. 

Then, and only then, move to the fifth action, which is to act.  It requires true faith to live and act in sync with the Spirit.  The future is now.  What lies ahead is shaped by our present actions and choices.  It is not ours to control.  It is ours to live.

Jesus knew that fear of the future tends to shape our lives unless a clear

Alternative is present.  Faith offers a power greater than fear, a power we can trust.  It is the presence of living God. 

            For us here at Crossroads, how does fear of the future shape our congregational life?  I suspect we fear the loss of friends and the possibility that this bold experiment in being church will ultimately fail.  I suspect we fear the reality of financial limits and of physical and emotional – maybe even spiritual – fatigue.  We fear dying as a body.

What specifically does our faith offer us at this point?  We have the assurance of God’s presence in our congregational life.  We are assured of God’s presence in our worship – when it’s good and even when it’s not as good.  We have the assurance of God’s call to this body to be church according to our giftedness and our passion. 

We also have some other assurances.  We will face challenges.  Money will often be tight.  Beloved friends will leave us.  We won’t always treat each other lovingly.  We will sometimes wonder if we’ll survive.  To survive, we will be forced to step forward in faith.  We know this is true because is our history as well as our destiny.

Dealing with fear of the future means living in the present and taking action.  That means learning to trust God’s action in us.  There is an old gospel song that captures this thought:

Many things about tomorrow

I don’t seem to understand,

But I know who holds tomorrow

And I know who holds my hand.

This image of placing trust in God who holds the future enables us to live with courage in the present. 

            Faith is the alternative to fear.  The imminent theologian Yogi Berra has said, “When you get to a fork in the road, take it.”  The pathway of faith is a choice each of us has to make.  It’s a choice each congregation has.  The church is always just one generation away from extinction.  If, in faith, we endure -- living by faith in real time – we will experience life in its fullness and discover a deep purpose for our living.  We will be participating in the movement of life itself into the depth, into the heart, of the Creator.

The way I see it, the ball’s in our court.  If the Church is deeply divided, we who claim to represent a theology of inclusion, of radical grace, of love with no strings attached, and of peace through justice face a challenge.  At stake may well be the credibility of the Christian church’s witness in this generation.  The challenge of being church for our time includes finding a way to breach barriers and build bridges within the body of Christ – bridges to Oneness in God and unity in Christ.

PRAYER (Janet Morley, All Desires Known)

God, our dance,

in whom we live

and move and have our being;

so direct our strength

and inspire our weakness

that we may enter

with power

into the movement

of your whole creation,

through our partner Jesus Christ.  Amen