Already and Not Yet
Text: Isaiah 65:17-25
After having come through Thanksgiving, Anniversary, Reformation Sunday, and Remembrance Sunday, today is a bit odd in the fall months. It seems that the majority of Sundays recently have had a major themes… and certainly looking to next week and the Sundays well into the New Year have themes of their own. Reign of Christ next week, and then the four Sundays of Advent… the twelve days of Christmas… and then Epiphany beyond… Today is somewhere in the middle of that “already and not-yet” season. It is already Christmas according to the music and decorations in the shopping malls. It is not yet Christmas… because we haven’t even got to Advent yet! It already feels like winter… and not yet… because it’s not yet December 21st… but sunset now comes before most of us get out of work on the weekdays!
Already and Not Yet.
Selfishly I am also in the midst of the “already and not yet” of a sort. I am already a father in that I have a high-energy five year old who has helped me re-discover my own childhood and sense of wonder… and yet I am not yet a father… as we anticipate the birth of our second child within the next few weeks. So while I am Megan’s Dad now, I am both wondering and anticipating what the newest member of our family will be like, and what kind of a Dad I will be to them. If you’re wondering, no, we don’t know if we are having a boy or a girl. Very intentionally so…
Already and not yet.
I remember seeing a clip from a film when I was at a major youth event in the 90’s. The scene began with an older man and a teenage boy being baptized in a river. Driving home after the baptism, the teen says to the older man. “Well, we done it Mac, we was baptized.” Peering into the truck’s rearview mirror, the teen studies himself for a moment. “Everybody said I’d feel like a changed person. Do you feel like a changed person?” The older man replies “Not yet.”
Already and not yet. They were already baptized, recognizing what God had done for them… but they hadn’t yet felt what kind of a difference that was going to make in their lives in the future. There is this tension between what is already real in our lives, and what we have yet to realize and experience. This sense of already and not yet is one of these central themes of our faith that has been all but ignored.
Being Christian has always been about this sense of “already… and not yet.” Of celebrating what we already have in what God has done for us in Christ, and yet still anticipating and striving for something better in ourselves. We have already received God’s grace, and yet we still have so much more to grow into.
The words from Isaiah, I think, are particularly powerful and show this sense of already and not yet. They’re even more so when we realize exactly what is going on when the prophet wrote them. By the time we get this far into Isaiah, the people of Israel were finally returning home after many generations living in exile under the thumb of the Babylonians. The Persian Empire had brought Babylon to heel, and the exiles were free to return to their homeland. They were free…
…but not yet. Because when they had returned home, they found the place in ruins. Squatters had taken up on the land, the Temple was still a pile of rubble, now overgrown with weeds… and all of the structures that had been destroyed almost a hundred years earlier were simply so much piles of dirt. They were freed to be a nation once again, but they weren’t there yet.
So the prophet’s voice encourages them, saying “for I am about to create a new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people a delight!” Remember, this was written and proclaimed to a people who were literally standing in the overgrown rubble of the once proud city. They were home, but home was in ruins. They were already home… but they were not yet home.
The prophet gives them encouragement. They had proclaimed a return and a restoration to their homeland… and yet now, now that they were finally home, they realized that there was still a whole lot more work to be done. They needed encouragement, and the prophet reminded them that while they may be home, there is still more to come. Something better, something hopeful. We are already restored, and there is still more to be done. Already and not yet.
As Christians I think most of us would like to think that we get the “already” part… in many respects we almost put too much emphasis on it. Much to our detriment. We make the mistake of believing that once we have made a decision to accept Jesus Christ into our lives, that’s it, we don’t have to do much of anything else. We’ve got it all figured out. But that’s where we get it wrong… The irony is that once we think we have it all figured out is the very moment when we have the most to learn. In other words, we’re not yet there.
It’s this whole “not yet” thing that bugs us. Like the exiles returning to Exiles expecting to go back into their homes to the way things were, we get a rude discovery that God doesn’t work that way. Instead, God says to us about something better is yet to come. Our future is not something to fear, but something to look forward to… and better yet, something to work towards and be a part of. But it bugs us when we’re not there, or that the pace of change isn’t going fast enough for us. We don’t like being stuck in the midst of this whole “not yet” thing… but as Isaiah reminds us we should never be discouraged. God is always doing something new. It is a reality of our life that we are always somewhere in the middle.
Believe it or not, we actually have a word for this: “Sanctification.” The problem is whenever I’ve heard it used, most people’s eyes glaze over. It’s more like Christian jargon that does more to exclude people than it does to include. Yet sanctification is this process in a Christian’s life by which we become more and more in tune with God’s work in our lives. Literally it means “to make holy.” As we discover our life in faith is not a destination, but a process. Already and not yet.
Our challenge is how do we live in this state of “already and not yet?” Part of it is to not sit on our laurels, assuming that all of our best years are behind us… or that we have nothing more to offer or learn. Part of it is to try to overcome whatever discouragement we might feel when things aren’t going the way we expect or hope… because God is still there no matter what. Part of it is trusting and acting on the promise that the Holy Spirit is there to guide us and teach us what we will need to learn. Most of it is simply being open to the reality that being both already and not yet is actually a pretty exciting place to be.
