Looking to the Future

In terms of the Christian calendar there's no particular reason why we should start the new year a week after Christmas. In some ways it would make more sense if it came after Easter Sunday when we remember the resurrection; or whit sunday when we remember God's Holy Spirit being poured out into the church and the world and into our hearts. But as it's turned out Christmas and New Year go together very well indeed.

Because after Christmas we all have a great big list of things that we wish were different.

Over the past few weeks we've been in the company of others a lot more than some of us are used to and it isn't always easy. Christmas is a time spent at the coal-face of Christianity with almost constant opportunites to be judgemental about the people we're thrown together with.

When visiting relatives we can't help noticing how they don't do things the way that we do: whether it's how they prepare a meal, or how they hold their knife and fork. We find ourselves disapproving of people, don't we? Of how they talk to their children, or how they don't recycle enough: in countless ways we find that the company we've been keeping doesn't behave in the way we would prefer, And with every opportunity to pass judgement has come an opportunity to forgive, to rise above it, and to remember our own faults.

So over Christmas we find it hard, very hard, not to throw the first stone. And we come out the other end of it feeling pretty bad about ourselves.

So that would be a good very new year's resolution, to forgive rather than condemn, to judge ourselves not others, not to throw the first stone.

Christmas has shown us how some of our relationships are just not what they could and should be. If you feel you ought to buy a present for someone, but you have no idea what to buy them what does that say about your relationship with that person? So that would be another good new year resolution - to get to know people a bit better, so we know what present to buy them next year because we know what they've been up to and we know what they like and dislike.

And what has this Christmas taught us about our relationship with money? Some of us will be starting the new year in debt because of what we've spent on Christmas. Did we really need to spend that much? Have we fallen into the trap of thinking money can make us happy, that material possessions will make other people like us? Many of us will be making new years' resolutions to do with money: not to spend more than we earn, not to throw our money away on things that don't make us happy. Some of us will have spent more than we can afford over Christmas because we're concerned about what people will think of us. This should tell us that something isn't right, there's something in us and in our relationships that isn't right. Lets fix it in this coming year.

There's a lot of fun to be had at Christmas but a lot of work too. Have we done our bit? Or did this Christmas confirm the fact that things aren't very fair in our home and the burden always falls on the same people. We could resolve to change that in the coming year.

And Christmas makes us painfully aware that as a society and as communities we don't manage to look after everyone. There have been people sleeping rough this Christmas; many people have been alone and unloved over Christmas; and many people have lived with disease and poverty while we've been opening presents and eating Turkey.

But lets be honest. Whatever our good intentions right now we know that come next Christmas we'll still find other people annoying, we'll still struggle to buy presents for people because we don't know them as well as we should and we'll still spend too much. And things probably won't be any fairer next Christmas than they were this year. Which is why some people only ever make one new years' resolution - not to make any resolutions.

But that can't be us. Resolving to change, to do better, is what we're all about. New Year's day is when the rest of the world does what we do every week. Every time we worship we confess our sins from the past week, we receive forgiveness and we are compelled to try again. Every time we say the Lord's prayer we go through this process of dealing with what's gone before and then looking to a bright future. So we should not be shy about joining in with everyone else and making some new years' resolutions.

Some people find it hard to think about the future. They're so depressed, so fearful about what seems to be on the horizon that they daren't hope any more. Or their aspirations are so vague and so unrelated to any practical steps that they might take towards them that it amounts to the same thing as not hoping at all.

But Christians should always hope, should always be looking to the future. Some of us worship in very old buildings, and some of our congregations are quite elderly. We read from a book the last bit of which was written nearly two thousand years ago. And yet our faith is not about the past, it's about the future.

The Kingdom of God that we pray for each week is not a golden age in the past, it's our future. The resurrection happened once two thousand years ago as a sign that it will happen to EVERYONE in the future. The cross isn't a memorial to what happened, it's a statement about what will happen in the future.

I've talked before about how Christianity has a beginning a middle and an end, a past present and future that is so at odds with Buddhism. For Buddhists time is something that goes round and round not forward but for us we must always be focused on the future.

Traditional African religions are all about the past, all about ancestors, being worthy of them and seeking protection from them.

The most civilized pagans in the Roman Empire thought Christianity abhorrent because to them the most you could say about the future was that it might be the same as the past. But ours is a tranforming faith, believing as we do in a resurrected Christ that announces to the world that it will be changed. What happened on easter day was not a one off piece of God showing off, it was a mighty sign that our whole world will be transformed, that the Kingdom of God will come to us. The resurrection is a wonderful sign, it's our redemption in the future. The risen Jesus is a bit of tomorrow today. Jesus is in the Kingdom of God and the redemption that he's working in us is like a gravitational pull towards the future, towards restoration, perfection, unity, towards heaven.

So in this drama we all have a part to play, and it's not generally a part that we get to choose.

The Israelites led by Joshua thousands of years ago in our Old Testament reading were part of the same drama, the same story, that we are performing in right now. Even then everything was going in one direction, towards the Kingdom of God.

They already had an illustrious past to inspire them, their liberation from slavery was a recent memory, but they were seized by a task to be performed in the present that was to bear fruit in the future. The book of Joshua is the first book after the pentateuch, the first 5 books of the Bible. They already had an ancient history in the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abraham and Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Noah, the tower of Babel, a religion could be based on just the first book of the Bible, couldn't it? But not only did they have their ancient history, their book of origins, but they also had their recent history, the story of how God had liberated them from slavery, of how the great Moses had formed them into a people and led them, how God had inspired him and produced mighty miracles along the way.

