Luke 21.29-33; Romans 8.18-30, James 1.17 – 18

Preached Canberra Baptist Church 23^rd August 2009

We have been exploring the idea of offering and in particular the Biblical idea of the first fruits. We’ve been exploring offering might mean for the way we live our lives. We’ve looked at money and debt. We’ve looked at death and worship. We’ve looked at work and the way in which offering can transform our experience of work. Last week we looked at time, especially past time and our management of present time, and the notion of eternity -- of an existence beyond time.

Today I want to explore another aspect of time and that is the future. Like a man with a zoom camera I want to look at future time in two ways: I want to first take the long view, zooming out to think about the far or distant future, then I want to come back to explore our relationship with the near future, with tomorrow and the day after, with next year. The reason for this double focus is that we human beings experience these two elements of the future quite differently.

The Bible says a lot about the distant future and how the destiny of humankind and all creation lies within the providential love and plan of God. We see visions of this right from the earliest parts of the Scripture, when in the covenant made with Noah God promises never again to destroy the world. In Isaiah 25 we see the vision of the heavenly feast (Is 25.6-10). Later in Isaiah we read the vision of the renewed creation where the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy Mountain, says the Lord. (Is 65.25) In the prophetic images of a future of peace and justice, a time when all the peoples of the world will stream into Zion, the Bible is replete with images of a secure and happy future of fullness, healing, and completion.

But there are also images of struggle and suffering. In the apocalyptic visions of Daniel and Ezekiel and also in the New Testament in Revelation we encounter a series of images of destruction and death, of violence and oppression. These are normally placed within the context of an overwhelming and final vindication of God’s goodness but there are difficult days on the way through to that vindication.

Whenever we look to the distant future we can see in Scripture images of suffering, struggle and violence and of completion, healing and wholeness. Our theological challenge is how we put those different visions together. Some people read the future primarily in terms of great cosmic struggle and violence. There are others who see the ultimate destiny of all creation in much more in terms of blessing and joy.

The great paradox of this far horizon of the distant future is that it mainly functions to shape and structure to our moral thinking in the present. Only last week I received some unsolicited and anonymous DVD’s from one of the former sorts of people. From their presentation the future is not a happy place – full of hell and demons and terrible judgment .The moral that they draw from all this is that now we have to be focused on ‘spiritual things’ and not concerned about global warming and the care of creation, or about peace and justice on the earth. Others people see the future as continuous with the present, and although there will be hard times, we see God acting to redeem the world and all creation. So, ironically, that vision of the very end is not so much about tomorrow as today, and how we should live in the present. Whenever Jesus talked about that far horizon of the future he warned his followers to be watchful and prepared today.

I want to change the focal length and zoom in to share with you today some reflections around not the distant or far future, but the near future, the horizon of God's imminent action in the world. As soon as we set our focal length there we find we’re not talking about just Christian expectations. Many people are interested in the immediate future. We find research institutes and think tanks all engaging with the future. We see pages and pages of fortunetellers and clairvoyants advertising in the back pages of the women's magazine. We see the banks and economic agencies conducting surveys of consumer sentiment and business confidence. We find whole financial industries all predicated on sale of futures, people trying to predict what will happen to the price of a particular commodity or stock down the road. Most of us take at least a passing interest in the weather forecast. As you can see, when it comes to the future there are enormous levels of interest in the community around us and a proliferation of what we might call ‘future tools’ – agencies and services that try to predict tomorrow.

There is often considerable anxiety about the future and what tomorrow will bring. How do we experience the near future? The distant future is not going to have much effect on us, but the near future – what is going to happen this week, next year, can have a huge impact on us. Many people experience this immediate future a bit like passengers in a speeding train –the landscape just keeps coming towards us very fast and completely outside our control. The future just happens to us – we can’t do very much towards changing it or shaping it.

Does Scripture say anything about this closer view of the immediate future? In our reading from Romans we heard the assurances that "all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose" (Romans 8.26) Two weeks ago we heard the gospel reading from the sermon on the Mount where Jesus urges us not to worry, to leave tomorrow’s anxieties until tomorrow – today will bring enough of its own. (Matt 6.25-34).

