Monday, November 26, 2012

Where We're Going, We Don't Need: Roads



November 25, 2012
Christ the King/Reign of Christ
John 18:33-37; Revelation 1:4b-8
Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need: Roads

Has anyone ever done a Google search for “What would Jesus…” and see what it auto-fills in for you?  What would Jesus do, of course.  But there’s also What would Jesus drink?  What would Jesus buy?  What would Jesus tweet?  An interesting one that caught my eye is “What would Jesus drive?”  My answer is… Jesus would drive a DeLorean.  That flies.  Powered by a Mr. Fusion and garbage.  And he would have some seriously cool 1980’s shades.  You see, I was thinking about that phrase that’s at both the beginning and the end of our passage from Revelation, the God “who is and who was and who is to come,” and I was thinking about God being outside time, unlimited by time, “OUTATIME,” you might even say, like the license plate on the DeLorean, the time machine that Doc Brown builds.  In the “Back to the Future” movies, Marty McFly and Doc Brown traveled through time and found a way to not be constricted to their own time in history, yet they still were limited by time.  There were still things they could and could not do without the risk of erasing themselves from history and preventing their ever being born.  God, on the other hand, doesn’t travel through time but is at every moment in time.  God is, here and now; God always was, at the beginning of time; and God is still to come, at the end of time.  If you want to know how that can be, well, it’s like what we say in the Great Thanksgiving when we have communion – pay attention next Sunday.  Pastor Ken and I invite you to declare with us “the mystery of faith”: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”  All at the same time.  Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.  Now, this three-times formula was often used in the Greek-speaking world to describe the eternity and immutability of the Greek gods.  For example, it was said that “Zeus was, Zeus is, and Zeus will be.”[1]  But, the difference for us as Christians is that we speak not only of God’s being but of his acts.  We say not merely that our God is, but that he comes, that he reigns.   
          This is God in the present tense.  Back in Exodus when Moses asks God for his name, what does God say?  I AM who I AM.  Present tense.  I AM.  Yet… that’s actually just how we’ve translated it.  The Hebrew can actually be translated into any verb tense.  I SHALL BE who I SHALL BE.  Or, I HAVE BEEN who I HAVE BEEN.  The great I AM encompasses all verb tenses.  How many of you have studied a second language?  One thing we often find out in learning another language that we don’t learn when studying English is the names of all the verb tenses.  Preterit.  Past Perfect.  Gerund.  Conditional.  There are some I don’t even know how to say in English because I learned them in Spanish class: pluscuamperfecto!  I remember in one of my Spanish classes in high school we had to take four verbs and conjugate them into every verb tense.  I think there were sixteen verb tenses on our charts!  Sixteen verb tenses.[2]  That’s a lot of different states of time.  And yet in the statement “I AM who I AM”, God puts God’s self in every verb tense; at every moment in time.  God, in Christ Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, is always with us.  God is, here and now. 
The great I AM is, is come and does reign.  Jesus Christ is the one who is, the one who reigns, here and now.  Today is Christ the King Sunday and we not only look forward to Christ’s kingdom coming, “thy kingdom come,” we also celebrate his reign today.  In the present.  In the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, we find this promise from Jesus: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”[3]  Jesus is always with us.  Granted, we often question it.  Lord, where are you in this midst of this suffering?  Lord, why do you let bad things happen to me?  I don’t know the detailed answer for every particular situation, but Jesus is there, crying with you, keeping you safe, guiding you even when you can’t see it.  Other times, we forget Jesus is with us.  Sometimes we pray, “Lord, be with us,” when he already is.  I’m guilty of that, too.  A better prayer would be, “Lord, make us aware of your presence,” or “Lord, fill us with your Holy Spirit.”  Jesus is already with you.  Jesus is already here.  We don’t need to ask him to come.  He’s here in the good times and in the bad.  In times when we don’t understand what’s going on and why this is happening and in times when his hand is crystal clear in our lives.  Jesus is king, and his kingdom is not of this world but it’s breaking into this world, past, present, and future. 
God in three persons is the one whose being and whose acts embrace all time.  God was there at the beginning of time.  Genesis 1 tells us that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth… and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.”[4]  And we know Jesus was there, too, from the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word (that’s Jesus), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.”[5]  God, in Christ Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, is the one who always was.  Who was there when Moses parted the Red Sea?  God.  Who was there when David brought down Goliath?  God.  Who was there when Jesus’ disciples discovered an empty tomb?  God.    There is a reason we call God Ancient of Days, eternal, everlasting, Rock of Ages.  Lee and I visited a church in Raleigh while I was on maternity leave, and a youth sign we saw put it nicely: God is [pause] epic.  God is so big, he is the one who exclusively exists at the beginning of time and at the end of all time.  God transcends human history, he transcends our whole space/time continuum.  He is outside of time, beyond time, unrestricted by time.  And because he transcends it, therefore, he controls it.  This is the all-powerful, almighty God, who always was, who is, and who is still to come. 
That paradox, or mystery, is something we touched on a lot at seminary, and in shorthand we referred to it as the “already/not yet.”  Jesus has already come; Jesus has not yet come.  Jesus already came in first century Palestine; Jesus’ second coming has not yet happened.  Already… not yet.  Jesus already inaugurated his kingdom, but it has not yet come to completion.  That’s why Jesus says his kingdom is not of this world, and yet we get glimpses of it sometimes.  At IFC, we get glimpses; in communion, we get glimpses; in acts of kindness, we get glimpses; in worship, we get glimpses.  Jesus’ kingdom has already come, Jesus is king, and yet we still pray “thy kingdom  come.”  And not only has his kingdom already started, in the passage from Revelation it said that Jesus “made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father.”[6]  We are a kingdom; we are priests.  We are to be kings and priests.  As this royal priestly community, also called the church, we represent and signify the rule of God that is already present in the world.  We declare that Christ has come.  We declare that Christ is king.  And we declare with faith that Christ will come again.  We do this in faith, with “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”[7]  We do this because we believe Christ isn’t just any old king, Christ’s sovereignty is the highest one on earth!  We believe Christ’s kingship is the one abiding and universal kingship. 
Christ has been king, is king, and will be king.  Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.  Christ is the one who is still to come.  Past, present, and future.  This is the God we serve.  This is the God we worship.  King Jesus.  The One who doesn’t need roads because he was there before there were roads and he’ll be there after the roads are gone.  And where we’re going, we don’t need roads, not because of any flying car, a half-crazed scientist who hit his head on the toilet, or even really cool 1980’s shades, but because God is already there and he will safely lead us there.  Our future is in God’s hands.  He is in control of our history.  May we recognize that our life is in God’s hands and live according to God’s kingdom, catching glimpses of it and creating glimpses of it, because Jesus is the everlasting king. 


[1] Boring, Revelation, 75.
[2] After the 11:00 service a retired Spanish teacher in the congregation left me a note to let me know that pluscuamperfecto is the pluperfect tense and she listed eighteen verb tenses, although she put questions marks next to two of them.
[3] Matthew 28:20
[4] Genesis 1:1-2
[5] John 1:1
[6] Revelation 1:6
[7] Hebrews 11:1

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