Time and Eternity (Jan 25)

Readings, Isaiah 9:1-14 and 1 Cor 1:10-18
Image, Michael Galovic (Serbian Australian, 1949–), Ukraine Response, 2022. 
 
When I lived in Brisbane, in my early 20s, I lived near the biggest video rental place I’ve ever seen, which for an aspiring actor was paradisiacal. They not only had most movies sorted by director, but had a whole foreign director section as well. The best part was that, on Tuesdays, all weekly rentals were a dollar and if you could correctly answer a trivia question you got an extra rental for free… and folks, I know it is gauche to use a sermon illustration where you, as the preacher, come off all shiny and bright, but you need to know I got a lot of bonus rentals.
 
What was great about this, other than the price and the range, was that when you got home with your 7 or so movies (I had plenty of time in those halcyon days), that was - more or less - the options you had when it came to at-home entertainment for the week. When night came and you started to think, what should I watch, you could simply look at this list. In seven days the movies went back and you borrowed some more and this became the short list to draw from. And while you, certainly, can umm and ahh for a handful of minutes over a handful of movies, the decision necessarily eventuates without too much stress or sweat.
 
Now, however, when the kids are asleep and I want to watch a movie, it's disastrous. Because the short list is no longer those handful of films I rented, but is more or less the entire history of cinema stretched out over streaming platforms, YouTube, and the Internet Archive. And you can swipe and swipe and search and search and the short list simply doesn’t hit bottom (until of course you do strike upon an idea and then invariably discover it is not on the streaming service it was last month but on the one you cancelled when your seven day free trial ran out). The abundance of choice we have now - as has been fairly widely observed - does not make choice easier, and in many ways we watch less, despite having access to much more.
 
Now, it is easy for me, as it can be for all of us, to look back on that period of video rental and pine. But that period has been gone for some time (how many of the youths around Forestway even know why that cafe is called The Old Civic?). But what’s more startling, or unnerving, is when we look back and remember, that not only has the period been gone for some time, it wasn’t even around for that long. The first video rental store opened in Australia in 1983, and by the mid 2010s they were basically all gone. A thirty-something year rise and fall. History is, after all, what was here today, but gone tomorrow.
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We might think of less flippant examples. Earlier this week, the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made the following remarks in a speech: “Today, I’ll talk about the rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story, and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints.” The post-war stability of the UN and deference to international law seems to be crumbling as a kind of de-globalised, multi-polar world comes into play. Wars being launched, cities being starved, leaders being snatched, threats against nations aired in public. US President Trump’s insistence that Denmark has no claim to Greenland just because they landed a boat there 500 years ago, is a statement Indigenous peoples across the world must be raising more than an eyebrow, but it is also striking because it flaunts the governing logic of the Western political order since the colonial period. All this points to the fraying of the assumed, the tearing of old orders, the disregarding of the established simply because it was established. And if we are on the collapse of one period of international relations, there will be a lot of us who feel that something permanent is being jettisoned, when once again, like video rentals, this period of international ‘stability,’ this era of international political order, is - at best - 75 years old (and it would be fraught to claim it was ever really as stable, pervasive, or good as it might seem here on the brink). Time is a funny phenomena, it bends with experience. It is very easy to think of timeless and eternal things that lasted little more than a blink of an eye.
 
The problem with stretching a period of history into the realm of eternity, is that it risks confusing the historical with the eternal, human with divine, the worldly with the heavenly, temporary with fixed. Many of the things we have always done, or the ways that have always been, are simply those that hovered around us or our parents at key points in our life. It is easy for me to think, oh, wouldn’t it be great for the girls to have the experience of going to the video store and picking out movies for the week (rather than them being able to jump from thing to thing to thing) and yeah, sure, I can long for that and there might be good to it. But that was my experience for a short time, I can hardly claim it as being something formative for the human race. But we can - and likely do this with all manner of things: perhaps it's a kind of memory of the church, or a certain political order, or a kind of manner or style of dress. We can even do it with commerce - people now, in the age of online shopping, are pining for the days of the mall. Not remembering perhaps the era of the mall’s villainy as it displaced local shops with their community and familiarity, or department stores with their style and glamour.
 
Because confusing the historical with the eternal, the earthly with the heavenly, is the root of idolatry. To make something material (a political figure, a nation state, a form of church, a moment in the culture) essential, immutable, perpetual, and fixed is to make that thing an idol, to claim for it what rightly belongs only to God.
 
