“The Unknown Future” 1
John 3: 1 - 7
Have you even wanted to know
the future? Of course you have! You’ve wanted to know
if you were going to find the woman or man of your dreams, you’ve
wanted to know whether you should take a job offer, you’ve wondered
which will be the next hot stocks, you’ve wished you knew now how
to align yourself to be in just the right spot for the future.
Yesterday, at our Northern Association meeting, Rev. Fred Plummer talked
to us about just this issue—how the church needs to prepare for a
future that will be very different from our past. We’d like
to have the wisdom to know just how to change, but there are areas that
remain unknown. To live in such a time of tremendous change is
both stressful and exhilarating, for the consequences of not changing,
or going in the wrong direction will mean the end of the church.
I’m going to be doing some more reading and study of the emergent
church and progressive Christianity movements—that will be a future
sermon series!
Our desire to know the future
is not unique. We hear echoes of that longing in our scripture
this morning—“what we will be has not yet been revealed.”
But the writer of 1st John is not proposing an exploration
of future events, but the future of our inward, spiritual selves.
The first is dismissed as being immaterial, unimportant, compared with
the critical nature of the second. Who we, the children of God,
grow up to be is of vital importance to the future of the world.
What is the shape of that future? As yet it is unknown, but there
are hints, possibilities, and promises made here in this letter.
As Eugene Peterson’s translation The Message
puts it: “And now children, stay with Christ. Live deeply
in Christ…What marvelous love God has extended to us! Just look
at it—we’re called children of God! That’s who we really
are. And that’s only the beginning. Who knows how we’ll
end up! What we do know is that when Christ is openly revealed,
we’ll see him—and in seeing him, become like him.” (The Message)
The suggestion is that our future lies in growing into a likeness with
God in Christ. As we become like God, as our nature becomes like
Christ’s, we will grow in our ability to love as God loves, for the
essential nature of God is love. Thus, if we are to properly prepare
for God’s future, we must learn to love others and ourselves as God
loves.
Sounds straightforward, doesn’t
it? So why don’t we live this way? Because loving others
and loving ourselves as God loves is much more challenging than we grasp
intellectually. I think our hearts and souls instinctively KNOW
how difficult it truly is and shy away from its demands, yet at the
same time we long for that deep connection with God. So we are
constantly presented with a choice--to stay living fairly comfortably
on the ordinary surface of life, or plunge into that difficult, disruptive
inner work necessary to truly learn to love as God loves.
Phyllis Campbell gave me a
Unity magazine this week that turned out to be very helpful in my preparation
of this sermon. In one article, Andrew Weiss shared an old story—an
old story that is every bit as relevant today as it was when first told,
and I’d like to paraphrase it for us this morning.
When
a certain man began practicing spiritual disciplines seeking enlightenment,
he learned another great leader of the faith had been transformed when
he heard a certain line of scripture being read.
“If that worked for him,” he thought,
“it will certainly work for me.” So he located the line in
his Bible and read it—but nothing happened. He was baffled.
So he took it to his teacher and asked him for help.
“Show
me the line,” his teacher said. Pointing to it, the man began
to read.
“No,
no, show me the line.” Thinking his teacher must be getting
senile, the man turned his book toward his teacher with his finger pointed
at the line of scripture. In one swift movement, his teacher slammed
the book closed on the man’s finger, pulled him towards him, and shouted,
“Who are you?”
The
man was stunned. His teacher let go of the book, pulled back slightly,
and said again, this time gently, “Who are you?”
And
the man realized that he had no answer; he had no idea who he
was. All of his answers to that question were tags and labels,
mental constructs and descriptions of relationships or activities—
At his deepest, truest level, he was a mystery to himself.
We
are in the same boat—as a congregation as well as individuals.
We call ourselves Congregationalists or UCC, we are men or women, young
or old, white or brown or black, mothers or uncles, doctors or teachers,
but who are we really? Who are we if we get past the surface of
our lives and look more deeply? What would happen if we drop our
assumptions, our habits of view, our own ideas about someone else, and
simply explore these questions: “Who am I? Who are you?”
