Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you could scrap the entire
world, go back to the drawing board, and start over? What would your new world
look like? What would you put in it? What would you get rid of? Who would you
get rid of?
This past week a department store in England unveiled an Advent calendar which
seems to reflect someone’s idea of a perfect world, or a least a perfect
Christmas season.
Most Christmas calendars have little paper doors that open for each day up to
Dec. 24th. Sometimes there’s a verse in there, maybe a reading, and usually a
piece of candy or something.
At First Baptist we have our own version, but instead of a cardboard calendar we
have a recycled prescription bottle with verses to remind us of the meaning of
Christmas. Don’t knock it, they’re functional, and they’re ecologically
friendly.
But this Christmas calendar at Harrah’s in London is not functional, and it’s
definitely not ecologically friendly. The calendar, worth $995,000, is one of
five available worldwide, one for each continent.
Harrods is displaying one in its flagship London store, although the designers
have had to show an image of some of the larger items on illuminated plates.
Instead of the traditional piece of chocolate, behind the 24 windows of the
calendar -- a sleek black box -- are a galaxy of luxury gifts designed by
Porsche Design aimed at bringing festive joy to the Christmas-loving tycoon.
Three highlights include a chronograph watch worth $150,000 in rose gold, a
designer kitchen and the 28 foot speedboat. Now that’s a Christmas you’ll never
forget! That Christmas calendar reflects a particular vision of the perfect
world, one in which money is no object, and fun or enjoyment are the object.
Few of us would turn down such a Christmas calendar. I wouldn’t mind a new
kitchen, and I could easily envision myself zipping around Lake Michigan in that
speedboat. I’d probably get lost and never come home.
But what would it be like if you lived 2500 years ago and you asked yourself the
same question – what would the world be like if you could get rid of all the bad
stuff and completely start over?
And since those folks wouldn’t be able to talk about this question without
talking about where God fits in, what would it look like if God fixed all the
bad stuff and left us a world with just the good stuff?
That’s what I think of when I read this passage. And we get some fascinating
answers to this question, answers that highlight the differences between our
view of life and theirs.
Ask yourself, “What would the perfect world look like if we started with a
passage like this one?” How do we go about working towards that perfect world?
What role does God play in creating a new world?”
This passage dates from the time when the Jewish people were living in exile in
Babylon, during the 6th century BC. Toward the end of their time in exile they
were looking forward to returning to Judah because they knew their captors were
about to be invaded and defeated by another army.
When they got that news, they began to speculate about what it would be like to
go back home and rebuild Jerusalem, the capital city where the temple used to
be. This passage is an oracle from a prophet who talks about what life will be
like when they get back.
From the outset this prophet says their return will not just be a trip back to
some destroyed land where their parents used to live. This return of theirs
would be the end of the world as they knew it and the beginning of an entirely
new world.
The earth and heaven was about to disappear. God would make a completely new
earth and heaven. None of the previous calamities or tragedies or sadness they
had endured would take place in the new world.
The new city of Jerusalem would be named “Joy” and the people who lived there
would be named “delight”. Many of the problems which had plagued the Jewish
people would no longer exist in that new world.
The firs thing to go would be death – no more infant mortality, no more early
death for people who should live to be very old. Someone who lives a hundred
years would be considered a young’un.
People would live that long because sickness and tragedy and war and natural
disasters would be a thing of the past. It’s like they would go back to the way
things were before God flooded the world in the time of Noah.
Another feature of this new world would be a greater degree of economic
fairness. As exiles they often found themselves working for someone else’s
benefit rather than for their family’s benefit.
The economic system during that time was one in which a very few people had
money and a very large number of people had next to nothing. Those who had
nothing spent most of their time and strength serving the folks with the money.
Because that was the case, they didn’t have much time or money to build their
own homes and raise crops for their own families to eat. There was no middle
class, no unions, and the labor laws went largely unheeded most of the time.
But not in the new world. Instead of working to build someone else’s home, they
would be working on building their own homes. Instead of planting someone else’s
fields they would be raising crops for their own children to eat.
Another big difference would be the way in which God was present with them. In
the world they knew, God was up in heaven, although before the temple was
destroyed they believed that God also lived in their temple.
But generally they thought of God as being in heaven, away from them, and in
many ways inaccessible to them. When they cried out to God they wondered if God
heard them, because God wasn’t a God they could see or touch or hear.
But in the new world all of that would change. Heaven and earth would be
together. God would live with the people. God would be so close that God would
know what they needed before they even asked. Now that’s customer service,
folks.
One of the best features of the new world is that none of these things would
ever change. It wouldn’t be as if they could walk away from God and then be
punished, which was their experience throughout most of their history. They and
their children and their grandchildren would enjoy this same perfect world.
Things would be so perfect that the natural relationship between predatory
animals and their prey would no longer exist. The prophet speaks of wolves
eating alongside lambs and lions eating straw with an ox.
No longer would animals hunt one another for food. These days we just understand
that to be the way of nature. We don’t think there’s anything wrong when we
watch a lion attack and kill a wildebeest on National Geographic.
