I
was in elementary school in the Seventies, a child growing up in the
U.S. during the Cold War. I remember not only having to do bomb
drills in case someone made a bomb threat, but also having to do
nuclear bomb drills. A catastrophic, fiery, apocalyptic end to the
world was a fear constantly on my mind, on the nation’s mind. I
don’t know what it was like up here in Canada. I’m sure the same
fear had to be at least in the back of your minds because any nuclear
exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. would have occurred by
means of Canadian airspace. Yet, besides that menacing fear, life
for me growing up was rather hopeful. I looked forward, dreamed of
getting a college education, of having a good paying job, a wife and
family, and doing financially better than my parents. I had dreams
and for the most part I could expect they would come about. That’s
hope, real hope, not some wish that life might be good some day.
That hope got even better when the Berlin Wall came down and the
Soviet Union collapsed. Peace seemed a real possibility that is
unless space aliens invaded earth. You may have noticed that after
the Berlin Wall came down the West no longer had a “common enemy”
that Hollywood could vilify, so movies about space aliens began to
proliferate.
Life
must be a bit different for children in elementary school now.
Children today are living in the post-Cold War world amidst what we
in the West no longer call a War on Terror. Although it would appear
that humanity's current problem with terrorism is driven by religious
fanaticism, this post-9/11 world isn’t the product of religion. It
is simply the aftermath of the Cold War and its accompanying economic
and political imperialism. Israel, Syria, Turkey, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Eastern Europe, the former
Soviet nations, and the Central American nations were all pawn
nations in the Cold War, oppressed pawns. Afghanistan and Central
America were the actual battlefields.
At
the end of the Cold War everyone thought there would be peace not
greater fear. Yet, children now must grow up with the fear of not
only a lingering possibility of global nuclear exchange, but also
nuclear terrorism; and not just nuclear terrorism, but also simple,
random terrorist attacks on public places. Today’s children will
also have to live with the effects of global warming, global
overpopulation, and pandemics such as HIV-AIDS (which according to
the 2007 UNAIDS report appears to have begun to level off and in some
places even decline). If current economic trends continue most of
our children will not have their share of the pie. Actually, the
major disillusion for my generation has been that we are not
financially better off than our parents and this trend will continue.
The
future for today’s young people does not look hopeful. I don’t
think it an exaggeration to say that all they have to look forward to
are cooler electronic gadgets, faster computers, extremely life-like
video games, and more potent street drugs. Hopelessness defines life
today. Our young cannot dream like I did. When they look at the
future all they can see is a huge overwhelming mess and the demand
for a lot of hard work to clean up after the parties that their
parents and grandparents and even great-grandparents have been
throwing. It is a twisted world when children have to clean up after
their parent’s parties.
Powerlessness
defines life today as well. No one seems to believe that we as
individuals have control over our lives and can do things that can
bring about change. Among ministers we often joke that “there are
a few people in that church who need to die before anything will ever
change.” Well, there are a few people on this planet who need to
die before anything will change, but even when those people die as
long as human greed and powerlust are part of the human condition
things will not change.
This
overwhelming sense of hopelessness and powerlessness is taking its
toll on global life. It promotes violence. Fanatics spread the
message that if things cannot be changed, then blow something up
particularly something that belongs to one of those people who need
to die anyway. It also promotes the magical thinking of
fundamentalism where if you believe right and live right God will be
on your side. Unfortunately, power hungry people with even a little
bit of charisma find it very easy to manipulate the hopeless and
powerless with fundamentalism whether it be religious, environmental,
or political. Materialism and consumerism are also a resulting
plague. If there’s nothing in the future to live for, then live
for today. Self-destructive and risky adrenalin-inducing behaviours
also plague life. In a global culture that is emotionally depressed
as we humans are people will do anything to feel pleasure, anything.
