Pastor's Page
The Olympics are over; the medals safely tucked away; the hoopla and breathless coverage fading back into silence. The quadrennial summer sports spectacle won’t return now until 2012. While some might say it was all “much ado about nothing,” or at least very little, and that the countless billions that went into the whole production could have gone to much better uses, the XXIX Summer Olympiad is more than the mere sum of its parts. Despite the nationalistic fervor of the host country, and its attitude of “We’ll get the gold” even if we have to bend the rules, at best these games point to a vision that is virtually unattainable otherwise.
Yet amid the athletic harmony projected on our screens we saw the opposite of that vision, the reality in which nations live and move and have their being, with the invasion of Georgia by Russia. Whatever the explanation/rationale offered, the fact remains that thousands of innocent people were killed/wounded/displaced—the same thing that happens whenever troops march, tanks roll, and bombs fall.
Thinking theologically, to borrow from the title of a recent Christian Living class, such a jarring juxtaposition of events should not be surprising, however. For our faith tells us that we are homo duplex, bearers of the divine image yet sinners in thought, word, and deed. Martin Luther, father of the Reformation, described us as simul justus et peccator—simultaneously righteous and sinner.
Given the bifurcated nature of our humanity, we know that all attempts to build the city of God by our own hands are doomed to failure. Perhaps no one put this better than T.H. White in his masterful novel, The Once and Future King that tells the story of King Arthur. Here the King muses before final battle with Mordred: “We cannot build the future by avenging the past. Let us sit down as brothers and accept the Peace of God. Unfortunately, men did say this with each successive war. They were always saying that the present one was to be the last, and afterwards there was to be a heaven. When the time came, however, they were too stupid. They were like children crying out that they would build a house—but when the time came for building they did not have the practical ability. They did not know how to choose the right materials.”
So it is that Christian hope is not based on the premise of “getting better every day in every way;” our sanctification, our growth toward the fullness of Christ, will ever remain incomplete in this life. Instead it is based on the power and promise of God that the day is surely coming when all things will be made new in Christ Jesus—things in heaven and things on earth. For all its bewildering perplexity the Revelation to John speaks of this in words that ring clear and pure:
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’” Chapter 21:1-5
The word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God!
Patterson