What fills you with dread? Public speaking?
A trip to the dentist? Death? Worldwide pandemic? Today, were going to look at
the idea of impending doom and why Christians need have no dread, only a living
relationship with the one true living God.
I remember
when our son came home with a letter from his grade-school saying that they
would be having an active shooter drill.
“What a world!”, I thought, when children have to prepare for the
possibility that somebody might come into their school or onto their playground
with a gun and start shooting people.
Then I
thought of when I was about the same age. We had nuclear war drills. You know, where
you don’t look at the windows, get under your desks, or go downstairs to the
hallway without windows, or into the basement where food and water were stored
in case there was so much destruction outside that we couldn’t get to our
parents and they couldn’t get to us. Yes, that was a bit traumatic. But, as I
remember it, we were kids and we didn’t show much trauma.
I suppose childhood has
rarely, if ever, been a protected time for vulnerable youth to grow into
themselves in peace. I remember reading an article on the role of children in
19th century America. In the artwork of that era, children weren’t
portrayed as cute or even in development. They kind of looked like grown-ups,
only shorter. And that, the article said, was the way children were regarded in
those day, as incompetent adults who depended on the family until they could
contribute something themselves.
I saw a meme online a week or
so ago (I posted it on our Facebook page) with the familiar vividly red and
green colored picture of the young rabbit in a cozy bed from the children’s
book, Good Night Moon. Good Night Moon is a bedtime book, designed to comfort
children with familiar objects as they go to sleep. Only, childhood is
different today, so the words are “Goodnight moon, Goodnight Zoom, Goodnight Sense
of Impending Doom”.
And, I’m sure it’s not only
children who have this 2020 sense of impending doom. It’s been, after all, as
they say, one thing after another.
We’re getting into the flu
season and there is talk of another wave of the coronavirus as fall and winter
weather move activities indoors. Unemployment is still high while those with
jobs are often underemployed. Businesses and schools have yet to reopen. Racial
equality is still unfinished business. The upcoming elections will leave a
large part of the country angry and alienated, no matter who wins. Fire season
may now be year-round in Southern California. Will there be rain this winter? What
could be next? Impending doom.
What do you think? Are you gripped with a
sense of impending doom? Or, do you have a different feeling about world and
local events? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Christians have a different way
of dealing with the future. There is no escaping or denying our feelings of
impending doom if we have them. Feelings are like what Martin Luther said about
temptation. They are like the birds. You can’t keep them from flying overhead.
But you can keep them from making nests in your hair.
It’s been said that there are
365 places in the Bible that say, “Don’t be afraid” or “Fear not” or an
equivalent. One for every day of the year.
Why? Because, at our root, we
are people of hope. We don’t know what the future holds, but we do know who holds
the future.
Death, perhaps humanities
greatest dread, is a past tense experience for us.
*Romans 6:3-5
Baptism is not a ritual, it is
a gift from God for new life, a life rooted in God’s promise of hope.
*Revelation 21:1-4
This if not, “a pie in the sky
by and by” promise. This the deeply rooted hope of eternal life that grounds us
for action in response to the mighty works of God here and now in this one.
“Eternal” means both a quality
of life in this world and a statement of what is to come, a future rooted in
faith and in baptism.
People never earn their faith
any more than they earn their Baptism.
We don’t deserve Baptism, and we
don’t fully understand it. It’s a gift, a gift from God, administered by the
Church. That’s, in part, why we baptize infants and why we put a white robe on
them.
Paul writes to the church in
Galatia,
*Galatians 3:27 “As many of you as were baptized into
Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”
We are not putting on our own
righteousness when we wear baptismal robes. We are putting on Christ. We wear the
white robes that the saints wear as they stream into heaven.
Christians even as we work for
God’s justice, God’s will, in this world, even as we are sometimes discouraged,
also have this feeling of Impending Fulfilment, and we pray that it might come.
We pray the first Christian
prayer, in the last verses of the last book of the Bible, in words addressed to
the saints, that is the Christians who are both sinners to our shame, and
saints redeemed by God to God’s eternal glory:
*Revelation 22:20-21
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