Scripture: John 12:20-26; Philippians 1:21-24 Series: 2021
The fifth sermon in a Lenten ‘Restless’ series, preached amid the COVID-19 pandemic and Texas freeze, addressing our restlessness to fast-forward to a normal future. Using John 12:20-26, where seekers come to see Jesus and he declares ‘my hour has come,’ Pruitt distinguishes the already-and-not-yet tension of Christian faith, critiques the dispensationalist urge to predict the end (Joachim of Fiore through the Darbyites), and reframes apocalypse as unveiling rather than destruction. Drawing on Paul (Philippians 1) and Augustine, he argues holiness is not deferred propriety but transformed desire available now. He closes by teaching the Daily Examen as a practice for gratitude in the present: God’s future is now because the God who is our future is with us now.
Illustrations: seinfeld-summer-of-george, teenager-college-question, fast-forward-through-life, calendar-change-markers, joachim-fiore-dispensationalism, augustine-chaste-but-not-yet, augustine-restless-heart
March 21
Restless with Our Future
John 12:20-26
When will this all be normal? When can we just go back to life as we had it before? We know we have a future, when will that future arrive? I think most of us have been thinking about these kinds of questions for a while now, though with different levels of patience, Different reasons behind them, but we still would like some idea of what our future is going to be. The past 12 months have forced this. Usually, we’re not in this position of having to decide what our future is going to be. Our future just happens. The next day arrives. And the next, and the next. And yet, there are moments when the future becomes more apparent. Moments of opportunity, of change and transition. New Year’s Day is a good one. At the new year, you start writing a different number on your check or, if you fill out a form, there’s a different number at the end of it. Change is right in front of you so there is an opportunity to change. What if this year is different? Summer is another opportunity, when the seasons change or the kids or grandkids get out of school. What if this summer is different? When you meet someone who is in high school for the first time, a common question, I think for most people is: where do you want to go to college? What do you want to do with your life? It seems like an innocent enough question but it can be very anxiety enduring. But I remember when I was a teenager, I did not like the question until I realized, if I just had an answer, it would satisfy people. They weren’t ready to go into all the metaphysical consequences of the choice of a career. They just wanted to be able to say, “Oh, so I saw The Pruitt’s youngest. he is good. He thinks he is going UT.” I realized, often, it was just a story to fill in another story. But for someone living that experience, a future can be ominous. Going out on my own. There are things I’m excited about. there are things I don’t know about. it is the same anticipation that happens after graduating college, getting a job, getting married, buying a house, having a kid, retirement, all these transitions that may make us think: is my future here? The TV show Seinfeld had an episode where George Costanza, one of the characters who was always getting into trouble and not very talented, decided it was going to be the summer of George. Summer of George. He was really excited and energetic. And yet, over the episode, he is just hit by disappointment after disappointment. It is no longer the summer of George. He thought his time had come to shine and it was not to be. Even if we are not all like George Costanza, for most people, there are some hiccups on the road to our time of ourfuture. It would be nice if we could just like get to the future, fast forward life a little bit. You know, have you ever been in those moments where you’re like, I just want to fast forward through this and get to the end of it.” Like, I want to fast forward through this party I have to go to. I want to fast forward through this job interview, this lunch. I just want to be in the future now. My brothers and sisters, we are continuing our series on restlessness in this season of Lent. A few weeks ago, we started talking about being restless with temptation. How temptation is always tempting, but how we find our peace in God. Then we spoke about restlessness and suffering. How suffering can limit our experience and our vision, but we are freed by God’s grace to not deny suffering or to avoid it, but to stand with those who are hurting by showing God’s love. The next week, we spoke about being restless with foolishness, how the wisdom of the world thinks that sacrificial love is foolish and it is uncomfortable with it, but that we can hold on to the wisdom of the cross that offers life to us today. Last week, we talked about being Restless with our past. How we can hold up the Glory Days or the golden age and think life was better back then. How that think blinds us to what God is doing now. This week, we’re talking about being restless with our future. Sometimes it may seem like the future is only exciting, only possibilities, but that’s not how it is all the time. There are those times in life that we just want to get to what’s next. We want to fast forward through this. Now, I think many of us are ready to fast forward to a time when nobody is getting sick from this. But that’s not how creation works. That’s not how time works. We can’t fast forward our lives. The people who had come to Jerusalem wanted to know about Jesus. They were ready. They came up to Philip, who came up to Andrew, and they were asking to see Jesus. They had heard about him. They’d heard about the Messiah coming, the anointed one of God. They were ready for that future to take place. And then Jesus says, “My hour has come.” This is it! This is the time! He goes on and says a number of things. Some of them are easy to take, some of them are hard to take. “Those who love their soul, those who love their life will destroy it. Those who hate it will have life eternal.” It’s not even love or hate. Jesus does not use verbs here. It is more like, “to the lovers of the Soul, It will be destroyed. To the haters of the soul (and I think it’s really the best translation of this verse) all you soul haters out there will have life eternal. If you cling too much to this, You will