“A PROMISE FOR THE LIVING OF THESE DAYS”
HEBREW 9:24-28

24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.
25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own,
26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,
28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

I believe it was Yogi Berra who suggested once that , “The future isn’t what it used to be.” That Yogi-ism used to be funny. These days though more and more people would say that he was right. That’s because the polls show that we’re in the grips of a pervasive pessimism. That shouldn’t come as a big surprise. We are being told that children today will be the first generation in the history of this great nation to have a lower standard of living than their parents. Wall Street may be booming once again but people on Main Street are still struggling to recover from the Great Recession. Overseas Iraq seems to be falling apart again and Afghanistan’s beginning to look like a 21st century Vietnam. We’re in debt up to our eyeballs and we’re being bombarded with gloomy news about the H1N1 virus.

How confident are you about the future? Do you feel like you could conquer the world? Or do you feel the same way Charlie Brown felt about the future. He once said, “I have a new philosophy. I’m only going to dread one day at a time.”

Whatever happened to our confident can do attitude? We used to be more like the eight year old boy who was practicing his baseball swing one day. The little boy confidently announced, “I’m the greatest hitter in the world!” He then threw the ball into the air, took a mighty swing and missed. “Strike one,” the boy announced. Undaunted, he threw the ball into the air again, took another mighty swing and missed again. “Strike two,” the boy announced. Still undaunted, he threw the ball into the air again and took another mighty swing. This time when he missed he jumped up and down, and shoulted, “Strike three! Hooray! Hooray! I’m the greatest pitcher in the world!”

That confident can do attitude was also on display about a month ago out in Orange, Massachusetts. It happened when 92 year old Jane Bockstruck choose a very special way to celebrate her birthday. She didn’t just invite a few family members and friends over for cake and ice cream. No. Jane Bockstruck celebrated her 92nd birthday by parachuting out of a plane 13,000 feet above the ground. It was a tandem jump but you’ve got to give her credit! She later told a reporter, “It was nice. It was quite windy and cold, but we had a lot of clothes on. Of course, if you’ve got somebody with you, it’s a little warmer. You know, two of us.”

That confident can do attitude seems to be missing these days. There is one news bulletin though that will change your attitude toward the future.

You’ll find that news bulletin in the Letter to the Hebrews. The news is simply this: Christ is coming back. Listen again to what the author says in his Letter to the Hebrews He writes, “So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”

That belief is at the heart of one of the central affirmations of the Christian faith. It’s the affirmation that Christ has come. Christ has risen. And Christ will come again. What that means is that Jesus Christ the man of Nazareth who is our crucified and risen Savior is the one who holds the future in his hands. It isn’t the CEO’s on Wall Street or the politicians on Capitol Hill or the Buddhist monks in Tibet or the imams in Saudi Arabia or the priests in the Vatican or the Congregationalists in North Reading. Christ is the one who holds the future in his hands which means you can live today with courage and approach the future with confidence.

Or you can choose to live your life in the same way that can be seen in a poem that echoes the words to a Christmas poem that you will all recognize. It goes like this:

T’was the night before Christmas and all through the house,

Not a person was praying,
 not one in the house .
The Bible was left on the shelf without care,
For no one thought
 Jesus would come there.

The children were dressing
 to crawl into bed,

Not once ever kneeling
 or bowing their heads.
And Mom in the rocking chair
 with babe on her lap,

Was watching the Late Show
 as I took a nap .
When out of the east
 there rose such a clatter,

I sprang to my feet
 to see what was the matter.
Away to the window
 I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters
 and lifted the sash .
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But Angels proclaiming
 that Jesus was here.
The light of His face
 made me cover my head.
Was Jesus returning
 just like He'd said ?
And though I possessed
 worldly wisdom and wealth,

I cried when I saw Him, in spite of myself.
In the Book of Life 
which he held in his hand,

Was written the name
 of every saved man.
He spoke not a word
 as he searched for my name,

When He said "it's not here"
 my head hung in shame.
The people whose names
 had been written with love,

He gathered to take
 to his Father above.
With those who were ready He rose without sound,

While all of the others
 were left standing around.
I fell to my knees
 but it was too late,

I'd waited too long
 and thus sealed my fate.
I stood and I cried
 as they rose out of sight,

Oh, if only I'd known
 that this was the night.
In the words of this poem
 the meaning is clear

The coming of Jesus
 is now drawing near.
There's only one life
 and when comes the last call,
We'll find out that the Bible was true after all.

Christ has come. Christ has risen and Christ will come again. Christ is the one who holds the future in his hands. That’s why you can rejoice and be glad. That’s why you can be sure that his truth and his grace and his love will prevail. You can do the same thing that a boy did when he went to get a new puppy. Shortly after he got to the pet store he fell in love with this one puppy that kept jumping up and down and wagging his tail furiously. The boy turned to the his father and said very confidently, “I want the one with the happy ending.”

That’s what is waiting for those who know that Christ will come again; a happy ending. Yes, there are wars and rumors of wars but Christ will come again. Yes there are fears of global warming but Christ will come again. Yes, there is sickness and death and terrorism and drug abuse and declining morality but Christ will come again. So, let us live these days with courage and confidence and with the same compassion that led Jesus to bring healing and hope to the forsaken and forgotten of this world.

That’s exactly what one community of faith did when it decided to celebrate a dirty Easter. Troy Bronsink tells the story in the book, “An Emergent Manifesto of Hope.” He writes, “Instead of planning an outdoor concert or dressing up and sing hymns or praise songs, we decided to fix up a local park. In a public demonstration of confession, we admitted that the park had been left for dead and so, like the women who went in that first Easter morning to visit the grave site and anoint the dead body of their Lord, we were to also keep an Easter vigil over the dead creation in our back yard. We met to hold a memorable service by picking up…broken malt liquor bottles, paper trash, empty plastic baggies, and vials used for weed and crack. Then in the hope of the resurrection we planted azaleas and water oaks and filled a sandbox with four tons of sand. At the end of the day, our Easter Sunday clothes were covered with dirt. We held hands and said to each other what the church had been saying for centuries: “He is risen, He is risen indeed!” For that brief moment, theory and practice were united. And we believed in the resurrection like never before because it was happening around us, blossoming before our very eyes.”

Yes, Christ has come. Christ has risen and Christ will come again and that is all you need to live these days with courage and confidence and faithful compassion. Amen.

Rev. Dr. Richard A. Hughes
November 8, 2009