In the Gospel lesson this morning, in the teaching of Jesus sometimes called the Little Apocalypse, we see a series of metaphors about the distant future. Some involve cataclysmic interventions in nature, violence and wars among nations. Also mentioned are significant cosmic disruption, oppression and even imprisonment and torture for the Christian community. But these negative images of the future are bundled together with a parable of a fruitful fig tree blossoming and leaves springing out as a sign that God’s promised future is beginning to unfold in the near future. Despite all of the negative symbols Jesus says that these are just the beginning of the birth pangs of the future and gives us a wholesome and vital symbol of a blossoming tree which points towards God's action to save, redeem and make whole his people and his creation.

By the time of the early church this vision of the imminent future has taken a step forward. We heard in Paul's letter to the Romans of the groaning in childbirth of all creation and we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit. We are seen as the pioneers of a new creation, albeit groaning in expectation of a newness which we are about to receive. It is clear from how Paul develops this metaphor that he sees the church has the first fruits of the crop that God’s future is bringing about. First fruits has here that sense of the beginnings of the harvest – the first fruits of what will be a bumper crop.

In the book of James this metaphor is presented in even more startling terms. Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures. (James 1.17-18) There is a reference to the good gifts of God coming down from ‘the Father of lights’ who offers his good gifts to everyone on earth. As part of this offering of gifts to humanity and to the cosmos God has given us as the first fruits of his creation. The first fruits – that beautiful bounty that expressed the goodness of God and promise of the harvest to follow - is here identified with the people of God who are themselves an offering to all creation. The idea is that through our ministry, through our own joy, through our worship and our love, we ourselves might encapsulate, embody and symbolise the whole future of creation. Here we see a near horizon of God's gracious action in our world and it is an action which is embodied in ourselves! We are the shape of future! It is we who actually carry in our own relationships with each other, in our experiences as a church, in how we live our lives of faith, the hope that all creation will one day experience and be transformed by. What Paul identifies as being the gift of the Spirit, James articulates as the gift given through the Spirit in God’s people to the world.

What does this then mean for our living? It means that we are to be positive people, people who really look forward to a wonderful new outpouring of what God has for us in the future. In a world where there are so many threats - the threat of global warming and environmental catastrophe, the so-called Clash of Civilisations and the great realignments that the coming century promises to bring, the enormous challenges of economy and ecology that seem to create a difficult and questionable future - in the face of all this the people of God know we are the first fruits of his creation, an expression of the bounty and the goodness of God. The people of God know that they in themselves can be a blessing, in much the way Abraham was a blessing, to all nations of the world.

To see ourselves as an offering, an offering to creation itself, is an exciting thing for us to begin to grasp. It empowers, shapes and models for us what our role as the stewards and managers of creation might be. It will also mean that our own joy , our own creativity, our capacity to solve problems, to express beauty, to idealise and think about a different future, to live faithfully with one another and faithfully with creation, are profound gifts that God has given through us to all. It means we can never underestimate the significance of what we are actually doing in our vocations or what our own work in the world might mean for all of creation itself.

I mentioned earlier the metaphor of the future as the landscape around a speeding train and people as the passengers within it – essentially passive and powerless, just taking things as they come, managing as best we can. But this idea of the people of God as a kind of first fruits of God’s creatures is a much more creative sense of the future. The future becomes a kind of artistic space, the creative room in which we can begin to express and unfold the future that already lies within us as God’s offering to the world. Rather than passengers rushing towards the future, we are painters who are gradually creating it. Our lives are not just a bustling journey, but a work of art. As we come to the big decisions of life – what we shall study, where we shall work, whether we will marry and if so who we will marry – these are the basic brush-strokes that shape the picture. We are endlessly in the studio of time, touching up, filling in the background, putting faces on the figures, choosing the colour palette. When we start to think this way we are not anxious in the face of the future but artistic in giving the future a face. We move from being passengers in the speeding train of life to be painters creating a vision of life. All of this activity has meaning not just for the shaping our own lives but for how God in his great gallery will hang these works of art - gifted, not to the nation, but to the future.

Do you think of yourself as a work of art, as beautiful? Do you think of yourself as one of those who actually holds forth hope not just for your own family, not just for your own city but for the whole shape of the unfolding creation and renewal of the world?

A first fruits understanding that our own expectation and hopefulness in life are God’s gift to the world is profoundly empowering for Christians. We can with joy and confidence in the face of all life’s uncertainties look to forward what the future holds. We may not know the detail of what is coming but God knows and has sent us as the first fruits of his Spirit, the first fruits of his creation, God’s gift to the world. He calls us to be the agents of tomorrow and the active creators of the future. He has called us to be heralds of hope in a world unsure of tomorrow and apprehensive of the day after that.

wait and pray with the prayer the Lord has taught us ….