All of us live our lives moving from our past into our future. For some we are driven forward by our past: our awareness of heritage, our upbringing, people we have known who have inspired us, challenges we want to overcome. These things push us into our future. For others, the future pulls us forward: a sense of opportunity, the need to create, the compulsion to improve ourselves or the world around. We are drawn to what is yet to come, we are part of making what will be.
Christians, and perhaps all people of faith, live on the edge, on the boundary, between these two realities. Our Christian faith is deeply grounded in the past, in what has happened, in a concrete historical event and the many people who have lived with the inspiration arising from that event. But equally we are a people who are oriented to the future, to what has been promised, to a reality that has not yet come to pass. We pray to our father, thy kingdom come.
Isaiah in today’s Reading (Is 43:16-21) speaks directly to that ambiguity and tension between a focus on the past and on the future. God acknowledges the events of the past, the great things He has done for His people Israel, freeing them from slavery. But He wants the people to look not backwards, but forwards, to the new thing He is doing.
Just so, we look back to the past, to the extraordinary intervention in history of Christ’s resurrection, but we also look forward to the implications of that event in our future, in all our futures.
The story John tells us in his gospel (Jn 8:1-11) of the woman caught in adultery, shows how Jesus is really not so interested in what has happened, as in what can be in the future. We are not defined by what we have done, but by what we aim to be.
Paul digs into what this feels like (Phil 3:8-14). The past is “so much rubbish” – it really doesn’t matter. But he also recognizes that he hasn’t arrived, he can’t just declare victory and kick back and relax. Yes, Christ has taken possession of him, but he still needs to work at getting to that future. He, Paul, hasn’t yet taken possession of his future; his reciprocation is not yet complete.
So it is for us. We are not locked into our pasts, whether good or bad. We can be inspired even in times of great tragedy to look to the future. Even in war, even in death, there is a future that we are headed towards. God is always doing something new. We can look backwards with the psalmist (Ps 126:3) and say ”The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy”, but even, and especially, in difficult times we do that so we can return from our time of weeping into a time of rejoicing.
We look to the future. We listen to a God who says: Remember not the events of the past, see, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? (Is 43:18)