Hope – the long view

 Preached @ Christ Church, Billericay on Monday 2 August 2021

The World

Forget the pandemic, Covid-19 is just a blip in the race to annihilation. We have much bigger things to worry about. There’s climate change for a start. What we are doing to the climate with our excessive use of fossil fuels means we are in danger of turning our planet into Venus. In case you don’t know, Venus is way too hot for there to be liquid water – the average temperature is about 460 Celsius.

Tipping Points

We may have already passed some tipping points, with record temperatures in northern Russia, releasing trapped methane into the atmosphere.

IF we succeed in stabilising the climate, we will have to find somewhere for the millions of people whose homes will be flooded by the seven metre rise in sea levels.

If we overcome all of this we have the dangers of asteroids hitting us and possibly wiping us out like one did to the dinosaurs, or the planet mercury leaving it’s unstable orbit and throwing the solar system into chaos.

Further out, in a few billion years, the sun will have expanded enough to boil the earth, and make it uninhabitable for humans. Finally the universe itself will expand to the point where there are no atoms left, just photons, and they will be so far apart that they will never collide - it’s called the heat death of the universe, although the temperature is just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero.

Threats to existence

It seems there have always been threats to our existence.

I was born in the mid-1950s when the threats to our existence were perhaps more in our control – nuclear war was either chosen or not by a very few people – not that we trusted them.

The message that the world gives today is that there is no hope. In the short term we will probably destroy the environment and make the planet uninhabitable, in the longer term the sun will do it for us. Even if we escape this planet the universe will expand until life is impossible.

Some of these threats affect us directly, others just seem to make any future worse than the present, it seems we are surrounded by decay and the end will come too soon. These constant messages of doom and gloom do not help people, and are undoubtedly a contributing factor in the worsening mental health situation we are constantly hearing about.

Our End

Thinking about our own end just adds to the doom that we feel is approaching faster and faster the older we get.

Revelation – the last page

What a contrast to the Revelation reading we had today. Billy Graham had a saying “I've read the last page of the Bible, it's all going to turn out all right.” That’s more like it, that’s the sort of message we want and need to hear. Further on from our reading today, and definitely on the last page Jesus says:

Rev 22:12 “Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. ¹³ I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, a the Beginning and the End. ¹⁴ “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. ¹⁵ Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. ¹⁶ “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.”

We must remember that Revelation is written in code, so that the vision of the victory of Jesus over the authorities of the time was not easily understood. The believers had the code and could make sense of what was said, the authorities did not, and it seemed to them as religious mumbo-jumbo.

2000 years later, the believers – you and I, only have some of the code, and must make the best of what we have. One thing is clear though, that Jesus will return and that He will rescue us. Whatever the details of the image of the new Jerusalem means, there will be a community of worshippers there, with us among them.

Credible Claim?

This is all very well, but is it credible? The message of scientists has been worked out over hundreds of years with some of the best minds carefully measuring everything they can and trying to understand things that are well beyond you and I. So by contrast, does the message of the gospel have similar credibility.

We can easily rehearse some of the amazing truths of Christianity:

Truths

Jesus came to earth from heaven, to a failing sinful world, to re-instate a relationship with God that had not existed properly since before the fall. He achieved that by dying on a cross and three days later being resurrected. If we believe this, our relationship with God is being restored, and we have already been given eternal life. We know this because we have eyewitness accounts in documents that were written and copied to local churches as evidence of what happened.

Even without the documents, we would have to ask what happened to make twelve frightened men found the biggest religion in the world? They were cowering in fear of the authorities after Jesus’s death, how did they suddenly become so fearless? Paul tells us what happened, not just to them, but to thousands of early converts to the new faith.

(Romans 5:1-5) Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Where does Hope come from?

Now, our hope comes directly from God, through the Holy Spirit. We have peace with our maker – perhaps we recognise for the first time that we are made and not just a random collection of molecules that happened by chance.

We are in grace, God is with us, not just at the end but all the time, to be sure we are able to finish the race (to use another of Paul’s metaphors). The Holy Spirit is there providing support, direction and purpose. He will ensure that we complete the race. I don’t usually like sporting illustrations, but as the Olympics are currently under way in Tokyo, I thought this might help.

The Barcelona Olympics of 1992 provided one of track and field's most incredible moments.

Britain's Derek Redmond had dreamed all his life of winning a gold medal in the 400-metre race, and his dream was in sight as the gun sounded in the semifinals at Barcelona. He was running the race of his life and could see the finish line as he rounded the turn into the backstretch. Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain go up the back of his leg. He fell face first onto the track with a torn right hamstring.

Sports Illustrated recorded the dramatic events:

As the medical attendants were approaching, Redmond fought to his feet. "It was animal instinct," he would say later. He set out hopping, in a crazed attempt to finish the race. When he reached the stretch, a large man in a T-shirt came out of the stands, hurled aside a security guard and ran to Redmond, embracing him. It was Jim Redmond, Derek's father. "You don't have to do this," he told his weeping son. "Yes, I do," said Derek. "Well, then," said Jim, "we're going to finish this together." And they did. Fighting off security men, the son's head sometimes buried in his father's shoulder, they stayed in Derek's lane all the way to the end, as the crowd gaped, then rose and howled and wept. Derek didn't walk away with the gold medal, but he walked away with an incredible memory of a father who, when he saw his son in pain, left his seat in the stands to help him finish the race.

That’s what our Father God is like, He will not let us fail, He will ensure we complete the course in this life and ultimately take our place in the New Jerusalem.

​Ultimate hope

Our hope is founded on our belief in Jesus’s resurrection. The evidence for it is there in the pages of the Bible, the history of the early church, and our personal relationship with God.

Our universe may end in almost nothingness, but there is a new heaven and a new earth, and that’s where we will be, with our God living with us.

Amen