Amen.
After having come through Thanksgiving, Anniversary, Reformation Sunday, and Remembrance Sunday, today is a bit odd in the fall months. It seems that the majority of Sundays recently have had a major themes… and certainly looking to next week and the Sundays well into the New Year have themes of their own. Reign of Christ next week, and then the four Sundays of Advent… the twelve days of Christmas… and then Epiphany beyond… Today is somewhere in the middle of that “already and not-yet” season. It is already Christmas according to the music and decorations in the shopping malls. It is not yet Christmas… because we haven’t even got to Advent yet! It already feels like winter… and not yet… because it’s not yet December 21st… but sunset now comes before most of us get out of work on the weekdays!
Already and Not Yet.
Selfishly I am also in the midst of the “already and not yet” of a sort. I am already a father in that I have a high-energy five year old who has helped me re-discover my own childhood and sense of wonder… and yet I am not yet a father… as we anticipate the birth of our second child within the next few weeks. So while I am Megan’s Dad now, I am both wondering and anticipating what the newest member of our family will be like, and what kind of a Dad I will be to them. If you’re wondering, no, we don’t know if we are having a boy or a girl. Very intentionally so…
Already and not yet.
I remember seeing a clip from a film when I was at a major youth event in the 90’s. The scene began with an older man and a teenage boy being baptized in a river. Driving home after the baptism, the teen says to the older man. “Well, we done it Mac, we was baptized.” Peering into the truck’s rearview mirror, the teen studies himself for a moment. “Everybody said I’d feel like a changed person. Do you feel like a changed person?” The older man replies “Not yet.”
Already and not yet. They were already baptized, recognizing what God had done for them… but they hadn’t yet felt what kind of a difference that was going to make in their lives in the future. There is this tension between what is already real in our lives, and what we have yet to realize and experience. This sense of already and not yet is one of these central themes of our faith that has been all but ignored.
Being Christian has always been about this sense of “already… and not yet.” Of celebrating what we already have in what God has done for us in Christ, and yet still anticipating and striving for something better in ourselves. We have already received God’s grace, and yet we still have so much more to grow into.
The words from Isaiah, I think, are particularly powerful and show this sense of already and not yet. They’re even more so when we realize exactly what is going on when the prophet wrote them. By the time we get this far into Isaiah, the people of Israel were finally returning home after many generations living in exile under the thumb of the Babylonians. The Persian Empire had brought Babylon to heel, and the exiles were free to return to their homeland. They were free…
…but not yet. Because when they had returned home, they found the place in ruins. Squatters had taken up on the land, the Temple was still a pile of rubble, now overgrown with weeds… and all of the structures that had been destroyed almost a hundred years earlier were simply so much piles of dirt. They were freed to be a nation once again, but they weren’t there yet.
So the prophet’s voice encourages them, saying “for I am about to create a new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people a delight!” Remember, this was written and proclaimed to a people who were literally standing in the overgrown rubble of the once proud city. They were home, but home was in ruins. They were already home… but they were not yet home.
The prophet gives them encouragement. They had proclaimed a return and a restoration to their homeland… and yet now, now that they were finally home, they realized that there was still a whole lot more work to be done. They needed encouragement, and the prophet reminded them that while they may be home, there is still more to come. Something better, something hopeful. We are already restored, and there is still more to be done. Already and not yet.
As Christians I think most of us would like to think that we get the “already” part… in many respects we almost put too much emphasis on it. Much to our detriment. We make the mistake of believing that once we have made a decision to accept Jesus Christ into our lives, that’s it, we don’t have to do much of anything else. We’ve got it all figured out. But that’s where we get it wrong… The irony is that once we think we have it all figured out is the very moment when we have the most to learn. In other words, we’re not yet there.
It’s this whole “not yet” thing that bugs us. Like the exiles returning to Exiles expecting to go back into their homes to the way things were, we get a rude discovery that God doesn’t work that way. Instead, God says to us about something better is yet to come. Our future is not something to fear, but something to look forward to… and better yet, something to work towards and be a part of. But it bugs us when we’re not there, or that the pace of change isn’t going fast enough for us. We don’t like being stuck in the midst of this whole “not yet” thing… but as Isaiah reminds us we should never be discouraged. God is always doing something new. It is a reality of our life that we are always somewhere in the middle.
Believe it or not, we actually have a word for this: “Sanctification.” The problem is whenever I’ve heard it used, most people’s eyes glaze over. It’s more like Christian jargon that does more to exclude people than it does to include. Yet sanctification is this process in a Christian’s life by which we become more and more in tune with God’s work in our lives. Literally it means “to make holy.” As we discover our life in faith is not a destination, but a process. Already and not yet.
Our challenge is how do we live in this state of “already and not yet?” Part of it is to not sit on our laurels, assuming that all of our best years are behind us… or that we have nothing more to offer or learn. Part of it is to try to overcome whatever discouragement we might feel when things aren’t going the way we expect or hope… because God is still there no matter what. Part of it is trusting and acting on the promise that the Holy Spirit is there to guide us and teach us what we will need to learn. Most of it is simply being open to the reality that being both already and not yet is actually a pretty exciting place to be.
Amen.
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