Matthew 6:34
“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.
2 Peter 3:11-13
Since everything here today might well be gone tomorrow, do you see how essential it is to live a holy life? Daily expect the Day of God, eager for its arrival. The galaxies will burn up and the elements melt down that day—but we’ll hardly notice. We’ll be looking the other way, ready for the promised new heavens and the promised new earth, all landscaped with righteousness.
Anytime we get into thinking about Time it can broaden out until you become lost in the immensity of the subject – but our couplet for today is “we are promised to tomorrow, while we are for him today” – so we’ll try to keep it somewhere around there.
For centuries the church has focused on tomorrow - on that great day when the poor shall inherit the earth – or as one of the songs in the play “Finian’s Rainbow” puts it: on that great come-and-get-it day – when we’ll float on angel’s wings above those heavenly streets of gold. In every place and time of deep punishing poverty – such as the Dark Ages in Europe, or today in those rural pockets of our South that seem always to be lacking even the basic necessities, or in the deep urban ghettos – you’ll always find the church preaching a gospel of “bear with it right now because your reward is coming in heaven.” When people have nothing, the promise of something to come eventually can give them hope – which is a good thing. It can also keep them patient with the current system, get them to accept their poverty now -- which is not a good thing. And these promises have been used, by our culture and by the church – honestly to give hope, and dishonestly as crowd control.
But while Jesus does speak of the life to come, it is always to promise that he has it handled for us, so we don’t really have to worry about it. “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:31). What he does say quite clearly to us over and over is that we are called to here and now. We may not fully experience the Kingdom of God as present today, but Jesus says it is – right here among us – here – today -- so we are to live “as if” we see it in all its glory and thereby live it into fruition. If we take care of today, Jesus has the future all covered for us.
But today is the one part of time we seem to do our best to avoid. We dream about the past – a glorious time when all was wonderful – and we expect either great things or total disaster of the future – based on our nature – and mostly we hardly notice today, even while we are living it, we’re so caught up in what was and what will be. We live like Scarlett O’Hara: “La ... I'll think about that tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day.” But it isn’t another day – it’s always just today. That’s all we ever have – today.
How aware are we of today – of this moment, this instant in time? For instance, how many of you have, just since church started here today, spent at least a minute or two thinking about what you have to do after you leave here this morning? I'm as guilty as you of this one. We can either miss the moment entirely because we are lost in a dream of yesterday or tomorrow – or – we can envision ourselves with endless tomorrows so why bother acting today?
Martin Luther King Jr. Used a phrase that has stuck in our collective consciousness -- it has been quoted over and over -- referring several times to “the fierce urgency of now.” He was, of course, speaking specifically about desegregation at that time, but it is a concept that can be applied to any endeavor. He used it in at least two famous speeches - the first was in the “I Have a Dream” speech, but he used it again at a speech given at the historic Riverside Church in NYC:
“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood — it ebbs.”
We truly do not have tomorrow - we only have today.
When Ronald Reagan was president, he was obsessed with a past that, as it turns out, never had really happened – but in this mythical past the budget was entirely balanced and everything was perfect. In order to recreate this past glory, Reagan stripped funds from Social Security accounts to get his budget to balance – in effect he “borrowed from the future so he could live in the past.” All this unholy mess we’re having right now about SS-- is there enough? will we run out? how will we pay the monies owed people who paid into this system all their lives? -- stems from Ronald Reagan’s fantasy and obsession with the past.
Imagine what our country could look like today if instead of looking backwards forty years ago we had actually seen the present moment we were in and had begun to deal with the inequalities of the day – with war and poverty and greed? But it likewise does us no good to look back and assign blame because we could ask that same question about any moment today or yesterday. We, too, are here, and now, and it is for us to look around us and see this moment and begin to deal with its needs – which are, oddly, the same needs – war and poverty and greed ..... and hopelessness and mental illness and on and on and on.
