This sermon was delivered at Christ’s Family Church Youth in Broken Arrow, OK on Sunday, May 9, 2010. The following is not a sermon manuscript, but my notes that I wrote while preparing for the sermon; this is more of a rough draft. That means that I said some things in the sermon that are not found in the following text, and there I some things in the text that were left unspoken. Finally, because this is a rough draft, it may be lacking prose. However, I hope you will enjoy this as is!
In February 1678, John Bunyan published his famous allegory, which eventually became a classic, The Pilgrim’s Progress. In this allegory, the Pilgrim receives news about a coming judgment on his town and flees his home trying to escape the judgment. He is on his way to the Celestial City.
Bunyan allegory is very helpful, because our Christian life is a lot like pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is a process between two places: the place of departure in the past and the place of arrival in the future.
We live between the realities of the past and of what is to come. Every moment of our existence is defined by what happened to us before and what will happen to us in the future. “Now” is nothing more than a transition between “Before” and “After.” It is impossible to catch the “Now”; and only the “Before” and the “After” are subject to our analysis.
The most discouraging time to live in is “Now” that is not defined by the past and by the future. Uncertain future is not comforting, but it is not as bad as absence of future, which leads to utter hopelessness. The “Now” that is not grounded in the past is also uncertain and lacking meaning.
The most meaningful Christian rite is the Eucharist, the Table of the Lord, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). This rite is grounded in what happened in the past and guides us to the future.
In the movie The Terminal, Viktor Navorski found himself in a situation between the two realities of the past and the future. By the time he landed in the United States, a revolution happened in his country Cracotia, which left him without proper citizenship. That meant that he couldn’t go back to his country, nor could he go ahead and get out of the airport on the U.S. soil.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian martyr who was hung by the Nazi armies, wrote from prison about a concept of ultimate and penultimate. Says Bonhoeffer about the penultimate:
There is, therefore, no penultimate in itself; as though a thing could justify itself in itself as being a thing before the last thing; a thing becomes penultimate only through the ultimate, that is to say, at the moment when it has already lost its own validity. The penultimate, then, does not determine the ultimate; it is the ultimate which determines the penultimate.[1]
In our discussion, the ultimate is the future and the past, and only this ultimate determines the penultimate “Now.”
In Jesus’ earthly life and ministry, His central message was about the Kingdom of God. However, he made several statements concerning the Kingdom in relation to time that seen to be paradoxical.
He said that:
- the Kingdom is near, but not here yet
- “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15; also Matt 4:17).
- The same message was spoken by John the Baptism (Matt 3:2) and by the Apostles (Matt 10:7, Luke 10:9,11).
- the Kingdom is here
- “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you” (Matt 12:28; also Luke 11:20).
- Other translations say that the Kingdom “has already overtaken you” (NET) or “has arrived among you” (NLT).
- the Kingdom is a future reality
- “For I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God . . . for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes” (Luke 22:16,18).
- “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” (Matt 16:28).
- the Kingdom is not tangible
- “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you” (Luke 17:20-21).
We see that the kingdom of God is in some sense already here, but it is also still coming; in one sense it is very near, but in another it is in distant future.
The disciples misunderstood the teaching of Jesus on the kingdom. They were confident that He was going to restore the Davidic kingdom, and when He was crucified, some of them went back to their past life; they went back to fishing. Even when the resurrected Christ appeared to them, they were wondering if this was the time for the restoration of the Davidic kingdom (Acts 1).
The disciples could not immediately grasp the “already-ness” and the “not yet-ness” of the Kingdom. Sadly, many Christians still don’t grasp this reality. Many Christians think and live as if the Kingdom of God is not here yet in any sense, but is coming in the future. Others want to live as if the Kingdom is fully here.
On one occasion I was arguing with a friend over a definition of the gospel. I argued that the gospel produces good works in us that give testimony whether we are truly people of the Kingdom of not. He argued that the gospel is simply atonement and that’s all. He affirmed the value of good works, but made a distinction between the gospel and the fruit of the gospel. My response is, “Who needs a fruitless gospel?”
