In the movie “Back to the Future”, Marty McFly is accidentally sent back to 1955, where he meets his future mother and fath as teens. If he cannot ensure that they get married and have children, his own future will not exist. Not only do we get some insight into life back in 1955 for a young person, we get a kind of theological movie about how things happen. That unless some certain things *do* happen, other things *won’t* happen.
It’s been an interesting journey, saying “yes” to this future at Corner Brook. I had no doubts whatsoever that this was meant to happen. If I had said no, the future would have been significantly different. What has been interesting is the reaction of my friends. My ministry friends, most of them, said “Way to go, Fran!” Some said “when other people are trying NOT to get settled in Newfoundland, you decide to go there.” Of my close friends, only one said “You’re doing this the right way. At a time when most of us are slowing down, you’re picking up speed and doing something different.” The others said “Why is Fran doing this??”
Today we hear two pieces of scripture. I like to call them “book ends” to God’s future. Isaiah has a vision of a new creation. God says “See, I am about to do a new thing!”. The vision describes what the new creation will be like. There will be no illness, no sadness; small children will grow up to be old and wise, instead of dying young.
Then in Revelation, we see the vision of John where the future has happened - the new creation, the realm of God has come. John takes his readers back to the future in God’s world. The realm of God, right in the mucky and horrendous world of the here and now, happens.
What is interesting is that neither scripture says HOW it will happen.
Rev. Thomas Hall is one of my favourite crafters of sermons. He talks about how we get stuck in the here and now - “preoccupied by grotesque shapes of terrorism, the runaway costs of living, unchecked crime in our neighborhoods, or pollution on a global scale.” and he says that we too often see only the mud of life. But, he says, the vocabulary of faith opens our vision to see purpose beyond chaos, joy beyond sorrow, life beyond death, and God beyond all the muck.
A friend of mine, Rev. Fred Ulrich, is both an ordained certified Methodist preacher, and an ordained Buddhist priest; because of his dual training, he has the ability to take stories out of either tradition, and make them relevant. He told a story about the lotus plant. The lotus is one of the most beautiful flowers, rising from under the water, pushing the flower head above the surface, and opening into something completely spectacular. What we don’t see, says Fred, is the muck down at the bottom of the pond. Lotus seeds cannot grow without the muck and the mud. Without a filthy and mucky bottom layer, the lotus would not be at all.
Human beings, and creation, are like the lotus. I think we need the muck and the fear, to make us look harder at the future. Without those things, perhaps faith would not exist at all. When we see death, we reflect on what life is; when we see illness we reflect on what health is - either physical or spiritual; when we see war, we begin to think about the true meaning of peace. When we look at all of those things we begin to think about the future which God describes to Isaiah and to John, and we begin to work to get to that future.
Faith allows us to claim with the prophet Isaiah that God is at work creating new heavens and a new earth. Our vision sees grace flying up and up from the mud.
God’s vision continues to build a new heaven and earth, not just through Jesus. That’s too easy to say it’s all happening through Jesus. God is also creating this new heaven and earth through each of us, if we are attentive. Jesus set the example, but we who claim to be disciples have to make the decision to follow, even if that means taking a risk and trying out something totally new.
God’s vision does not suggest that we unplug ourselves and walk away from the mud. Rather the opposite—we work in our world and in the relationships of our daily lives as if the Realm of God is at hand, and is already shaping that new heaven and earth. Our hands, our words, our efforts and energy, our financial investments to further God’s purpose for the world become in God’s creative hands, the tools God uses to create new things in the world.
The letter of Paul to the Thessalonians is a kind of exhortation. He writes to the church in Thessalonika that they should not “weary of doing what is right”.
But our sustaining vision frees our faith to look beyond the Now and beyond those things that run opposite to God’s great vision of health, healing, wholeness, peace, love, and restoration in this world. So we look back to Isaiah, and back to Revelation, in order to create that future which God lays out. What we as Christians are trying to do in our faith journey together is going back to the future of God’s vision for all of creation.
And in that quest, we take risk. We set out on a journey to a new place. We don’t know what will happen on the road. We don’t know what will happen at any of the stops on the way. But we enter into the journey together, to work together in the creation of that future. This is our upward call- to shape the future, to shape a beautiful flower, from the very mud in which our feet are planted. May it be so.
Sources:
1. “Grace Flying Up”, a sermon based on Isaiah 65:1-7 by Rev. Thomas Hall
2. General Council lecture, Camrose, Alberta 1998, Rev. Fred Ulrich.
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