John 11:32-44; Revelation 21:1-6; Isaiah 25:6-9
Daylight savings is funny, isn’t it? It’s sort of like our ultimate attempt to control time – which is ultimately uncontrollable – and it’s actually sort of impressive that we manage to pull it off, that we all manage to get to church at the right time the next day.
I don’t think I’ve ever actually stayed up until 2:00 in the morning to watch the time jump ahead to 3:00 or fall back to 1:00. That must be the closest we get to some kind of time warp… I guess it’s a little like staying up until midnight on New Year’s Eve, when one year turns into the next; when December turns into January, when today turns into tomorrow.
Funny thing about tomorrow, though, is that as soon as you get there, it’s today again, right? I ran across a silly song this week – maybe you know it, I think it was featured on a Muppet Show many years ago – about a small town in southwest Ohio called Morrow (M-O-R-R-O-W), which as you can imagine, leads to all kinds of confusion and lends itself well to all kinds of jokes. This song I came across is about someone who is trying to catch a train to Morrow but missed the train going today and so would have to wait and go tomorrow. There are several verses, which I’ll spare you, but this was my favorite:
The clerk at the train station says:
“Now let me see if I have heard you right
You’d like to go to Morrow and return tomorrow night
You should have gone to Morrow yesterday and back today,
For the train that goes to Morrow is a mile upon its way
If you had gone to Morrow yesterday now don’t you see,
You could have gone to Morrow and returned today at 3
For the train today to Morrow if the schedule is right,
Today it gets to Morrow and returns tomorrow night.” (Homiletics, Nov.-Dec. 2009)
Tomorrow seems to be one of those elusive places we’re always looking ahead to but can’t ever seem to get there.
Annie, – remember the musical Annie? – Annie sits at her window in the orphanage and looks toward tomorrow – only a day away – whenever she’s feeling hopeless, because she knows that there’s always hope, tomorrow.
Isaiah – remember the prophet Isaiah? – looks at his people driven out of their homes and sent into exile, their temple and their cities destroyed, and looks toward tomorrow – the God-promised tomorrow – and sees a mountain on which “the Lord of hosts will make for all the people a feast of rich food and well-aged wines.”
And John – remember John of Patmos? We don’t talk about him much – he sat on the island of Patmos where he was sent in exile, where he wrote the book or Revelation, he looked out to the destruction in the world around him and looked toward tomorrow – the God-promised tomorrow – and sees a new heaven and a new earth, and hears a voice saying, “God will wipe every tear from their eyes; death will be no more, morning and crying will be no more, for the first things have passed away… I am making all things new…” (Rev. 21:1-6) Tomorrow…
It’s getting from today to tomorrow that seems to be the hard part.
Sometimes, doesn’t it feel like we can’t get to tomorrow? We’re like that guy trying to Morrow but he can’t because the train has already left. We’re like Annie, sitting in her orphanage window night after night, dreaming about tomorrow. We’re like Isaiah, believing in God’s promise of a new future. We’re like John, believing in a vision in which death is no more… But we’re here, in today, in the real struggles of the world, and sometimes tomorrow seems awfully far away.
And then, there’s this story about Lazarus. Lazarus was dying, and his sisters have called Jesus but he didn’t come right away, so that when he arrives, Lazarus has already been dead for the better part of a week. Mary is weeping when Jesus comes to her, and Jesus weeps, too, and everyone wonders the obvious question: Couldn’t Jesus have kept him from dying?
But Jesus does better than that: he goes to the tomb where Lazarus was buried, and tells them to move the stone from the door, and then he calls into the tomb, “Lazarus, come out!” And Lazarus does, bound with strips of cloth from head to toe.
It’s a strange and sometimes troubling story, that simultaneously gives us hope and raises more questions that it answers: Did this really happen? Could it happen? Why doesn’t happen again?
Is eternal life something that happens in some far off “tomorrow,” or something that happens now? Where are we? Today, or tomorrow? Are we looking forward to what God has promised us, or celebrating what God has already done?
Well, both, of course.