Even the sacrament of baptism, it seems, can become a site of idolatry when the particular details of the historical moment - i.e. who did the baptising - is given eternal significance. Paul chides the church in Corinth for their quarrelling based (on all things) who it was that baptised them. The baptiser (be it Peter, Paul, or Apollos) is held up as high as Christ, and as such is splitting the community into factions. Paul admonishes them, asking: Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? And then extends his argument for the insignificance of the one who did the baptising by admitting (or at least supposing to admit, as one might presume there is a little rhetorical flourish at work) that he can’t even remember who, if any, he baptised. Paul seeks to instill a proper distance between the earthly and the heavenly, the historical and eternal, the true God from the idol. It is this reminder of the difference between someone in time (an apostle) and the Lord of Time (Christ), that allows the community to properly enjoy and participate in the gift of heaven that is the sacrament of baptism.
 
So how do we avoid this confusion? How do we maintain the great chasm between the historical and eternal? For this is, in part, the way to avoid idolatry. First, and this goes to our prelude on video rental and international relations, is to recognise the changing, fluid, and brief nature of history. To recognise that an era in the culture, politics, or the church, is always fleeting. In part this is why we have the prayer of confession - not because Christ’s salvation needs to be constantly earnt through our petition, but to recognise our continual need for our lives to be reoriented on the path of his completed work. This is in part why we have the acknowledgment of country, to recognise that the history of this land has a much longer span than has been typically recognised. We recognise the changing, fluid, and unpredictable nature of history as a way of confessing it is not the rock on which we build the household of our faith, for it is always slipping like sand through an hourglass.
 
The second way we maintain the great chasm between the historical and eternal, is to be in community with and be learning from people who have experienced history differently than us. That could be people who have experienced more of history than us, who laugh at how quaint a thirty-something year old preacher’s examples of the changing nature of history sound. But that should also be those who lived through the same span of time but experienced it in a radically different manner. Those who lived through the same time but without the same vote, the same access, the same rights. Those who lived through the same supposed stability of international relations but in nations too often turned into pawns of a proxy war. Those who lived in the days of video rentals but without the infrastructure or expendable income to make it a weekly habit.
 
I think again of the church in Corinth. Specifically, Paul’s admonishment of the community for how they were practicing the Lord’s Supper. Those who were wealthy would come together and enjoy the love feast and have consumed everything before those forced to work could even arrive. It would be easy for the rich and independent in the community to look fondly on those days of the church, remembering the many hours spent at table with their fellow saints - unless they are made aware of how others are experiencing the same time, who because of material inequality are excluded and ostracised, denied and denigrated. It takes listening to and committing to be in community with those who are experiencing history differently, that allows them to properly enjoy and participate in the gift of heaven that is the sacrament of communion.       
 
The final way in which we avoid this confusion of the historical and eternal and so resist the impulse to idolatry is to recognise that changeless stability is not a prerequisite of divine activity. As the prophet said,
The people who walked in darkness
   have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness--
   on them light has shined.       
The child that is born for us, the son that is given to us, the Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace who is sent into the world in love is sent in the middle of changing and crumbling history. Christ comes, the Spirit moves, God acts in the turmoil of time. It is not because of an era of Egyptian imperial stability that God appeared before Moses and said, I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt… and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians. It was not because of an era of Roman imperial stability that Jesus was sent by God to bring good news to the poor… to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free. And the Spirit today, is not beholden to any supposed stability in church, culture, or politics, in order to move like the wind, stirring up great change and bringing to light a new thing that God is doing.
 
For the great danger of idolatry is not only misplaced worship, but it is that in being misplaced, we are so determined to hold onto and prop up what is timebound and thus destined to crumble that we miss seeing and recognising what God is doing, or is about to do, in our time. To go back to that speech by Prime Minister Carney, his closing caution was: “The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.” This is in part why we open the scriptures and hear them proclaimed each week, because this is not only a source of comfort but interruption, not only about what occurred, but pointing toward the always occurring. This is good news - and not only for avoiding the trapfalls of idolatry - but also as a source of strength and hope. In times of turmoil, when we are struck with fear over the fraying of the edges of the world, unsettled by the cracking of the age, we recall our foundation is built on something deeper, firmer. As our Basis of Union proclaims, the church is able to live and endure through the changes of history because our Lord comes, addresses, and deals with people in and through the news of his completed work.
 
The present is aptly named, it is a gift. And there is much in time to point us to and draw us near the wonders of eternity, much on earth that is as it is in heaven. But the present order is always, already fading away, and like the garment of the resurrected Christ, it must not be clung to out of fear that the next moment, and the next, and the one to come after that will not also be infused with the gifts and graces of our God. This is also, finally, in part why we are sent out into the world, even our worship services don’t last forever. Because it is to and for the world that Christ is sent and already present and active, and it is there we shall find and follow him into eternal life. For it is in holding loosely that we hold faithfully and maintain the chasm between time and eternity. It is in stepping out in trust that we find our feet on the path of Christ which time cannot ravage, nor history deplete, but is where his authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace