If you don't know that Christmas is a couple of weeks away, you must be living underground. And you must have no contact with any children. And you cannot have been to a mall, Wal-Mart, Walgreen's, or any other chain store since three weeks before Halloween. Christmas, probably more than any other day in the contemporary American calendar, is one of those days where impact really stretches the envelope of time not just — like some great tragedy — after the fact, but also in anticipation. If we aren't good little boys and girls today, we know who won't leave many gifts for whom in the future. If we don't go out and spend, spend, spend, we are increasingly told by financial pundits, then we know who will be to blame for a sluggish economy, because so many retailers depend on Christmas shopping for some obscene percentage of their annual profit. So there is a clear correlation between what we do today and what will happen then. Little children and retail chains alike evaluate the time between now and December 25 and ask, "Are we headed in the right direction?"
We believe, as Christians, that our faith has a direction in time and that we find ourselves at a certain point along that trajectory. As we read the biblical epic, we find a beginning in Genesis. Whether we understand those stories as literal truth or as theological metaphor, they are stories of a beginning. And there is the end of the story found in Revelation. Again, how we read that story — as literal prediction or as apocalyptic teaching — it gives us a sense that we are headed in a certain direction toward an ultimate future. And here we are, somewhere in between, just as Christians have always found themselves between the first advent of Christ and the second.
The Christian season of Advent has always had a strong sense of past, present, and future. During Advent we recall the past: the centuries of waiting for the birth of the Messiah, the prophetic utterances about what the Messiah would be like, and then the unlikely birth of the baby in the Bethlehem manger. This is the historical coming of the Messiah two millennia ago. But there is also the present tense, the sense in which we need to open our hearts and minds to the presence of the eternal Savior today in the eternal now as we make decisions and live out our lives as disciples. And there is the future, a future that we feel lies within the providence of God and in which God's reign will ultimately prevail.
We find all three tenses in the opening verse of today's lesson: "For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope." There is the anchor of the past, "whatever was written in former days." There is the existential moment in which we find ourselves, "so that [today] by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures...." And there is the future into which we must direct our lives with the assurance that "we might have hope." This is how life is lived, isn't it? Past, present, future. The challenge is to keep all three dimensions together in a healthy balance whether in the season of Advent or in our lives.
We know how too much emphasis on the past can lead to the death of the present. As the old cliché points out, you can't move ahead looking over your shoulder. One of the great downsides of the miracle of modern medicine is the increased number of persons whose bodies are healthy, but who suffer from some form of senility that gives them a lively sense of what happened sixty years ago but little awareness of their current situation. Similarly, there have always been people in the church who are fascinated with the historicity of the story of Jesus, aficionados of biblical archaeology, and perhaps even frequent travelers to the Holy Land, but for whom a present experience of the living God is missing. Typically, we don't have to look for people who can even quote the scriptures extensively but who do not seem to be affected, let alone transformed, by them. In Paul's words (15:4), they are keenly aware of what was written in former days but seem to regard it as historical artifact rather than personal instruction.
Pretty much the same can be said for too much emphasis on the future. The old saying is true, "Life is what happens while you are making other plans." In Christian circles there have always been those who have been so preoccupied with the second coming of Christ that the true meaning of the first coming seems to elude them. This was the crisis Paul confronted in his very first canonical letter to the Thessalonians. In my day, it was preoccupation with the works of Hal Lindsay that seemed to provide a Christian distraction from real life for many people, but it is always something. Is it too much to suggest that if every person who read the Left Behind books and saw the movies was living a spirit-filled, Christ-transformed life the world would be a different place than it is today? Christian teachings about the second advent of Christ are not meant to be a distraction, but a reminder of God's ultimate victory that allow us to truly focus on loving and serving God in the present moment. The lesson wants us to be filled with encouragement and hope not to escape from the vicissitudes of life in the real world, but, "to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."
It would seem that the dangers of living totally in the present, with neither reference points in the past nor goals for the future would be self-evidently tragic, as is witnessed in cases where people have only very short-term memory and whose real lives begin to look eerily like a Sartre play. And yet we live in a time that almost seems to encourage such disconnect from the past. What public speaker doesn't love to quote the Spanish philosopher George Santayana: "Those who ignore the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them"? Yet, we usually live more in line with this thought than we admit. A man named Ambrose Bierce, in his book, The Devil's Dictionary, defined history as "An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools." Napoleon said, "History is but a fable agreed upon." And everyone's favorite comes from Henry Ford, "History is bunk." We are apt to fall prey to what C. S. Lewis called "chronological snobbery." I always thought he coined that wonderful phrase, but it turns out it comes from his friend, Owen Barfield, who defined it this way:
Chronological snobbery is the presumption, fueled by the modern conception of progress, that all thinking, all art, and all science of an earlier time are inherently inferior, indeed childlike or even imbecilic, compared to that of the present. Under the rule of chronological snobbery, the West has convinced itself that "intellectually, humanity languished for countless generations in the most childish errors on all sorts of crucial subjects, until it was redeemed by some simple scientific dictum of the last century."1 Chronological snobbery is the presumption, fueled by the modern conception of progress, that all thinking, all art, and all science of an earlier time are inherently inferior, indeed childlike or even imbecilic, compared to that of the present. Under the rule of chronological snobbery, the West has convinced itself that intellectually, humanity languished for countless generations in the most childish errors on all sorts of crucial subjects, until it was redeemed by some simple scientific dictum of the last century. (1)
Elsewhere, Barfield observed, "It has become to believe that ‘anything more than a hundred years old is ancient' and ‘in the world of books, or opinions about books, the age at which senility sets in has now been reduced to about ten.' " (2) When I tell students about my Commodore 64 computer, I might as well be telling them about eating dinosaur meat. Without worrying about all the cultural and psychological hazards inherent in our tendency to dismiss anything from the past, as Christians we affirm with Paul, "For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction...." We separate the past, present, and future advents of Christ. Instead, we must hold them together.
