Beyond the Horizon--September 17, 2021

Beyond the Horizon--September 17, 2021

"By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave instructions about his burial." [Hebrews 11:22]

I will be honest: it is hard to conduct your life now in light of a future you cannot yet see.  And yet, that is the challenge of faith--to live now, in light of God's promised future.

It's hard at any age, but I am a witness to a thousand different glimpses of the struggle with the children and grown-ups in our house.  For kids, it is especially difficult to think of the future, especially to change your intended actions now in light of the future.  Every time my kids get a little bit of spending money, whether from doing extra chores or as a birthday gift or from the tooth fairy or whatever else, they insist, "I'm saving this up for..." and then they name some big-ticket purchase they happen to be salivating over.  But it is never very long before they start wrestling with the temptation to go blow it all on candy and bubble gum, an action figure, a doll, or a trading card, or an especially indulgent snack at the movies.  Sometimes they can keep their focus on that future thing they'll want or need, but an awful lot of the time, they can't hold out.  Or rather, they choose not to.  Same with doing homework--there's always the temptation to goof off after school, or play video games, or whatever else, and tell themselves, "I can do the homework in the morning!" And then when the morning comes and homework is left undone, they are kicking themselves for not having done it the day before as soon as they came home from school.

Adults are the same,  too--every year, I promise myself I want to do our taxes earlier, and somehow it seems every year, I convince myself to keep kicking the can down the road.  But April 15 is coming every year, and it would be wise of me to just get it over with as early as possible because I know that future moment is coming.  For that matter, every time either my wife or I hit the snooze bar on our alarms, it's a sort of small refusal to life in light of the dawning day.  The stakes may be low when it comes to getting a bit more sleep, and eventually my mature self does get up to face the day, but in a sense I'm still living the struggle my kids have with homework and money burning a hole in their pockets.

It is hard, just plain hard, to live our lives with an eye toward future realities.  And it is harder still to live our own lives in light of futures that can seem distant or beyond a direct impact on us.  When it comes to my kids' spending money, they're the ones who miss out in the future if they've already spent all their tooth fairy money on Mike and Ikes at the next matinee.  I'm the one who finds myself rushed and running late if I hit the snooze bar one too many times.  But deliberately making choices now in light of a future that is beyond my own lifetime?  That's really, really hard.  And we are great at conning ourselves into selling the future short for a bit more instant gratification in the present.

So again, to hear the writer of Hebrews uphold faith as a forward-looking reality is important for our own discipleship.  And that's what he highlights about Joseph, the dreamer son of Jacob who eventually becomes second-in-command in Egypt and prevents a famine from causing ruin for the Egyptians and countless people around.  You know that part of the story, I'm guessing--whether you heard Donny Osmond sing it in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat" or enacted on a flannel-board in childhood once upon a time in Sunday School.  Even in that part of the story, Joseph is forward thinking.  When he interprets Pharaoh's dreams to learn that a famine is coming, Joseph wisely recommends they start saving grain in the present in the plentiful years so there will be enough when the lean times come.  That's making choices now in light of a future you can see on the horizon all by itself.  And honestly, in an age like ours where we can see problems on the horizon and our go-to response as a society is to kick the can down the road while lamenting as we look backward nostalgically about how great things "used to be," it is a real wake-up call to see even these ancient people like Joseph and Pharaoh being more mature and forward-thinking that we often are.

But beyond the plot points of the musical version or Sunday School lesson retelling of the story, there is an important coda to Joseph's life that we don't often talk about.  The writer of Hebrews, however, knows his Bible well, and points not to the dreams or the great reversal from prison to prestige for Joseph, but to the very end of Joseph's life.  He has secured a stable and happy enough life for himself in Egypt, now with a wife and two sons of his own.  And he his famine-relief plan of saving up grain made it possible for his whole extended family to survive--not only that, but all of Jacob's sons and their children are all welcomed to come and live in Egypt as resident aliens for as long as they need.  The Pharaoh of the time welcomes these immigrants and sees that their presence is a blessing for the whole nation of Egypt, and so Joseph knows that his family will be safe for his entire lifetime.  But still, even old man Joseph looks further down the road to a time yet beyond the horizon--and he sees that there is more to the story.  Joseph tells his sons to keep looking forward to a day when their whole family--by then, a nation in its own right--will leave Egypt and find a home in the land God had once promised to Abraham.  Joseph is so confident that eventually their family's story will leave Egypt and make it to the Promised Land that he instructs his descendants to bring his bones to that new land when they get there, so that his body can be at rest in the place where his many-times-over great-grandchildren will make their homes.  

In other words, Joseph is teaching the next generation to look ahead and anticipate a future they cannot yet see, and to act in light of a reality they may not even get to experience themselves.  After all, it would turn out to be four hundred years, as the Scripture tell it, before Jacob's descendants were finally set free from slavery when a new Pharaoh came to power and put them in chains.  So Joseph was looking ahead to a time centuries into the future, and still told his own children to act in light of that coming time.

Faith makes that kind of forward-looking outlook possible.  It reminds us that "the way things are" is not "the way things always will be," and that we have a hand in shaping the future that comes along, or at least preparing ourselves and our loved ones for how they face that future.  Sticking our heads in the sand or pretending nothing will ever change is as tempting as putting off tomorrow's homework, especially if we tell ourselves, "I'll never live to see the consequences!"  But it is a shirking of our responsibility to those who come after us to do that--and to hear the writer of Hebrews tell it, it is also unfaithful.

In an age and culture like ours that often gets stuck in the run of instant gratification, it is a countercultural thing to say, "My faith leads me to look ahead to the future rather than only focusing on some glorious golden age that exists only in my memory." But that is what we are called to do.  We are called to envision the future beyond our own immediate self-interest, both to the future of the world, this world, that we will hand to the generations who come after us, and also to God's promised future of a renewed creation where wolves and lambs lie down safely together, where swords are beaten into plowshares, and where people from all nations, tribes, and languages are gathered in the presence of God.  If that is where all of creation is heading, then it will change how I treat others even now, in a time where violence, greed, hatred, and fear so often seem to be running the show.  

Today, let us live this day--which is the only day we have been given--but let us live it in light of the future we cannot yet see, but to which we are responsible.  Steward your resources, love your neighbors, care for the world you'll leave behind for the seventh generation after us, deal with enemies knowing one day we may well find ourselves at the heavenly banquet table seated across from them.

That's the challenge of this day as people of a forward-looking faith.

Lord God, give us the confidence to know that the future we cannot see is still in your hands, and so help us to be good caretakers of what you have placed in our hands in the present.