Between the Already and the Not Yet

Trinity Episcopal Church

Sunday, November 10^th AD 2019

 In today’s second Reading, we hear the following from our elder brother, Paul:
 “As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter…      to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here.”

 What he is essentially saying to the Church in Thessalonica is that they really need to calm down. The Second Coming of Christ  (when he shall again appear with all the Glory of God about him) has not yet occurred. The world we experience is not the fullness of God's Kingdom.

 Those who have died are not doomed and gone forever (for the Final Resurrection has yet to take place), and those who are alive and have been baptized into the life of Christ have no right to sit back and rest on their laurels in bliss just yet.  Things are still unfolding.

 We are still (in a sense) of this age and of this world in which life ebbs and flows, but by being bound to Christ we become witnesses to a much higher level of reality.

 We become witnesses to the Divine Reality that underlies all things:
- The reality that “the things which have being cast down are also always being raised up”
- That those who set themselves in the heights will eventually be brought low.
- That the God who made the World from No-thing (non-existence) is in the Process of making all created things new. 

But although God is acting from Eternity, we who exist in the flow of time are caught in the tension between the Already and the Not Yet.
          
Indeed Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians tells us that this has been a defining tension in the Christian community since the very beginning. Even folks in the Gospels constantly seem to be asking Jesus when he will establish the reign of God in Jerusalem and when he will finally defeat the Forces of Oppression forever.

 “You’re here!” -  They say -  “Hosanna!” (Save us!)

 Christ has come and has announced the arrival of God’s Kingdom (that God’s eternal Presence dwells among God’s people). So what are we waiting for?

“Heaven” is another one of those words that has unfortunately come to mean something other than what it is supposed to mean. It has become the “goal” or the “end” of Christian life. I mean, Jesus ascended into Heaven, and the Bible contains a few visionary images of what the Heavenly Temple (the unmediated Presence of God) might be like. Such images can indeed be beautiful and awe-inspiring.

In modern language when we talk about “Heaven” we might be tempted to think of clouds and harps, or perhaps one might think of it using Church images (such as the “Heavenly Temple”). Regardless of how one pictures it, it’s usually the place that we like to think of as being where Good People go when they die.

 That’s all very nice.

 But in the older sense of the word, it referred to God’s abode – where God dwells as God.

 Yes, clouds might be a part of that, but the ancients lived in an incredibly vibrant world with very little light pollution; their world was dominated by the light of Day and the infinite expanse of the Night Sky.

 When people spoke of Heaven they spoke of that infinite expanse - that world above ours, Inaccessible, Magnificent, Mysterious. The realm from which the seasons and the weather and the affairs of human life are governed.

But Heaven isn’t just up there.  

Modern astronomy tells us that our world is in the Heavens – that we ourselves are (at this moment) flying through the realm of stars and stellar clouds.

 We are, at this moment, surrounded by the Heavens:
          Heavens above.
          Heavens below.
          Heavens to the left of me.
          Heavens to the right of me.

  That’s in the physical, material sense - but Jesus isn’t just out there floating in Space somewhere.

 The scriptural witness tells us that the Presence of God dwells in the Heaven of Heavens. As the physical heavens exist high above our world (while also surrounding and cradling this earth) so too does Presence of God transcend space itself, while simultaneously surrounding us and upholding us.

 That’s already true.  God is already here.

 But we have yet to experience the Reality of God in its fullness. 

In Christ Jesus we get a glimpse of what is already true, as well as that which is yet to come.
In his earthly ministry Jesus was a witness to the Arrival of God’s Presence among God’s people. He could be that witness because he himself is the Incarnation of God’s Presence among God’s People.

He acted as healer, teacher, and lover of souls (because that’s who he is). But in his Death and Resurrection we get a glimpse of what the end of Christian life actually is.

Christ didn’t just die, float up spiritually to heaven, and call back down to us to say that he’s up there keeping the sauna warm for us. Christ rose bodily from the grave. His corpse was brought back to life.

 By the Power of the Holy Spirit he was raised up to a new kind of bodily existence: Unity with God, in the flesh, never again to be touched by death or corruption.

 I mean, he did tell us in his earthly ministry that he would rise after death, and that the end of all human life is to be united to God in the flesh and raised up in the fullness of time.

 But anyone can say that… not everyone can do it.

 In his earthly ministry he healed the sick and raised the dead, foreshadowing what was to come. The people he raised from the dead in ages past have all returned to the grave; for they were only foreshadowing a greater mystery. The restoration of all things in the fullness of time.