That’s the whole tension of our tradition, everything we celebrate is based on just that: God has done great things for us, and we rejoiced. And: God will do great things for us.
It’s like standing at a turning point in history, with the past behind us and the future ahead of us. Think about the folks we’ve met he last few weeks: Blind Bartimaues who came running up to Jesus, knowing that his life would be changed, the rich young man who wasn’t ready for his life to be changed… Job, with the tragedy of his past which would always be his present, but still looking forward to the future.
And the stewardship campaign… every year, we as a congregation, and individually, we look to the past and celebrate what God has done, and we look forward to the future, making plans and building dreams.
It’s fitting, I think, that we’re concluding our stewardship campaign this year on All Saints Day, when we honor those people we’ve lost in the last year, because isn’t it for them that we look forward? Isn’t it for all the saints who’ve gone before us that we make plans for the future?
But this also seems like a good time to look back as a community – standing here on this day when the time has changed, when we’ve fallen over from October into November, from today into tomorrow, in this little lull before the holidays start revving up into a tornado of activity that won’t dump us out until mid-January… a good time to look at where we are as a congregation and where we’e going…
This has been a good year, wouldn’t you say?
Can we say, the Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced?
Let’s think:
With God’s help,
You’ve served people all over the community in all kinds of ways, we’ve donated food and back packs and bicycles to people who need them, you’ve started a garden that is still producing incredible bounty…
With God’s help,
You’ve continued a strong and vibrant youth ministry and ministry for children, even without a youth director on staff.
With God’s help,
You’ve done behind-the-scenes work on everything from fixing drainpipes and air conditioners to revising administrative policies – all that not-very-exciting stuff that is so important for the rebuilding that we are doing.
With God’s help,
You’ve gathered for worship in creative and meaningful ways. You’ve cared for each other when times have been rough, you’ve helped each other grieve, you’ve celebrated together. You’ve welcomed new friends.
We can say it: The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced. Say that with me, will you: The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.
However.
However…. Tomorrow is a hard place to get to, and we aren’t there yet.
There are dreams God has for us that we haven’t gotten to yet. And maybe we thought we’d be there by now. Maybe we’re starting to feel a little discouraged.
Can we just be honest about this?
Maybe we look around and we’re about the same size we were a year ago, and we look around at each other and think about all the dreams we have for the congregation – all that we really truly feel God is calling us to do – and we kind of wonder where all those new people are who were going to come and do it all. Better yet – if we’re really being honest – where are all those new people who were going to come and pay for it all?
That’s the kicker, isn’t it?
A year ago – maybe we’re thinking – we were looking ahead to tomorrow and all that God had promised us, and now it IS tomorrow, or really today, and we’re looking ahead to the next tomorrow and wondering how all that is going to happen.
So, yes. We’ve got some work to do. We’ve got to do be intentional about inviting people in; if we think we have something important to share here, nobody is going to know that unless we tell them. We’ve got to be on the lookout for ways to serve our community, and we’ve got to be ready to respond, and give in new ways. We’ve got to think about how we use the gifts of our leaders so that we all don’t get so burned out running the organization of the church that we don’t have time to be the church. We’ve got to commit to each other that we are going to live into the future of this church, and we’ve got to do it for all the saints who did it for us.
The hope God promises us is not just the future hope of banquet feasts of rich food on holy mountains with well-aged wines. It is that, but it is also a promise that there is a little bit of tomorrow – our God-promised tomorrow – in our every day. It’s a promise that every day, in every moment, God is rolling away that stone that keeps us inside wrapped up in whatever cloths are binding us, and every moment, that tomb is opened and God is peering in and saying in a loud voice – if only we could hear – come out!
Because something happens there. We do not know what and we need not fully understand, but something happens there at the edge of that tomb when the stone is pushed away (and we are right to think of another tomb, another stone rolled away…) Something happens there that moves us from yesterday to tomorrow, and we stand here today, changed by what happens there, because we know, now, that the promise is true. That there is hope, not just for tomorrow, but for today.
The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.
The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.