Year B: April 18, 2021 | Easter 3
Easter 3, Year B: I John 3:1-7
Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross
April 18, 2021
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch a video of the sermon, please visit this page (about 21:55 in).
“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.” – I John 3:2a[1]
Another week, another round of mass shootings, another several unarmed young men of color dead at the hands of police, another series of riots, and another batch of preventable COVID deaths.
If you haven’t actually muttered it recently, you’ve probably at least thought, “I wish everything would just go back to the way it was before.”
And for those of us gifted with relatively peaceful, undisturbed lives, that does sound like a nice thing. Quiet neighborhoods; national harmony; a bustling economy; even just the ability to shake hands or hug people—they’re all sounding pretty good. We’ve lost a lot over the last few years, and recognizing all that we’ve let slip away hasn’t been any fun. Right now, the past is looking pretty good.
Earlier this year a bunch of my college friends kept flooding Facebook with the same article. After it popped up in my feed what seemed like a few dozen times, I figured I might as well read it. The link led to an extensive op-ed calling for Generation X to rise up and return our nation to the glories of our youth. The author recalled our childhood and teenage years as days of true liberty, where everyone was free to speak or do what they wanted without consequence; an era of equality, where racism and sexism simply didn’t exist; a time of unity, when everyone born in the USA was proud to be an American; and a period where families were strong, where parents raised their children with both reasonable rules and unconditional love while children dutifully respected and obeyed their elders.
My first thought was, “Huh—this guy sounds way to optimistic and nostalgic to actually be Gen X.” Then, after a long pause, I eventually posted a single comment of my own: “The author recalls the 1980’s and 90’s much differently than I do.”
There were some really cool things that happened when I was a kid. With access to computers at home and school, my friends and I were among the first digital natives. Nintendo, Transformers, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became significant players on the toy and entertainment scene. America had pretty much won the space race. As communism toppled across Europe, we all celebrated the spread of freedom across the globe.
But there were also a lot of negatives: drugs and crime were devouring our cities. Rumors of satanic activity and child-murdering cults meant parents had to check each piece of Halloween candy for needles or razors[2] before we could eat it. The rise of single parent families flooded the news, and even those who weren’t from what were then termed “broken” homes were frequently latch-key kids. Christians were boycotting everything from E.T. and the Smurfs to Dungeons & Dragons, heavy metal music, and Madonna. Fear of AIDS ran rampant. Cold War tensions were so high I remember years of going to bed every night knowing I would never wake up because Russia was going to bomb us. Even after the fall of the Iron Curtain, I clearly recall Saturday morning cartoons being preempted by coverage of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, abruptly ending the unstoppable march of peace, justice, and the American way for billions of people.
So you might call my generation’s formative experiences a mixed bag. Good for those who weren’t paying attention or whose parents were able to preserve their innocence. Not necessarily so great for the rest of us “sensitive” (aka: observant) kids.
But we aren’t alone in our longing for earlier times. Nostalgia has filled the human heart as long as people have had a past to remember. The sentiment frequently shows up in the Bible, whether it’s the Hebrew refugees in the wilderness longing for the food they ate as slaves in Egypt or the exiles returning from Babylon vainly attempting to recreate the Israel they read about from the days of David and Solomon. It’s woven throughout the New Testament, too. In today’s epistle reading, we see John’s community struggling with present realities as they too recalled the magic of their church’s earlier days.
Shortly before our passage, John talks about people who had “gone out from us”—those who had been part of their young church who recently left for whatever reasons. The individuals who remained were shaken and dismayed and appear to have begun questioning the reality of what the apostles had been teaching them. This whole Jesus thing does sound pretty squirrely, so it’s easy to see why people would have second thoughts about it. Add to it that John’s community at least perceived they were being persecuted in some way, and you might think that not only had you made a mistake in joining them, but maybe even God was telling you to get out.
In the midst of their confusion, their questioning of the present as they’ve been reconsidering the past, John seeks both to comfort and encourage them: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”[3]
While acknowledging recent troubles, here John refocuses his people on their immediate reality. Yes, friends we trusted have turned their backs on us. Yes, it can be disheartening. Yes, the future might feel foggy or even bleak. But don’t let past joys or future worries distract you from the present. God has called us as children, and that itself already makes us God’s children. When things are going well, we are God’s children. When times are hard, we are God’s children. When we’re confident and competent, we are God’s children. When we’re scared or unsure what to do, we are God’s children. In life and in death, in sickness and in health, we are God’s children.
Humanity, from a global level down to our individual neighborhoods and households, has been through some hard times recently. Nature is running wild. The justice system isn’t working. Our healthcare providers can’t keep up with demand. Even if we know it wasn’t good, the past at least looks stable from here, so it’s easy to desire a return to older times. But trying to recreate the past, itself broken in many ways, only leads to disappointment and failure.
Which is why John wants us to return not to the past but to the present, to see it in the light of truth—the good and the bad. And then, as a church body, he reminds us of an even deeper reality than what we may see or feel: we are God’s children. Right now, in disorder and uncertainty, in failure and in fear—even in stability, happiness, and hope—we are God’s children.
I want us to stop and sit with that truth for a few moments. Focus on it. Breathe the fact in, and let it fill you—your body, your mind, your emotions; your doubts, your longings, your aspirations. John is calling us to remember: we are God’s children.
“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
But John doesn’t just leave us with that present knowledge, bathing in the warm reality of God’s love while frozen in the problems pressing against us. He sets a path for our future: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.”
“What we will be has not yet been revealed.”
We tend to look at the past—whether as a church or as society in general—and recall its triumpths as a golden age or the apex of culture, the way the world should be. The way we want it to be again. But chasing the past—or even seeking to maintain the present—is a pointless task. For people, time flows in only one direction. Clinging to what was isn’t the point of life or history or even the Bible. When we spend all our time longing for or attempting to recreate the good old days, we miss out on the opportunities of the present and the rewards of the future.
We, all of us, are God’s children. We don’t need to worship the past. We might draw lessons from earlier days, but there’s no reason we should excuse their problems or reconstruct their ruins. We have a future, a hope, built on a better reality than what we’ve already seen. And that is what we strive for. We look for and move forward in search of a godly realm, the radiance of the Reign of the Heavens guiding our way. We look ahead, continuing our path to that future day-by-day, step-by-step, and breath-by-breath: God’s children working hand-in-hand with the Almighty, our Creator, Redeemer, and Comforter. It’s okay to remember—even celebrate—the joys of the past, but the reality we seek—and what together we work to build—is a better kingdom.
The path may be long. The road may be filled with twists and turns, with accidental off-ramps or exhausting switchbacks. But we look to the light of Christ. We return to the Spirit’s path. We don’t turn back, and we can’t stand still because
“beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] Especially if someone was giving out apples, which wasn’t really that big of a loss for a kid.
[3] I John 3:1a