This could be seen as sufficient for a religion. They could have become at that point a people who, like many other cultures, live in the past. Always talking about their golden age, wishing for nothing more than to return to those days. But that wasn't what God had in mind for them.

They were the chosen people and they were marching towards a promised land, their faith was calling them into the future. And the goal they had in mind, of a promised land flowing with milk and honey, in fact, wasn't the final destination many of them will have thought it was. That land was to produce many generations of prophets and eventually would be the setting in which, through which the redemption of the whole world would take place.

So Joshua had to win that battle, didn't he? God would make sure that the Israelites prevailed. In our reading we hear about how God tells the soldiers in advance that he will be with them and he will cause them to be victorious. Joshua thought that winning that battle would be a stepping stone towards the promised land. In fact it was a stepping stone towards the Kindgom of God. Those soldiers waiting to go into battle, no doubt full of fear, what effect did it have on them to be told that the outcome was already settled? It must have given them great courage, but some of them still would lose their lives. God wins the battle, but he does it with them and through them not without them.

And we are always crossing the Jordan. Our life on earth is meant to be lived on the threshold. And what courage and joy it can give us when God tells us that the outcome is not in doubt, that the victory has already been won by Him. But we're not excused from the battle, are we? Some of us will die early, and some of us will suffer, but we are part of something much bigger. We're part of this story that is moving towards the most wonderful conclusion, and no matter what blows befall us in the present they won't stop us from taking our place in the Kingdom of God.

That Kingdom which is built up and brought ever nearer through our lives with Christ here and now. Which was built up and brought nearer when the Israelites crossed the Jordan. They were given signs, the Ark of the Covenant, that God was with them. And we too have been given signs that God will be with us and that victory is His and will be ours.

Joshua's men had to win that battle so that there could be a land and a people through which God's prophets would speak. They had to play their part on that terrifying day thousands of years ago so that many hears in their future Isaiah, one of the greatest prophets of Israel, could prophesy the coming of Christ.

And in our Gospel reading Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah. But not because he's stuck in the past. He quotes this prophet from 500 years ago as he is telling them about the Kingdom of God which is partly there and then, in the present, and partly in the future. He's making the link between an earlier part of God's story, the prophecy of Isaiah, the part that he is playing in it there and then, and what is going to happen in the next bit of this story. In this passage we see the perfect integration of past, present and future. We see the thread running through the whole story that includes the Israelites in captivity, in the wilderness, then in the promised land producing prophets that start to give clues as to where it's all going. It's all pointing towards Jesus, isn't it? But then Jesus comes and even He can't stop talking about the future. Jesus, who is there in the present spends most of his time talking about things that will happen in the future. But when he talks about the future he refers to the past. He shows the continuity between Isaiah, who was looking to the future, and himself who is pointing the way to the future, and ourselves who should have our eyes firmly set on this future.

Throughout the New Testament we see Jesus' actions set against a template of the past. The 40 days in the wilderness when Jesus uses the scriptures to defeat the devil; the transfiguration where Jesus is seen alongside Elijah and Moses, the Passover as context for the Eucharist, the ark as the image for future salvation, Jesus as the new Adam in Romans.

So for us this must mean that there's no ban on talking about the past. Jesus refers frequently to the line of prophets that led up to the time of his birth. And we have our own impressive history that we shouldn't be shy about, indeed we should be proud of it. The reformed tradition looks back to the early church. It looks back to the reformation, to Geneva in the 16th Century, to the religious revival of the nineteenth century, to the pilgirm fathers. But why do we look back? We do so, in the same way that Jesus did, because it points the way to the future. Our history is so important but not for its own sake. The book of Joshua is highly questionable if taken on its own, its a bloodcurlding tale of ethnic cleansing, but it really matters because it is part of that thread that runs from the creation of the world to its redemption, it's part of God's story.

Our own past is important because of the role it played in building the present and the future. It's still important because it can inspire us and point the way to the future still. But we mustn't live in the past because the Gospels show that God doesn't live in the past. Jesus, throughout the Gospels, acts in the present, with a nod to the past, but as a signpost to the future. That's God's story and we're part of it. The cross is not something locked away in a museum, or chained up in a book. It's an active, dynamic, transforming force that is working now and is creating our future.

Every day is Easter Day for us. That means we live in hope. We look at every dark situation and believe that it can be transformed into light. And that hope is real, it's based on something real and powerful and true: the certainty of God's promise.

Lets look again at those words from the letter to the Hebrews:

Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest for ever, in the order of Melchizedek.

God has made an oath about our future. He has sworn by Himself. Our souls don't need to be blown away with confusion, we have this hope as an anchor. We don't need to be driven onto the rocks of despair, our hope keeps us where we are, secure in God's promise. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain.

What's behind the curtain? In our darkest hours we fear what's behind the curtain, what's on the other side. But Jesus has already gone there on our behalf. Like Joshua and his men we learn, in advance, that the battle has been won for us. So we're not afraid and we don't despair. We have this hope, always, as an anchor for our souls.

And because we have this hope we are not afraid to look to the future and we're not afraid to build for the future,