In a way the whole season of Advent, with its emphasis on the past, present, and future advents of Jesus Christ, is a reminder of our need as Christians to live lives that are informed by the past, enlivened by the presence of the living Christ in our midst, and directed toward the consummation of God's will. In other words, our lives as Christians and as Christian communities need to embody the totality of God's grace. Paul does this in today's lesson not just by emphasizing past, present, and future but by joining two complementary words that together express the totality of God's self-revelation: truth and mercy. (3)
For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. (Romans 15:8)
The truth of God speaks of God's absolute nature and the reliability of God's revelation. Words like "trustworthiness" and "faithfulness" come to mind. "For the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them" (Hosea 14:9 KJV). Too much emphasis on the immutable truths of God can lead to an overly stern and harsh image, however. So God's truth is coupled by Paul with God's mercy, God's kindness, and steadfast love or forbearance. I hope it almost goes without saying that we have often placed far too much emphasis on God's mercy as a gooey kind of all-accepting love and forgiveness. In the last few years, a new kind of American religion has been described by researchers who claim it is particularly prevalent among young people. I think it crosses age boundaries. It has been termed "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism." According to researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this new faith consists of beliefs like these:
- "A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth."
- "God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions."
- "The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself."
- "God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem."
- "Good people go to heaven when they die." (4)
Isaac Watts, the great hymn writer, is supposed to have commented upon reading Jonathan Edward's famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," with the words, "Could use a bit more of ye gospelle," in other words it could have used a little more emphasis on God's mercy. My reaction to "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" is that it "could use a bit more of ye truth."
We are all guilty, from time to time, of failing to see the big picture, of not comprehending the forest because of the trees. Paul's exhortation is for us to never lose sight of the big picture of God's marvelous work in the world, past, present, future: unchanging truth and unfailing mercy. Why? "... so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."
There is one final dimension that Paul emphasizes about God's work through Christ Jesus: that it is an ever-expanding and inclusive work. If we want to envision God's work through time (and this image may be more or less useful to different folks) it is not like the path of an arrow, beginning at one point and ending at another — a straight line. It is more like a trajectory that begins at a point — God's covenant with Abraham — but that becomes larger and larger the further it goes in time, producing a shape not like a line, but like megaphone; becoming larger and encompassing more and more area with each passing moment. And this is good news for everyone!
Paul doesn't quite break into song to celebrate this expanse of God's love but he nearly does as he gives a paean of (to the original readers) familiar scripture passages ending in a benediction. He begins by quoting Psalm 18:49, "Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles, and sing praises to your name." The "therefore" refers to what Paul has just said about the truth and mercy of God being made available to the "Gentiles." The word "gentile" throughout this passage translates the Greek ethne (from which we get the English word ethnic) which simply means all non-Jews. Then a quotation from Moses in Deuteronomy 32:34: "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people (Israel)." Paul doesn't introduce this with "Moses says," as we might expect, but with "it (not "he" as in the NRSV) says...." "It" of course refers to the scriptures that were written in former days for our instruction, tying this expansion of the gospel message to all nations (the Gentiles) back to the teachings of scripture. We have progressed from the Gentiles praising God to the Gentiles praising God along with the Jews. In a cosmopolitan congregation like Rome where there were undoubtedly ethnically Jewish converts to faith in Jesus as well as Gentile Christians, this quotation from Moses underscores Paul's earlier call for unity in the church (v. 7).
Paul again quotes scripture, "Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise him." This is actually half of the shortest and probably most frequently memorized of all the psalms, so there is little doubt many of his original readers would have mentally completed it, reemphasizing God's mercy: "For great is his steadfast love towards us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures for ever." Finally, Paul quotes Isaiah by name, again weaving two themes together: "The root of Jesse shall come, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles...." Jesse, David's father, reminds us that Jesus came from the house and lineage of David. The word "rises," regardless of its original meaning in Isaiah, now can be understood as a reference to Christ's resurrection, his arising from the dead (it is the same Greek word), which calls the Gentiles to faith in the God who raised him. And this paean of scripture references ends with a marvelous prayer for the future: "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit" (Romans 15:5-6).
During the Advent and Christmas seasons, I sometimes hear complaints from liturgical purists about jumbling things altogether. Services based on the Kings College Service of Nine Lessons and Carols jumble seemingly (although not really) random passages with Advent and Christmas music, some complain. And church Christmas pageants have always jumbled up the Luke and Matthew birth narratives, overlaying Christmas and Epiphany with angels, animals, and kings all standing in one tableau. They have a point. But Paul's conclusion to Romans reminds us that as Christians we need to keep everything in view all the time: past, present, and future; God's truth and God's mercy; the old prophecy and the ultimate fulfillment; Christ's birth and his resurrection. When we see things in too much isolation, it is easy to forget where we are. And then we can lose track of whether or not we are headed in the right direction. Amen.
1. Owen Barfield, History in English Words (London: Faber and Faber, UK, 1964), p. 164.
2. Owen Barfield, Worlds Apart: A Dialogue of the 1960s (London: Faber and Faber, UK, 1963), p. 148.
3. John Paul Heil, "The Voices of Scripture and Paul's Rhetorical Strategy of Hope in Romans 15:7-13," Theoforum 33 (2002) 187-211. (http://johnpaulheil.com/Voices%20 of%20Scripture.htm). I am also indebted to Heil's interpretation of some of the OT quotes in verses 9b-12.
4. http://www.christianpost.com/article/editorial/322/section/moralistic. therapeutic.deism — the.new.american.religion/1.htm.