 We see the first real glimpse of that in the resurrected Jesus. Although he is still very much the same person, and we read that he still bore his scars and ate with his disciples, he is also very different.

He randomly appears places. He can appear, but be unrecognizable.
He can appear to some, but hide himself from others.
Eventually he ascends (still bodily, still in the flesh), and slips behind the curtain (as it were) to be where he always was - the unmediated Presence of God, the Heaven of Heavens - where the Eternal Word of God is always being Spoken.

The “end” of Christian life is not only a spiritual heaven (per se), it’s not being separated from our bodies as ghosts in the clouds. It is participation in Christ’s Parousia: Christ’s final arrival – the Fullness of God’s Presence breaking out upon creation as water floods out from a broken dam.

When the fullness of time has come and all the ages have finally run their course, Christ has promised to appear again in All Glory and restore the Cosmos to a new kind of life - a cosmic participation in God’s own Eternal Life. The unfolding of God’s Presence in the Cosmos finally fulfilled.

 And as all things were made in the beginning by the Word of God, so too will humanity again be raised up to participate in the new creation embodied by the Living Christ.

We shall see him as he truly is, the Eternal Image of God in human flesh; and on that day (as St. John writes) we shall be as he is.  

Of course, we still have questions.

 In today’s reading from the Gospel according to Luke, the Sadducees (who did not believe in the resurrection) ask Jesus about the math of it all.

 Ok, Jesus. We all believe marriage to be a sacred covenant instituted by God, right? So let’s say there was a woman who married, but before she and her husband had a chance to raise a family, the husband died and she marries his brother. Say the same thing happens with the woman and the man’s brother - he dies before they can build a life together. And say this pattern repeats seven times.
 Which pairing are we going to say is still married in the Resurrection?

 Jesus gives the answer I wish I could have given in math class: “You’re asking the wrong question.”

 We do believe that marriage is a sacred bond between two individuals, and we even view it as being sacramental (that it somehow conveys the Grace of God in our lives). It’s the joining of two lives, the mutual offering of self that the two might be one, form a household together, build a life together.  Just as God (the Lover of Souls) desires to do with us.

 The sacred relationships that we share with each other in this life are mediations of God’s grace.

Each spouse’s mutual giving to the other is meant to mirror God’s offering of the Divine Self to us. The joining of lives, of two becoming one, symbolizes the reality that God desires unity with the Human Soul.

 At death our bodies and our bonds in this life dissolve (even in the marriage rite we say that at death do they part) but our unity with God does not end and can never be dissolved.

In the Resurrection (when all things are made new) we will no longer be married or given in marriage, because we have found our fulfillment in our unity with Christ. His Father becomes our Father, his Spirit becomes our Spirit, and we are all made one flesh with the One who is God incarnate.

We’re all brides of Christ – even now.
The Resurrection and Restoration of All Things is the divine consummation of the relationship that we already have with God through Christ Jesus.

 At the Parousia (the Final Arrival of Christ in Glory) we will no longer have any need for the sacraments and your priest will be out of a job, for the Great High Priest will have been revealed. The unmediated Presence of God will be everywhere and in everything (God will finally be All in All) – Apparent, Imminent, Unavoidable.

 As we believe Christ is present in the Sacrament when we say “this is His Body and this is His Blood”, so will that same sacramental Presence shine forth in all things.

 As we believe we are bound to Christ’s Life, Death, and Resurrection in baptism, so will we experience the fullness of that reality in the age to come.

 That’s the not yet - but things are already in motion.

 At the beginning of Creation this was the destiny that God had set before us - that we might become the Children of God.  In Christ Jesus that destiny was manifest to us and we were given the sacramental grace to walk in the Way of Christ until his coming again.

 Now, in this time and in this place, we are co-conspirators with God in this Great Divine unfolding. We’ve been given a good look at how the story ends; and being bound to Christ, we become witnesses to God’s Presence breaking into the world making all things new.

 As Paul writes later in today’s second lesson:
“God chose you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth. For this purpose God called you through our proclamation of the good news, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught.”

 Christ has come. Christ is coming. Christ is the ever-coming one; for he is the Image of the God – and God is always more.

 Therefore beloved, have faith. For the God who brought the Heavens and the Earth into being, who created life from non-life, and who rose Jesus from the dead is just getting warmed up - and it’s gonna be good.