But for them that kind of violence was evidence of just how screwed up this
world was. And in the new world no animals would kill each other. God would
provide in such a way that they would all have enough food to eat.
Can you see the differences between this perfect world and the one reflected in
the Christmas calendar at Harrod’s? Harrod’s reflects the view that the perfect
world is one of immense riches with no work and all play.
This vision from the Old Testament is just one where things are fair and no one
gets sick and violence has been done away with. Possessions aren’t the
measurement of one’s quality of life. People aren’t obsessed with all of the
ways in which we find gratification these days.
But all of these expectations revolve around their relationship with God. God is
present, God is responsive, God brings comfort, God sustains them. And all they
have to do is go on being God’s people ands treating each other the way God
wants.
It’s not like they need to go out and create this new world. It’s no incumbent
on them to say, “OK, God wants to completely change everything and we’re going
to get started here.” No, the focus is not on doing, but on being the people of
God. That’s crucial.
As we think about our church’s future and what God might be doing through us,
let’s not ask ourselves, “What do we have to do, what ministries are we going to
start, what do we hope to accomplish next year?”
Those questions are all important, but they’re not a place to start. Did you see
how the focus in this passage is not on the people doing all the right things,
but on what God was going to do? Notice how all they had to do was just go on
being God’s people.
They didn’t have to go out and find themselves. They didn’t have to hire a
consultant to help them market themselves. They weren’t saying, “What do we have
to do in order to stay in business? How can we compete with all those other
nations?”
They just had to be who they were. Now don’t take that to mean that they did
nothing. They worked hard, they treated each other with respect, they looked out
for one another, and their community was completely devoted to God.
But their overall sense was that God was doing the work, and they were just
being God’s people. These days the message many churches get is, “You have to go
out and do the right things or you’re going to go out of business and shut your
doors.”
And there are literally hundreds of churches that shut their doors every week in
this country. So people are afraid, and they wonder what they have to do. They
wonder if they can do what they have to do. They wonder if they have the
leadership to do what they need to do. They doubt that they have the resources
to do what they have to do.
I have a different take. I think the reason why most churches close these days
is not because they didn’t go out and market themselves properly; it’s because
at some point they really stopped trying to be the people of God.
Rather than turning outward and embracing their communities, they turned inward
and focused on what made them feel comfortable. When churches felt their
religious principles being encroached upon during the last 50 years, some of
them decided to try and take back their communities, take back the authority
they used to have.
Instead of being the church in the community and addressing the community’s
problems through very practical ministry, they focused on trying to reign the
community in and make them be more like the church.
You see that kind of thing in the debates about creation science, prayer in
school, criticism of the entertainment industry. And when they couldn’t win
those battles they tended to form their own Christian version of those same
entities.
We saw the formation of Christian TV programming to counter all the sex and
violence on TV. Christian music of all genres hit the shelves of Christian
bookstores as a counter weight to all the dirt and profanity in popular music.
Millions of Christians took their kids out of public school and either did
homeschooling or private religious schools.
But whatever you make of all that, and it’s not all bad, there seems to be a
sense that we want to wall ourselves off from the world and create our own
little world where we can control who gets in and what gets said.
And it’s really hard to be the body of Christ in the community when you do that.
You’re really against the community, you don’t really have their welfare in mind
unless they join you.
So no wonder churches got smaller and eventually withered away. And I think
that’s why we have done so well despite the fact that there are so many
challenges to being the church these days. More than any congregation I’ve ever
worked with, our focus is on being with the community.
That doesn’t mean acting like them all the time. But in the way that Jesus was
with people like Zaccheus and Mary Magdalene, and all the people who gave him
such a bad reputation, we have tried to be with the people of our community. And
sometimes we end up being with people who find little help elsewhere.
We are being with hundreds of disabled people on a daily basis now that Donna
Lexa Community Arts Center is located in our church. The disabled are not “out
there” somewhere. We’re literally with them, working to make sure they have a
place where their lives can be enhanced through art.
We are with the Hispanics in town and the Burmese and the mentally ill and the
elderly. It would be nice if we could market ourselves in such a way that we
could get a bunch of new people to attend here. But I think we’re called to be
the church in a different way.
We’re called to be the body of Christ, to be the presence of Christ, rather than
doing the presence of Christ. And while it’s great to talk about what kinds of
new programs we might start next year, I think the first thing we have to do is
talk about what kind of people we want to be.
How will we be Christ’s body in this community next year? What kind of person do
you want to be? Is being with you like being in the presence of Christ? Where do
you feel called to be present with those who need Christ?
I want you to take your pledge cards out at this time. I want you to consider
what kind of congregation we are and what kind of church we can be. Take a
moment and pray about it. And then ask yourself, “Do the numbers on this card
reflect the presence of God in my life?
Will they allow me to be with this community in such a way that Christ is
visible in my life? What kinds of numbers would be necessary so that Christ’s
light can shine through me, though us?