Ahead of the Curve--December 2, 2024
It's not that we're rooting for the world to fall apart--we're not.
It's that we're ready for the world to be put together rightly--and we are convinced that God is already committed to making all things new, too.
The trouble is that just about everybody in the world is afraid of letting go of "The Way Things Are" in order to get to God's vision of "The Way Things Are Meant To Be." We are afraid of losing the comfort of what's familiar, if for no other reason than that it's what we are used to. We human beings tend to prefer "the devil we know" to something new and unfamiliar--even if it's God at work. So at some level we fear God's promise of new creation, because we know it will rearrange all we've ever known in a world-system that is built on death, scarcity, and greed--even though that system is rotten and the world is aching for renewal.
We're used to a world, for example, where bully nations invade or occupy their neighbors, and wars rage on endlessly while refugees flee for safety from bombs and drones and gunfire. We might not particularly like that this happens, but we are just accustomed to "how the world is" that we don't dare there really could be another way for human beings to live with one another.
We are used to a world in which I expect to have store shelves lined with a cornucopia of food available at any time, deliverable with only the click of a button, while others go hungry and cannot access drinkable water. We tell ourselves, "That's just the way things are" because we are anxious about how our lives could be up-ended if someone dared us to let go of our patterns of endless acquisition. We are afraid of imagining a world in which nobody goes hungry because we are afraid of not being able to have the Super-Sized Extra Value Meal or the On-Demand technology we are used to. We are afraid, in other words, of having to change or adapt our own wants and wish-lists, because we don't want to admit that they could be getting in the way of someone else's needs.
We are accustomed to seeing the world as a zero-sum game, where my success has to come at the expense of somebody else, and where YOUR having a place at the table has to be seen as a threat to MY comfort. After all, when Jesus says that "the last shall be first," we who are used to being first in line can't help but worry about our prospects. We are squeamish about the idea of God re-ordering the whole world so that all can have enough, because we just cannot help but think it would mean losing our cushy positions and the privilege we've built our lives on. Maybe it would... maybe it would even feel like the sun, moon, and stars were falling from their places in the heavens. And maybe, after all of those things were rattled to their core, we would discover God rolling up the ol' divine sleeves and building something new out of the rubble.
I get it--all of that can sound scary. And so, in a sense, it is scary for us (at an earthly level) to hear Jesus bluntly declaring that all the things the world counts on as fixed and permanent will be shaken to the foundations. And yet, Jesus is convinced that the in-breaking of God's Kingdom--the coming of God's Reign in fullness--isn't something to fear, but to celebrate. He tells his followers not to cower in fear when the world's systems crumble, but rather to "stand up and raise your heads." That's because our hope was never meant to be tethered to the Dow Jones, the A-Listers, or the Powers of the Day. And we were never meant to be comfortable with the rottenness of The Way Things Are, where some go hungry and others throw out excess from their pantry and where we love things and use people. What Jesus has come to do is to announce the arrival of God's New Thing even before the Old Order of The Day has been razed to the ground. So like I say, Jesus isn't cheering for the world's destruction--he's looking further into new creation. He is teaching us to be ahead of the curve.
That's where we start this year's adventure following Jesus, which we're calling "Life on the Edge." We start where Jesus meets us, and then we dare to go where he leads us, which will sometimes feel like the cutting edge ahead of a world that is afraid of difference and slow to change. Jesus tells us here at the outset that the destination toward which we are headed is God's Reign in its fullness and the renewal of all things. We don't need to be afraid, even if the way he takes us on pushes us to let go of the familiar-but-rotten in order to step into the new creation of God.
Stand up and raise your heads, Jesus tells us.
Even if the world can't see it, our redemption--the whole world's, that is--is drawing near.
We are just ahead of the curve.
Lord Jesus, make us brave enough to look ahead to your promised future, even when we are afraid to take the first step.
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