Catching Up to God--December 3, 2024

Catching Up to God--December 3, 2024

"Then [Jesus] told them a parable: ‘Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near." (Luke 21:29-31)

When the branches on the trees start to bud, you know that warmer weather is on its way, sure--but the sprouting leaves don't make it summer. Rather, it's the other way around--the fact that it's nearing summer is what tells the trees to start putting forth leaves.  We just might have missed the subtler clues that the trees understand.

In a similar way, if you see the blades on a windmill turning through your window or car's windshield, you know that there is a breeze outside--but you also know that the windmill isn't creating the wind. No, just the opposite: the wind is causing the turning motion of the mill. You can't see the wind, but you can see what it is doing in the world.

For that matter, if you see a cart rolling along with a horse in front of it, you know that the cart isn't nudging the animal forward, but rather the horse is the one pulling the cart.  This is, quite literally, a matter of making sure we don't get the cart before the horse.

My point with these examples, all of them using the same logic as Jesus' initial observation about fig trees, is that for all of them, the sign you can see is the effect, not the cause, of the bigger reality you are looking for.  Summer isn't caused by fig trees bursting into bud--it is caused by the increase in sunlight in one hemisphere of the world due to the tilt of the Earth on its axis.  As a result of that increase in sunlight (and frequently an increase in average temperature), plants wake up from their winter dormancy and put out new leaves. Since human beings don't typically observe life from a point in space where they can see the Earth as it whirls through space, the obvious sign for us is the leaves, not the bit about the axis.  But what definitely does not happen is a bunch of fig trees all squinting and straining as they strive to "make" summer happen by their efforts or their achieving it.  Summer isn't something you can earn, not even if you are a tree.  Summer comes, and the trees simply live in light of what they know is on its way.  They can tell summer is coming, and so they shape their lives--and even their physical form in the world--accordingly.  

Same with the wind and the windmill or the horse and the cart.  Don't confuse causes for effects.

Jesus' point, of course, isn't just to get us to be better critical thinkers or users of logic (although that really would be a good thing for his followers to practice more consistently, if I'm being honest). He wants us to be clear about how the Reign of God comes--and how we experience it.  And at the root of it, Jesus says that the observable signs we might see in the world of God's kingdom don't make it happen--rather, they are signs of what is already true about God's Reign being revealed in the world.  Summer is already on the way by the time the fig trees are putting out new leaves; we as observers are just finally getting around to realizing it by the time we notice the buds on a walk through the neighborhood.  God's Reign is already breaking in around us, right under our noses and underlying all of our existence--we are just slow in catching up to what God is doing when we recognize it.

This is vitally important for us to be clear about, because periodically church folks will get themselves all confused and think that WE have to do something in order to "make" the Kingdom of God come, or to bring it about--often with dangerously high stakes.  Sometimes a war gets justified in the name of "God's Kingdom" (the Crusades, anyone?). Sometimes tactics of terror and cruelty get excused if they are committed by a nation or a "side" that drapes itself in its religiosity.  Sometimes people get fooled into believing that there's a timeline of specific historical events they have to force into the headlines in order to get God's end-times chronology to unfold in the right order.  Sometimes we just delude ourselves into thinking that if we're just good enough, pious enough, or "win" enough converts to Christianity, it will hasten the coming of the Kingdom and the return of Jesus.  And to be honest, all of those make the same mistake as thinking the trees have to do something to make summer come.  Jesus doesn't put it in our hands to make God's Kingdom come, and he certainly doesn't need us to foist ourselves into positions of political power or get preferential treatment for our religion to bring it about.  That gets the horse and the cart all backward (and it sure doesn't fit the character of Jesus, either).  

God's Reign is already breaking in around us and among us. We might well get glimpses of it and be drawn into its motion--but again, that's more like the wind grabbing hold of the blades of the windmill and getting them to turn. In other words, it's not our achievement--it is something we are swept up into.  We are always following Jesus' lead and catching up to God's movement in the world--God is never dependent on us accumulating enough power, wealth, status, or influence first in order to make the Kingdom come. We're the budding leaves on the fig tree, answering the summons of summer's growing warmth--we don't make the summer happen.

Today, then, the invitation from Jesus is to keep our eyes open and look for the signs of where God's Reign is stirring up among us and then to let ourselves be caught up in its momentum.  Where do we see Jesus' kind of self-giving love?  Where do we see courageous prophets standing up to say NO to what is rotten and YES to justice, mercy, and walking humbly with God?  Where do we see swords being beaten into plowshares?  Where do we see forgiveness, pardon, and grace in the midst of a culture of stingy and self-centered transactional thinking?  Where do we see glimpses of Christ, in other words?  That's where we turn our attention and join in the motion today.  And as we do, we'll realize that we are only ever catching up to what God is already doing in the world around us.  

Sometimes it just takes us a while to recognize it.

Lord Jesus, turn our focus to see God's Reign breaking in among us, and to let its momentum pull us in the directions you have in mind for us.