LIVING IN BETWEEN
"the end of all things is near..." 1 Peter 4.7
There was an architect, a surgeon, an anaesthetist and a politician, arguing about the nature of God.
“He was clearly a surgeon” said the surgeon. “His first act was removing Adam’s rib to create a woman.”
“Ahhh” said the anaesthetist, “but first he caused a deep sleep to come upon the man. He was an anaesthetist!”
“But that’s Genesis chapter two,” said the architect, “in Genesis chapter one, he first designed and built the universe. He created it out of chaos.”
“And there you have it,” said the politician, “who created that chaos?!”
Well, the waiting of the last few months has ended at last. Boris is our new Mayor. (And that has nothing to do with the choice of my text…)
Of course the speculation has now begun as to who will win the General Election in two years’ time. No sooner one arrival than another destination.
Christians are arguably always caught up in the 'in-between times'. They never arrive. It is in the nature of our faith. And although we would sometimes like to know our future, it is better that we should not know. The Bible tells us all we need to know about the future and about living 'in between'.
First there was the time between the Garden of Eden and the giving of the Law to Moses.
Then between the giving of the Law and the coming of the Messiah, the fulfilment of the Law.
And for the early disciples there was the wait between the events of Holy Week, and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.
And some years after Pentecost Peter is able to announce that the Church was still 'in between', but that the end was nigh. The apparent delay of the Lord's Second Coming was always a problem for the early church which Peter and Paul sought to address.
So here we are on an 'in-between' Sunday - with Ascension last Thursday and Pentecost still a week away. In the drama of the liturgical year we are to wait until the Spirit comes.
When I was but a young man in Sussex I went with my Pentecostal friends to 'tarrying meetings' - from the words of our Lord to his disciples in Luke's Gospel: "but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." (Lk 24.49) - we were to pray, and wait for the Spirit to fall - or for 9pm - whichever came earliest.
I remember inviting the local Pentecostal pastor to preach at my church in Camberwell and explaining that the service had to finish by noon. He looked at me as if I were mad and exclaimed: "But sometimes the Holy Ghost don't get here till 12.30!"
So was the Holy Spirit inactive until the day of Pentecost? Or to speak of another member of the Trinity, did God the Son do nothing until he was born in Bethlehem?
The revelation of God in Trinity has had particular foci - historical events - over the past five thousand years. But the work of Father, Son and Holy Spirit has been evident, retroactively if you like, throughout all of history.
So before the Law was itemised on Mt Sinai, men and women still had consciences, and societies drew up their own laws. St Paul talks about this in the opening chapters of his letter to the Romans.
And before the saving work of Christ's passion, men and women were still saved through faith in a merciful God. The letter to the Hebrews makes it clear.
And before the day of Pentecost, God's Holy Spirit was at work through prophets and kings, through harlots and pagan dictators. Scripture bears witness to it.
Now on this Sunday in the year of our Lord, 2008, we are in between that first Pentecost nearly 2000 years ago, and the end of the world, or our own death, whichever comes sooner.
Does that mean that we will see nothing of the kingdom of heaven until 'the end of all things', the consummation of the age, the dissolution of the cosmos?
No! Before that time, retroactively, the kingdom of God is the ideal towards which we must struggle. As we will say in a moment: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven."
This was the objective of Adam and Eve as they were cursed and expelled from the garden. They would not re-enter the kingdom of heaven through the garden gate, guarded by the angel with the flaming sword.
They would only move towards paradise regained through the passion of Christ and with the help of the Holy Spirit.
It's not as if God was holding out on everyone until the day of Pentecost. As if he commanded them to love God with heart and soul and mind, and neighbour as self, way back in Deuteronomy; but had no intention of giving them the means to do so for a thousand years!
The in-between times have always been as potent as the special events. Becoming is every bit as important as arriving. All of our life, as human beings, is caught up with 'in between', which is one reason that we are so preoccupied with the passing of time. When we are young we cannot wait till the next event. When we are old we wait with some apprehension for the one and only event left for us.
Peter puts it in these practical words of wisdom: "The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins." (1 Peter 4.7,8)
A consistent theme through Scripture is to live as if life matters; to make our life count for God and for others. In the words of our Lord: "I have come that ye might have life, and have it more abundantly."
Peter's little summary here may be paraphrased that we are to live thoughtfully, prayerfully and lovingly. This will cover a multitude of sins. Sin is that destructive agent at work in our life and in our world. It is trapped in the 'in between' time with us.
But Christ has dealt with sin, and if we will live by the Spirit, then sin will not have dominion over us.
A policeman stops a man driving the wrong way up a one way street. "Didn't you see the arrows?" he asks. The driver replies "I didn't even see the Indians!"
What is important about living in the ‘in between’ time, is seeing the arrows. It is knowing where we have come from and where we are heading. Of course we don't always get it right, which is why we need the constant reminders of which way the arrows are pointing.
The whole of this mass is a restatement of the saving acts of God which punctuate our history and motivate our day by day living 'in between'. And the mass points us to the future - Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.
It is the future, whose power is present now, that draws us on, to the time when there will be no more 'in between'; to the eternity of God.
Meanwhile, we are the 'becoming' ones, always growing and moving on. I'm reminded of that now rather quaint description of this process as it is described in the 1920s children's story The Velveteen Rabbit by Marjory Williams:
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.Margery Williams
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse.
"You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
The Velveteen Rabbit, Heinemann 1989 (1922)
In the 'in between' we are becoming - drawing closer to Christ personally, and trying to shape our society on the coming kingdom principles of justice and mercy.
Christian hope is the ability to hear the music of the future.
Faith is the courage to dance to it in the present.
"The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins." (1 Peter 4.7,8)
