Already-Not-Yet--November 11, 2024

Already-Not-Yet--November 11, 2024

[Jesus taught his disciples:] "Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven..." [Matthew 6:9-10]

There's a song from Stephen Sondheim's show Company that gets me every time. The title comes from a few lines from the ending chorus, which goes, "You're sorry-grateful, regretful-happy..." Those paradoxical pairs of emotions, "sorry" and "grateful," and "regretful" alongside of "happy," stick in my mind because they so poignantly get at the bittersweetness of being in a relationship with someone for a long time.  Over the span of years or decades, there are joyful moments, sorrowful moments, beautiful moments, and terrible moments. There are the perfect days where it all went right, and the awful ones you wish you could undo--all of it as the price of the ticket. To love anyone in this life requires the ability to embrace those opposites all at the same time: you're always sorry, you're always grateful.  And I think it's right to say those may well happen at the same time.

Without waxing too poetic here among lesser-known Broadway shows, it's that tension I want to look at today--the tension in the paradox of being "sorry" and "grateful" at the same time, of being "regretful" and "happy" in the same moment.  If you can feel what the lyrics mean about being both of those at the same time, then hold onto that feeling as our way of entering into the way Jesus speaks about God's Reign, or "kingdom."  It's a paradox, too.  The Reign of God, and the victory of God over the powers of evil, is an already-and-not-yet kind of thing.  It's both a certain and present fact, and also a future eventuality we have not yet stepped into.  God's victory is assured and real, but it is also the object of our unrealized hope.  It's a sorry-grateful, regretful-happy sort of thing.

You get the sense Jesus is trying to convey that in the way he teaches us to pray--words that many of us know as the Lord's Prayer.  Jesus teaches us to pray for God's Reign to "come," for starters.  That suggests it is already a reality, but that we are asking God to bring the kingdom "to" us or to enfold us within it.  We aren't wishing or hoping for a possible victory on God's part--we are acknowledging that God's Reign is already real, and for it to expand and surround us in every way and place where it isn't yet fully realized.  

The same thing is true for the next thought in the prayer: "Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven."  In other words, "God's victory, in which God gets what God wants done, is already happening in God's space (heaven), and we pray for that victory to include our space (earth), where still much happens that is NOT God's will."  We are asking for God's will to happen among us the way it is already currently done in the realm we call "heaven." And there's the tension: God's will is already done in heaven, and God's kingdom/reign is already realized in heaven.  But so much of our lives and our world are out of step and out of whack with God's good design.  The victory of God is a paradox--already accomplished, and yet so much of what happens in the world resists and denies that victory.

This is a really important notion for us to be clear about, because without the paradox of "already-and-not-yet," we are setting ourselves up for disaster.  On the one hand, if we make the mistake of saying EVERYTHING that happens in the world right now is exactly what God wants done and is precisely God's will and the appearance of God's Reign, then we end up putting God on the hook for some pretty terrible stuff.  It would mean saying that every time a missile or drone blows up someone's house and makes some child an orphan, it's God's will.  It would mean saying that every drug overdose and every kid bullied so much at school for being different that they take their own lives are also all part of God's will being done.  It would mean that when the bad guys win, we have to chalk it up as God's victory, or that God made it happen.  And it means when the crooks get away with their crookedness, it must be by God's help.  Well, that doesn't sound like what Jesus is saying at all.  No, if we are praying for God's will to be done on earth "as it is in heaven," that must mean a recognition that at the present moment an awful lot happens in the world that is resistant to God's will and running counter to it.  To take Jesus' prayer seriously means acknowledging that just because something happens in the world, it does not necessarily mean that it has anything to do with Jesus' victory or with God's will. Like our older brother in the faith Martin Luther points out in the Catechism, to pray for God's kingdom to come and God's will to be done acknowledges that God's kingdom and will do indeed come even without our praying for it, but we are asking for them to come among us wherever they are not yet fully realized.

On the other hand, if God's victory is ONLY a future hope and not also a present reality, then we're left wondering if God's victory is just wishful thinking.  Or even worse, we end up thinking that God needs US to force the victory into happening or to overpower and dominate others in the name of bringing about God's "kingdom." And Jesus is equally clear that he's not looking for us to build a nation, take over a government, or launch an empire in his name.  God's Reign is already in existence, and God's victory is already real, so we aren't being recruited to "make it happen" any more than you can force the sun to shine or intimidate a Monday into being Tuesday. Because we trust that God's Reign is real and existent already, we are freed from the illusion that Jesus needs more muscle power from us to "make" God's will happen. It's not like that, either.

When we pray, as Jesus taught us, for God's Reign to come and will to be done, it is an admission that no earthly kingdom, no human government, no political party, and no partisan agenda gets to claim God as their mascot. And instead, we keep hoping for God's victory, which has already begun in the cross, to be made real fully in all the places--both within us and around us--where God's good will is rejected.  That allows us to see our work in speaking up for justice, in practicing compassion and courage, and dethroning the idols we have wrongly given our allegiance to.  And it allows us to trust that God's Reign is bigger than any human attempt to boil it down into any party, any kingdom, any nation, or anybody's personal agenda.

Today, keep praying for God's Reign to come among us... for God's will to be done through us... and for God's victory to be fully realized within us.  But know as we do that it means living in the paradoxical tension of hoping for something that is a present-tense reality and a future-tense hope.  You know, a sorry-grateful/regretful-happy thing.  All of it at once.  Already and not yet.

Lord Jesus, let your reign and your victory be made real among us wherever we have been resisting your way of justice and mercy.