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Sermon
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| THE VISITOR FROM THE FUTURE The movies that fascinated me were not the Westerns and not the Tarzan stories. They were the science fiction films, and especially those in which the characters were transported backward or forward in time. They would step in and out of time machines that fizzed and flashed, being instantly located in another period of time – even with an appropriate change of clothes. They would look down at themselves, amazed at the odd gear they were wearing. With that in the background, what I want to suggest is a rather different way of looking at Jesus; namely, as ‘The Visitor from the Future’. In fact, I believe this may be a more appropriate way to see him, rather than as an historic figure in the past. He is certainly that also, of course, but this alternative way of seeing him is not really weird at all. In some ways it fits with classical Christian thought about Jesus: that he comes into human time from outside time, so to speak. I need to take you back to that reading from John’s gospel, chapter 1, which we read in a version that helps make the meaning clear.* We read, “At the beginning God expressed himself.” Later the words, “So the Expression of God became a human being.” The crucial word in there is the Greek logos, which is commonly translated as ‘word’. Our older versions have “In the beginning was the word” and “the word became flesh”. Even the NRSV has that. It’s a bit confusing if we don’t know that logos means a whole lot more than what we mean by ‘word’. It means something more like this: “the central idea in the mind of God . . . God’s design for the universe . . . the end result of all things in the mind of God”. So, when the gospel writer says Jesus is the logos (commonly translated as ‘word’), he means that Jesus has come into the world from beyond time, revealing to us what is in the mind of God. In this sense it’s appropriate to think of Jesus as one who comes to us out of the future – the future in the mind of God, to which God is calling us. This is why what I’m saying is called “The Visitor from the Future”. If you are able to embrace this, you will have understood something that is at the heart of our faith. As the visitor from the future, Jesus brings us two very important things: the vision of a new creation, and the vision of a new creature.
I
First is THE VISION OF A NEW CREATION. Jesus was full of hope for the world – an attitude not everywhere obvious today. He was aflame with the vision of a new order he called ‘the Kingdom of God’ – an order that perfectly reflected what God had in mind. I am in no doubt that he wants us to be excited and caught up by the same kind of vision. One who was so caught up in our own time was Martin Luther King, the champion of civil rights for black Americans. King had taken his doctorate at Boston University, where I was in the 60s, and was a regular visitor. In August 1963, a quarter-million people gathered on the Washington Mall to hear what I consider the most stirring rhetoric of the century. I invite you to revisit it. “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. Martin Luther King got his vision of a new creation from the one we have called ‘the Visitor from the Future’.
II
The second thing Jesus brings us from the future is THE VISION OF A NEW CREATURE. Christian thought says that Jesus is, in his own person, the first off the line – the ‘prototype’ for a new kind of human being. This new kind of human being does not ask ‘What can I get out of this world?’ Rather, he/she asks ‘What can I put into this world?’ My guess is you’ve all heard of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’. Anne Frank was a young Jewish girl who lived in hiding from the Nazis during World War II, and who at some time was lost in the ‘holocaust’ that killed one third of the world’s Jews – the people to whom Jesus belonged. You might expect a young girl living under these conditions to be very cynical. It was not so. Here is what she wrote in her diary. “I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply cannot build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. I see this world being gradually turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever approaching thunder which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty will end, and that peace and tranquillity will return again.”Those are very moving words from a person younger than many of us here today and from whom you might not expect such hope. And yet, why should they surprise – especially for those of us who call ourselves ‘Christian’? For, you see, if the coming of Jesus Christ says anything about this mystery we call ‘God’, it is surely that God is full of hope! The coming of Jesus is God’s vote of confidence in the human race; God’s disclosure of what you and I can be. I want to illustrate this point, and draw the message to a close by recalling an incident from the movie film “Amadeus”, the story of the great composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In the Western world I doubt there would be much dispute that Mozart was the greatest child prodigy of all time. We are told he was writing as good music at eight as Haydn was writing at forty. But Mozart was always desperately poor; indeed, he died penniless. One of the great moments in the film is when Mozart’s wife Constanze visits the court musician Salieri for help in getting a job for Mozart. She carries bundles of his music as proof of his ability. Salieri is speechless when Constanze tells him these sheets of music are not copies. What is the significance of this? They are all originals – and yet they show no sign of correction or revision. It is unbelievable. You see, what it means is that these works of exquisite beauty were already formed in the mind of Mozart before they ever appeared on paper – fully formed in his mind before they appeared! And so it is with the kind of person you can be: not yet apparent for the seeing, but fully formed in the mind of God. Jesus, ‘the visitor from the future’ (God’s future) is the one who lets us glimpse that potential in every person – the one who comes to disclose the ‘you’ that is already formed in the mind of God, and to touch your being so that the idea in the mind of God can become flesh – in you. Let it happen – and be part of God’s new creation. * “The Gospels translated into Modern English” by J.B. Phillips ___________________________________________________
An address presented by the Rev Dr John Bodycomb at St Aidan's
Uniting Church North Balwyn, on 24th December, 2006 IT MAY BE REPRODUCED WITH ACKNOWLEDGMENT. |
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