Our
scripture tells us that we are “children of God,” but what does
it mean to be a child of God? How should we live as “children
of God?” How do we treat others if they too are children of
God? How are we treating ourselves? How can we truly learn
to love others when we’re so poor at loving ourselves? Jesus
didn’t say, “Love your neighbor” and stop at that point.
He said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Wayne
Muller explored this idea in an article about having compassion for
ourselves and for the world, and whether it is possible for us to love
others if we haven’t learned to love ourselves. He suggests
it is impossible to authentically love others if we don’t even know
our “selves”. Further, we cannot find God apart from
ourselves, apart from our sisters and brothers, apart from the stranger
and sojourner and even apart from our enemies. Muller challenges
us to see that “the face of every being that lives is a reflection
of the divine; every one of us carries a spark of the spirit of God.
When we love anyone, we are loving God. When we care for anyone,
we are caring for God. Jesus said that whatever you do for anyone
who suffers, you do for Him. When we open our hearts, our homes,
or our hands in service to anyone in need, we are making a place for
God. Every act of loving kindness toward ourselves or others is
an act of love for God…. No more is required of us than this:
that we love ourselves and one another with gentleness and mercy, for
we each carry within us the tender heart of God.”
Albert
Schweitzer said once, “One thing I know, the only ones among you who
will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”
But it was Mohandas Gandhi who pointed out that even as we serve others,
we are working on our selves; every act, every word, every gesture
of genuine compassion naturally nourishes our own hearts as well.
When we care for ourselves, we are more able to care for others;
when we learn our own hearts well enough, we are enabled to listen to
the heart-deep longings of others. In healing our own inner wounds,
we find peace; as we find peace, we are able to bring peace to
others—then we become a gift to the world. As we melt away the
ice and fear that has held us closed in upon ourselves, then we will
begin to embody the love of God—where that takes us is still unknown;
as our scripture reminds us, “beloved, we are God’s children now;
what we will be has not yet been revealed.”
Muller
offers us this challenge: “Our only hope for loving kindness
is today, in this moment, this instant: there is no other soil in which
love can grow…What are you waiting for? How can you be kinder
or more loving to yourself in this moment? …What in your body
or heart is in need of special attention? Which person or situation
in your life would benefit from a moment of loving kindness? …Acts
of love are often uncomplicated, small gestures that require little
effort: a touch on the shoulder, a word of appreciation, a cup of tea,
a warm bath or a note of thanks. It could be so simple, so easy
to be more loving in this instant….” How much longer will
it take for us to realize that caring for ourselves is just as important
as caring for others—not MORE important, but essential to our ability
to love as God wants us to love? Remember how our scripture began
this morning: “See what love the Father has given us, that we
should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
Can we accept that God loves us? Can we see that how we care for
ourselves as well as others is an expression of that same love?
When
we let that realization truly sink into our consciousness, our hearts,
our minds, our very souls, we move from living on the surface of life
to living in its divine heart. And we will be changed. Ken
Wilbur talks about this as a change from translation to transformation.
I found in reading his work that Wilbur offers a unique analysis of
these “two important functions of religion.” The first is
“a way of creating meaning for the separate self: it
offers myths and stories and tales and narratives and rituals and revivals
that, taken together, help…make sense of, and endure, the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune.” …This function of religion consoles,
fortifies, defends, provides legitimacy—and is, as he puts it, the
“single greatest ‘social glue’ that any culture has.”
But
more is possible for there is always more of God to experience, more
depth to the Spirit, more understanding to seek, more love to express.
Thomas Merton wrote in his journal: “If you dare to penetrate
your own silence and dare to advance without fear into the solitude
of your own heart…then you will truly recover the Light and the capacity
to understand what is beyond words and beyond explanations because it
is too close to be explained: it is the intimate union in the
depths of your own heart, of God’s spirit and your own secret inmost
self, so that you and God are in all truth One Spirit.” This
encounter, this realization is truly transformation. Where such
transformation will take us lies in the as yet unknown future—but
it is a future that will be blessed by the radiant, loving presence
of our Creator who has already claimed us as “children of God.”