We are called, just as surely as were the people of Jesus’ day to live the reign of God – claiming for ourselves that we DO live surrounded by God’s good grace – and there IS enough to go around for everyone.
One of my favorite non-scriptural sayings is this: “The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” The seeds of love and hope that we plant today may not produce in our lifetimes – but they will bear fruit – they will in God's good time -- but only if we plant them first.
For centuries the church has focused on tomorrow - on that great day when the poor shall inherit the earth – or as one of the songs in the play “Finian’s Rainbow” puts it: on that great come-and-get-it day – when we’ll float on angel’s wings above those heavenly streets of gold. In every place and time of deep punishing poverty – such as the Dark Ages in Europe, or today in those rural pockets of our South that seem always to be lacking even the basic necessities, or in the deep urban ghettos – you’ll always find the church preaching a gospel of “bear with it right now because your reward is coming in heaven.” When people have nothing, the promise of something to come eventually can give them hope – which is a good thing. It can also keep them patient with the current system, get them to accept their poverty now -- which is not a good thing. And these promises have been used, by our culture and by the church – honestly to give hope, and dishonestly as crowd control.
But while Jesus does speak of the life to come, it is always to promise that he has it handled for us, so we don’t really have to worry about it. “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:31). What he does say quite clearly to us over and over is that we are called to here and now. We may not fully experience the Kingdom of God as present today, but Jesus says it is – right here among us – here – today -- so we are to live “as if” we see it in all its glory and thereby live it into fruition. If we take care of today, Jesus has the future all covered for us.
But today is the one part of time we seem to do our best to avoid. We dream about the past – a glorious time when all was wonderful – and we expect either great things or total disaster of the future – based on our nature – and mostly we hardly notice today, even while we are living it, we’re so caught up in what was and what will be. We live like Scarlett O’Hara: “La ... I'll think about that tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day.” But it isn’t another day – it’s always just today. That’s all we ever have – today.
How aware are we of today – of this moment, this instant in time? For instance, how many of you have, just since church started here today, spent at least a minute or two thinking about what you have to do after you leave here this morning? I'm as guilty as you of this one. We can either miss the moment entirely because we are lost in a dream of yesterday or tomorrow – or – we can envision ourselves with endless tomorrows so why bother acting today?
Martin Luther King Jr. Used a phrase that has stuck in our collective consciousness -- it has been quoted over and over -- referring several times to “the fierce urgency of now.” He was, of course, speaking specifically about desegregation at that time, but it is a concept that can be applied to any endeavor. He used it in at least two famous speeches - the first was in the “I Have a Dream” speech, but he used it again at a speech given at the historic Riverside Church in NYC:
“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood — it ebbs.”
We truly do not have tomorrow - we only have today.
When Ronald Reagan was president, he was obsessed with a past that, as it turns out, never had really happened – but in this mythical past the budget was entirely balanced and everything was perfect. In order to recreate this past glory, Reagan stripped funds from Social Security accounts to get his budget to balance – in effect he “borrowed from the future so he could live in the past.” All this unholy mess we’re having right now about SS-- is there enough? will we run out? how will we pay the monies owed people who paid into this system all their lives? -- stems from Ronald Reagan’s fantasy and obsession with the past.
Imagine what our country could look like today if instead of looking backwards forty years ago we had actually seen the present moment we were in and had begun to deal with the inequalities of the day – with war and poverty and greed? But it likewise does us no good to look back and assign blame because we could ask that same question about any moment today or yesterday. We, too, are here, and now, and it is for us to look around us and see this moment and begin to deal with its needs – which are, oddly, the same needs – war and poverty and greed ..... and hopelessness and mental illness and on and on and on.
We are called, just as surely as were the people of Jesus’ day to live the reign of God – claiming for ourselves that we DO live surrounded by God’s good grace – and there IS enough to go around for everyone.
One of my favorite non-scriptural sayings is this: “The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” The seeds of love and hope that we plant today may not produce in our lifetimes – but they will bear fruit – they will in God's good time -- but only if we plant them first.
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