But,
what about us Christians; we actually claim to have hope. What do we
mean by hope? First, we have hope based in the immediacy of God’s
presence with us and his intervention in our lives. Second, we have
the future of the second coming of Jesus Christ when there will be
the resurrection and God makes all things new. Our hope is more than
a wish. We do not say I wish God was with me and I wish that he
would intervene on my behalf. Anyone who has known the Lord Jesus
Christ for any length of time knows certainly that God is personally
present with us each and with the congregation where we worship and
that God does intervene on our behalf. Our hope is real and if we
know the Triune God of grace and his work in our lives now in the
present then we know that what he promises for the future will occur.
Jesus Christ will come back. He will put his world to rights.
Indeed, there will be no more sin and death.
Since
our hope is real, based on the fact that God is present and active in
our lives; we must ask what difference this hope makes and if we have
hope, how then should we live? To answer our first question about
what difference our real hope can make in today’s world; well, we
know that there is something to this thing called prayer. As far as
what we who have this real hope can do; well, first of all pray and
then strive to work for the kingdom coming.
There
is a street ministry in Hollywood, CA called Youth Link of America.
They are located on Hollywood Blvd. which seems to be a Mecca for
runaway youth because they have delusional dreams of being or at
least meeting a star. On the ministry's website they suggest ways
people might assist in their ministry. There is obviously the
request that people donate money. Yet, they also give a simple
request that people pray for four things: safety for the youth, that
they might be able to build relationships with the youth, for the
spiritual and emotional strength to reach out to them, and the
resources to meet the needs of the young people. I think the prayer
request that Youth Link America makes is exactly what is needed for
this entire world.
Every
person on this planet needs to know safety and it is the work of
Christians to pray and to strive for real peace in this world. God
has not made himself present to us and intervened in our lives so
that we simply continue on like everybody else. We are called to
change, to follow. Jesus said blessed are the peacemakers, not
blessed are the money makers. It is our task in this world to make
peace by calling evil, evil, and evil doers, evil doers; to call
injustice, injustice; to call greed, greed. It is our task to call
the offender to honesty and the victim to forgiveness. Real peace,
safety is based in honesty and forgiveness.
Every
person on this planet needs to have relationships where trust and
unconditional love can be found. Friends, this is why there is a
church. This is why Jesus commands his followers this one
commandment, “Love one another as I have loved you.” The
ultimate result of God’s presence in our lives is the creation of
human community where love in the image of the Trinity can be found.
God has made himself known to us so that we might build relationships
with others in which the unconditional love of God, the Trinity
himself, can be known and is known.
Every
person on this planet needs the emotional and spiritual strength to
move forward in life. Everyone needs to know the freedom and healing
that comes with knowing Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit; freedom and
healing from enslavement to addictions, the pain of childhood neglect
and abuse; freedom from bearing grudges; and the freedom and healing
that comes from forgiving. The greatest healing came in my life when
Christ Jesus showed me that he loved and was gracious to certain
people I was bearing a life-time grudge against, even though my
grudge was based in the right. You see, there is a fine line between
wanting God to avenge the wrongs done to us and bearing a grudge that
becomes our life’s major pre-occupation that only results in self
destruction and petty retaliation. The church is the only human
community where forgiveness (rather than retribution) is the rule of
the day, and praise be to God, he gives us the strength to forgive
and to move forward.
Finally,
it is not only the work of Christians to pray that everybody in the
world gets their daily bread; it is also to work for the equal
distribution of wealth around the world. This means that we
Christians in the West need to put a limit on what honestly is enough
and give the rest away. It means that we must simplify our
lifestyles. This is more than just reducing our carbon footprint.
It is learning to live with and on much less than we are accustomed
simply for love of neighbour and love of God. We who know that the
future is in God’s hands because we know his presence in the
present, simply cannot model to the rest of the world a lifestyle
that lives for the present. We must model the lifestyle that
respects in love the needs of all peoples and that strives for the
end of poverty not only with what we put in our refrigerators, but
also for whom we vote.
We’ve
been graciously given a real reason to hope, my friends; a very real
reason. The Triune God of grace is with us…and we know it. Let us
not take his graciousness towards us in vain. Let’s live this hope
openly before the world. Amen.
