"THE FUTURE GLORY"
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11)
July 23, 2017
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
Romans 8:18 (ESV)
There are a lot of things that people will tolerate in this world (especially these days), but one thing that a lot of people (if not most) still have a real problem with is broken promises. Whether it involves a husband or wife's marriage vow or an elected official's oath of office, we demand that people to live up to their word and their commitments (even if we don't really expect them to). And when they fail to do that, we tend to think less of them. I suppose that's why so many people in our world today are disillusioned about God. They are familiar with His promise of everlasting life and eternal glory for those who believe in His Son, yet they still see Christians suffering and dying every day, often being treated and themselves behaving in ways that could be described as anything but glorious or Christian. A lot of people feel as if they cannot trust God because they see such a stark contrast between His promises and the harsh realities of life that His people have to live with every day.
As you might suspect, believers in Jesus Christ have a different take on the things going on in their lives that don't quite measure up to what their Lord has promised them. We who though Baptism have been called to live in the shadow of Jesus' cross do not see our pain and suffering as a contradiction of what God has promised but rather as a tension between the present and future. As the apostle Paul reminds us in this morning's Epistle, there is really no comparison between what is and what is yet to come for the disciples of Jesus Christ. As disciples of Jesus Christ, let's spend these few minutes this morning listening to what the Word of the Lord has to say to us about our present sufferings and about our future glory.
Our present sufferings ought to be obvious to anyone who is a participant in this adventure that we call life. There may indeed be a lot of things for us to enjoy in life (such as the birth and Baptism of a child), but far more of our attention is spent on what is wrong than on what is right. It seems that the older we get and the more of life that we get to experience, the more obsessed we become about the things that are wrong in our lives and in the world that we live in. That's certainly understandable, because, whether we want to talk about it or not, the older we get, the closer we are to the biggest thing that is wrong with life in this world, and that is the fact that people die--not just some people, but all people. And regardless of our age, none of us has the least bit of control or even knowledge regarding when and under what circumstances it will happen to us. What I'm saying is that no matter how you want to paint it, suffering and death are facts of life for all of us.
The reason why suffering and death are facts of life for us is that sin is a fact of life for us. No matter how terrible, every evil that we face in life is really nothing more than a symptom of sin. Our first parents, way back in the garden, may have been the first to get the bright idea of rebelling against their perfect Creator, but every last one of us has seconded their motion. And we continue to do so every day, even though we know the consequences of sin all too well. It's like an addiction or a disease. In fact, that's exactly what it is--a disease. You and I and everyone else suffer from a terminal condition called sin, and all of the things that aren't right in our lives and in our world are the symptoms of that condition. It's a condition that we have brought on ourselves--a condition that we continue to allow to thrive within us. I'm not saying that there is always a direct cause-and-effect relationship between our specific sins and the things that go wrong in our lives, but because we are all sinners living in a sinful world, we are always at risk. Even if we could somehow do away with all of the symptoms, the condition would still be there.
The picture would be a bleak and hopeless one indeed were it not for God's intervention in this sorry state of affairs by the incarnation of His Son Jesus Christ. In Christ God got Himself intimately involved in this messy business of sin--certainly not as a participant, but as the Deliverer. Like us, He endured suffering and death, but His suffering and death were far worse than ours because in them He endured all of God's righteous judgment against your sin and my sin and everybody else's sin. And because He did that, we have His promise of future glory. The people who rejected Him in His own time were really no different than those who are disillusioned with Him today. God had promised a King, but this King's crown was made of thorns. God had promised a glorious Messiah, but this Messiah died a criminal's death. God had promised a victorious Champion, but this Champion claimed to win by losing and encouraged His followers to do the same, conquering the world not with deadly weapons but with self-sacrificing love. It just didn't make sense to Jesus' contemporaries, and to many people today it still doesn't make sense.
It wouldn't make sense to us either--and neither would our own suffering and death--except for one little thing. It's called Easter. This Jesus who died in shame was raised in glory and has assured those who trust in Him: "Because I live, you also will live" (John14:19). The resurrection didn't change anything that happened to Jesus beforehand, but it gave it meaning by proclaiming that He is the Savior that He claimed to be and that His suffering and death really did make atonement for sin and thereby justify sinners. In the same way, the glory that awaits us in Christ doesn't change the suffering and death that we have to endure in the present, but it sure does make some sense of it all. Like little Oliver, in Baptism we have been united with our Savior Jesus Christ in His death and in His resurrection. We must die as He has died, but we will also rise again in glory just as He has. And our future glory will proclaim that we are the disciples of Jesus that we claim to be and that in Him we are victorious over sin and death despite all of our faults and failures.
There appears to be a vast contradiction between what we experience in life now and what we have been promised in the life to come. But our future glory is a sure thing--as sure as the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. In fact, we can catch a glimpse of it right here and now, in spite of the misery that surrounds us. We saw it this morning. We see it every time that God claims someone as His own through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. We see it every time that a person hears the Gospel of Jesus Christ and believes it. We see it every time that we pray to our heavenly Father in the name of Jesus. We see it every time that we hear or speak the words: "I forgive you." As we live each day in this world with our eyes firmly fixed on the One who has delivered us from our sin and suffering and has promised to mercifully take us to the perfect glory of heaven, we are encouraged as we remember His promise: "In the world you will have tribulation" He tells us. "But take heart; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).
Amen.
May the Lord bless your hearing of His Word, using it to accomplish in you those things for which He gave it. May you be enriched and strengthened in faith that you may leave here today to go out into our world armed with the whole armor of God, prepared to be able ambassadors of your Savior Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it. Amen.