Looking to tomorrow

Deuteronomy 32:44-50, 34:1-12, Matthew 24:1-14, 29-31

Many human beings are fascinated by the future.  What lies down the track? Quo vadis? Where are we heading? What will tomorrow bring? It’s not just individual human inclination. There is a huge industry now focused around the future. In the 80’s and 90’s we had a Commission for the Future. Think tanks of all political persuasions use policy analysis to try and influence the future. Scientists engaged in a range of disciplines are trying to predict the future.

At the end of his life Moses was instructed to climb Mt Nebo. There he could look over to see the Promised Land!  This was not just a geographical experience. The land had been promised to Abraham centuries before. Moses had been born in Egypt and wandered in Midian. After the rigours of the Exodus and 40 years wandering in the wilderness he now could see laid out before him the Promise God had made to Israel – he was looking not only into the Promised Land, he was looking into his people’s future. He was looking to tomorrow.

This experience was shared by others in the Bible. In Genesis 18 Abraham was taken to a place where he could look down on Sodom and God showed him the future of the city. Jeremiah the prophet saw the coming collapse of his society and preached and prayed that they might change their direction. If we went through the prophets we would find that many of them had insight into where their societies were heading and what lay ahead.

In the NT we have many texts that deal with the future. Paul in Romans 8 grappled with the mystery of creation bound in futility and longing for the future of the children of God. In 1 Corinthians 15 he talks about the power of resurrection touching all things into the future until finally even death itself will be overcome.  The writer of Revelation, includes a long vision of ‘what will happen hereafter’ exploring the fates of nations and kingdoms and the future of the people of God.

It should not surprise us that the future is of interest to early Christians. If you want a one word summary of the message that Jesus brought it would have to be “Repent!”  - which just means ‘change!’, ‘turn around’, ‘live differently’. More extended exploration of what Jesus was teaching shows something breaking in to life, something that turns old ways on their head and turns the world upside down. Is it any wonder they were interested in the future?

That interest bubbled up in the tumultuous days before Jesus was tried and executed. The disciples heard him announce that the stones of the Temple would be thrown down and asked the very human question – tell us when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age?” Tell us about tomorrow and what’s going to happen.

We stand in the tradition of the disciples. In our natural human curiosity, and with the eye of faith, we want to see into tomorrow. There are many challenges and risks before us as a human community. We are surrounded by change and we want to know where that change is leading. Let me name just some issues. We are facing changes to legislation affecting the industrial relations climate in this country. These have been called the biggest changes to the IR system in a hundred years. What will tomorrow bring for Australian workers and for the kind of society we will live?

We are facing in a week anti-terrorism legislation that includes giving powers to detain Australian citizens without trial and empower authorities to shoot to kill in certain circumstances. What will tomorrow bring for civil rights and human community in our nation?

Concerns around the world are growing about the emergence of an avian flu pandemic which could kill millions, or even tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of people. In the papers yesterday there was a  report that any such pandemic could lead to the closing of all Australian air and shipping ports. What will tomorrow bring for families the world over, ourselves included, who have loved ones ill with this disease?

We are living with changes to climate patterns and various scenarios offered as to what will happen if not tomorrow, at least by the end of the present century. Evidence varies and scientists are divided in their predictions, but some of the scenarios are, shall we say, sobering. What will tomorrow bring with regard to climate, and environment, and the shape of human life?

Now I don’t wish to spread gloom. All these things are risks, potential events, and no-one knows what any of them might look like, if they occur. But we should at least be looking to tomorrow, and asking what we as people of faith can say about how we engage the future.

I want to do that by exploring at Moses on Mt Nebo and Jesus on the Mount of Olives and how they were looking to the future.

In engaging this theme, however, we must acknowledge that Christians have done some very strange things in their engagement with the future. There is a long history of isolated texts being torn from context and used, Nostradamus-like, to predict the future. Like the Tarot and gazing into crystal balls these have very limited effectiveness as tools of prediction. However, after the event, any one with a computer-search function on their electronic Bibles can find a spooky reference that is vaguely suggestive of what has just occurred, if you look at it from a particular angle in the correct light conditions. This, and many of the ‘words of prophecy’ that are glibly offered in some church traditions are not what we are talking about today. Such approaches have minimal connection with the Scripture, other than as a source of raw material and poetic language.

That are at best quaintly eccentric, such as the born-again Christian and founder of Zion Oil & Gas of Dallas, who is drilling for oil in Israel, on the basis of a text from the very section of Deuteronomy we are looking at this  "Most blessed of sons be Asher. Let him be favoured by his brothers and let him dip his foot in oil," Deuteronomy 33:24.

“Standing next to a 54-metre-high derrick at Kibbutz Maanit in northern Israel, Brown said the passage indicated there is oil lying beneath the biblical territory of the Tribe of Asher.” (Sydney Morning Herald April 6, 2005) Evangelical Christians have invested in Zion Oil and Gas.

This approach to the future can also be deeply offensive, for instance in claiming Hurricane Katrina or the Indian Ocean Tsunami are judgements of God in fulfilment of various recent prophecies.