lose it. That is what he’s saying. This takes place in John 12 right after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead in John 11. John 12 is a transition from time with Lazarus until they get to Jerusalem. Jesus’s hour is his passion, but after the resurrection, he says he will come again. Jesus says his hour will happen again. Since the time of Jesus, Christians have been ready for the hour to come again. The Christian faith has this kind of tension between the already and the not yet. Between the promised future with God, life eternal, life everlasting, and the present reality of the Brokenness of this world: hurt and pain, sickness and disease. We’re in this period, but we want to get to our future, we’re ready to get to our future, but Jesus says you will not know the time or the hour and that it will happen like a thief in the night. So some Christians, for a thousand years, have thought, “maybe I can know, Jesus. Maybe I will know the time or the hour. Maybe if I read the Bible this way, turn it this way and I interpret this for that and that for this, then I will know the hour. And if I know the hour, I can plan on it, and that would be awesome.” Since about the 14th century, there has been a group of Christians who’ve been really into planning the future. It started with this guy named Joaquim de Fiori. He began the practice of dividing the ages of history in a way that he could predict when the next stage could come. His work was influential in some of the undercurrents of the Reformation in the 16th century and then, in different ways, these forms of interpretation were taken up to the Darbyites of the Plymouth Brethren in England in the 18th and 19th century, who developed what became known as dispensationalism. This is the idea that history is a series of seven dispensations and we’re almost there to the end, and we can predict when the end is going to take place. This gets us into different figures in the 20th century and 21st century who predict the end of the world. Now, it is important to remember that Apocalypse in the Bible is about being revealed. Apocalypto in Greek means to unveil something: the true reality of the universe is being unveiled. Apocalypse, Revelation, is not about the end of the world, but about the new creation, God’s New Creation, being fully apparent before all. Some people find solace in these predictions of when Christ will come again, of what specific time that is going to look like. But there is a misunderstanding of Jesus saying, “You will not know the time or the hour.” “But we want to know, Jesus. We want to know. It’d be a lot easier if we could just predict. Then, we could get ready for it. Or maybe we could fast forward now to our time with you. Wouldn’t that be great?” Paul has the same sentiment in the letter to the Philippians:
“For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.”
God has a purpose here and now where you are. And that purpose is not to skip to the end of the movie. The reason why he says, “you will not know the time or the hour,” is so that we have a chance to be ready. Now, we don’t have to skip to the end. We don’t have to get through whatever we’re going to get through. We don’t have to sit on our hands while pandemics and viruses and freezes and all these things going on right now continue to go on. We can be ready. And in being ready, we can have a more fulfilled life. And what does that mean to be ready? This whole series is designed around this quote from St. Augustine early in the Confessions where he says, “oh Lord, our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” There’s another quote, a little later in the Confessions, when he’s young man, and he says, “Lord make me chaste, but not yet.” Augustine writes it in a tongue-in-cheek way but many Christians over the years have taken him literally without realizing it. Holiness is seen as being a stick in the mud no fun sour pus. What often takes place is a confusion between cultural propriety and holiness. Holiness is not about being better than others or proper but having a so heart full of love that anything that is destructive or hurtful is not desired. Being holy is not about saying no to what we want but transforming what we want so that we no longer desire what hurts us or others.
The thing about faith, the thing about holiness, is that we don’t have to wait to graduate, we don’t have to wait till our kids graduate, we don’t have to wait until we totally pay off the mortgage. There’s not a benchmark in the world that prepares us for seeking love. If we are bargaining with God so we can avoid being holy, we miss the point. We must let God transform our hearts to the point that holiness is what we desire so that we want to be chaste, we want to be selfless and thoughtful, we want to be generous and giving. Will we accept God’s love fully today? Will we build habits that put it in to practice? The way that we can avoid being restless with our future, the way we can avoid trying to fast forward to that summer of George, is to prayerfully see the ways that God is faithful to us now and that we can be faithful to God now. To be grateful for our present time. To be grateful for our present reality. A tool the church gives for this is the Daily Examen. The daily examen is a historic Christian practice. If you have been to Evensong, this is the prayer we do at the end. We have placed a prayer card on your seats with the examen prayer, and if you are watching at home, there is a link on Facebook and the website and the church center app, so you can follow along. I want to go through the prayer this morning to practice together.
- The first step is becoming aware of God’s presence.
- The next step is to review the day with gratitude.
- The next step is to pay attention to your emotions.
- The next step is to choose one feature of the day and to pray from it.
- The last step is to look toward tomorrow.
Our future is now because the God who is our future is with us now. As a holy man said, “If God is love, love should know no limit, for God cannot be confined. Any time is the right time for works of love, but these days of Lent provide a special encouragement.”
You are already forgiven, so you might as well forgive. You are already loved. So you might as well love. God’s future for you is now. God’s future for you is love.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.