If we only have an ultimate past, in which Christ redeemed us, but didn’t give us any future, than what good is it?
Martin Luther said, “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly.”[2]
I see where Luther is coming from, but I disagree with Him, for even St. Paul says that we should not sin so grace may abound.
By His life, death, and resurrection, Jesus Christ has brought God’s Kingdom to earth in some sense. Christ has inaugurated the Kingdom of Heaven, but we should not live and think our Christian life as if the Kingdom is purely a future reality.
The other extreme is thinking that the Kingdom is already fully here. We have met people and heard evangelists who, like Soviet Russians, want to build a “paradise on earth”; they want to “live like the children of the King.” They try to have mansions and expensive vehicles and private jets. The problem with that thinking is that our King is crucified, and being His child means bearing our cross. They preach complete health, as if we were already in heaven.
Another example of this extreme is over-spiritualization of relationships with God. As one Russian hymn that talks about the goodness of having relationship with God poses a question, “Will it be better for me in the Paradise?”
To answer that question, yes, it will be better because we live between two realities: a Kingdom that is inaugurated and here in some sense, and the Kingdom that is still coming in its fullness in the future.
The paradigm for our earthly pilgrimage is this: we live between the two Comings of Christ; we live in a Kingdom that is inaugurated, but not fully here yet. We live having faith that is grounded in what happened to Christ (and to us in Christ) in the past, but we also live having hope that is grounded in what will happened to Christ (and to us in Christ) in the future.
In some sense, our salvation is complete and we are saved by grace, but in another sense, we have to work out our salvation and we have to have hope of salvation.
If we alter what the gospel says either about our past or our future, our present loses its meaning and does not make any sense.
Once Jesus told a parable that we all know, but rarely do we speak why he told that parable. The parable is about three merchants and how they used their king’s talents that were entrusted to them.
11 As they were listening to this, he went on to tell a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. 12 So he said, “A nobleman went to a distant country to get royal power for himself and then return. 13 He summoned ten of his slaves, and gave them ten pounds, and said to them, ‘Do business with these until I come back.’
(Luke 19:11-13, emphasis added)
Just like these merchants, we live between the departure and the arrival of the king. Our present pilgrimage is determined by what the king has done in his departure and what he will do upon his arrival.
Another great biblical example of this “already/not yet” principle is the Exodus of the Jewish people. They already left Egypt, but they were not yet in the Promised Land. What happened to them in the desert was a result of their understanding (or failure to understand) of their past and their future.
I will conclude by another quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
Jesus Christ who rose again—this means that God out of His love and omnipotence sets an end to death and calls a new creation to life. “Old things are passed away” (II Cor. 5.17). “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21.5). Already in the midst of the old world, resurrection has dawned, as a last sign of its end and of its future, and at the same time as a living reality. Jesus rose again as a man, and by so doing He gave men the gift of the resurrection. Thus man remains man, even though he is a new, a risen man, who in no way resembles the old man. Until he crosses the frontier of his death, even though he has already rise again with Christ, he remains in the world of the penultimate, the world in to which Jesus entered and the world in which the cross stands. Thus, so long as the earth continues, even the resurrection does not annul the penultimate, but the eternal life, the new life, breaks in with ever greater power into the earthly life and wins its space for itself within it.[3]
As Viktor Navorski, we cannot deny that what happened in our past is real. Except that in his past, Viktor lost his citizenship, but in our past in Christ, we have gained the heavenly citizenship through Christ.
As Viktor Navorski could not make his future happen now, so we cannot live as if the future Kingdom of God is already here and now. But as Vikor Navorski used his time in the terminal to work, make friends, play a matchmaker, go on a date, etc. so we have use our time in this earthly pilgrimage, in this desert, in this terminal, to do the work of the Kingdom, looking back to the First Coming of Christ, and looking ahead to the Second Coming.
[1]Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 133.
[2]A Letter From Luther to Melanchthon, Letter no. 99, 1 August 1521, From the Wartburg.
[3]Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 132.
Journey to Theosis 