What of Moses and of Jesus looking to tomorrow?

The last four chapters of Deuteronomy deal with Moses death and the leadership transition from Moses to Joshua, his younger successor who would lead the people into the Promised Land. Several times Moses is told he is going to die. In Chapter 31 God first tells him he will die.  In the passage read to us from Chapter 32 we have God’s command to ascend Mt Nebo and another reminder that he will die there. And then in Chapter 34 the story of his climbing the mountain, looking to the Promised land and his death.

What we did not have time to read are the two great speeches of Moses that fill out the story between these summary moments. In chapter 32 we have the great Song of Moses, his great summary of the journey thus far, his singing out their trials and their triumphs, their failures and God’s faithfulness. It is Moses’ telling of the story, the uncensored version, reminding them of all they had done wrong and how God had, (with serious misgivings at times!) stuck by them.  And this story, says Moses, “is no trifling matter for you, but rather your very life” (vs. 47). If you forget the story of your failure you will die. If you ignore the uncomfortable message of the crisis you created for yourselves, you are doomed. What he saying with as much authority as he can muster is “You cannot look to tomorrow by ignoring yesterday!”

But that is not the end of the story, for (after God reminds him again that he is about to die) Moses immediately goes on to Chapter 33, his wonderful final blessing on the twelve tribes. Here he maps out the wonderful future for his people – group by group he blesses them, announces the blessings that will come from their assigned areas in the land. Yes, you must remember the past and the lesson of its failures, but you must also look to tomorrow and all that God is going to give you.

In this wonderful close to Deuteronomy Moses presents an analysis of the present crisis but he also offers an assurance of the promised future!

And what of Jesus on the Mount of Olives? This passage is far too complex to analyse in depth. It is a form called ‘apocalyptic’ a Jewish form of thinking about the future. In the Bible we find it mainly in the books of Daniel and Revelation but this teaching of Jesus also participates in this way of speaking about the future.

There are three things to point out about what Jesus says about the future.

The first is that we should not be too quick to think that the end is nigh! In answer to the direct interest of his disciples in the signs of the end, Jesus says a great deal of dramatic and traumatic events will occur, but don’t get taken in: these are just the beginning of the birth pangs! Don’t be led astray. Don’t go reading things into natural disasters or wars or tumult in international affairs. Jesus teaches his disciples that when the end comes it will be like a lightning bolt that covers the whole sky – in other words you won’t miss it! So forget all the detailed interpretation of ancient texts, and the personal ‘words of prophecy’ announcing when the end of the world will be, says Jesus: these are misleading guides and false prophets.

Secondly, he wars that the future will get very grim. Now he is talking, of course, to his disciples, and talking about their future. From the description of events he gives it looks very much like the sacking of Jerusalem in AD 70 by the Romans. Some scholars hold that Jesus’ words were probably written down by Matthew after the sacking of Jerusalem. Whatever is the case, it is clear that Jesus was speaking about the immediate future of his followers. Lest there be any doubt about this look at vs 15b of Jesus’ discourse:  “so when you see the desolating sacrilege standing in the holy place, as was spoken by the prophet Daniel (let the reader understand)….”  Matthew here inserts a little editorial note which is a signal to his readers (i.e. his 1st century readers) that says “Now you all know what we’re getting at here”. It must have been common knowledge to his readers.

The point Jesus is making to his followers is that life might get very difficult. Christians throughout history have had that experience, as they do in many parts of the world today. Prosecution, social marginalisation, even prison are the lot of some of our brothers and sisters. The way we live is not the norm – neither historically nor in terms of the way the world is today. It may change – it probably has to change! Jesus never promised us stability!

Thirdly, Jesus looks to time when history will be brought to its true end.  There is a purpose and end to human history. This is one of the main differences between eastern and western religions.

Many different word pictures are used in Scripture to describe the end of history: trumpets blowing, graves being opened, clouds, glory, etc.  We cannot reconcile them all, take them all literally.  The point is that things move towards a conclusion: and that conclusion is all about wholeness, fullness, peace: this was the promise of prophetic tradition. Others texts speak of judgement,  but wholeness, restoration is the end.

What of us? How do we look to tomorrow?

With Moses we should maintain a critique and analysis of the present BUT also hold fast to a sense of blessing!  People tend to fall one side or the other – being critical of the present of present realities and bereft of hope for the future, or being positive about the future and completely ignoring the difficulties of the present time.

We also need to hear Jesus and not get too fussed about the detail of the future. As a small book I was once given expressed it “Don’t sweat the small stuff!” We need to be realistic about what troubles and difficulties can come: about the possibilities of betrayal, oppression and all the things that can affect the people of God. But we also need to endure and have confidence that God holds our destiny and can be trusted.

Above all we should know that there will be a consummation, an end, a completion to human history – the kingdom of God! That consummation is about peace, and goodness and justice and wholeness. It’s the blessing that Moses talked about, the promise of the Kingdom that Jesus preached about and called us to believe in.

Preached at Canberra Baptist Church 23rd October 2005 - Jim Barr