Every so often people desire, or foresee, change and point to a day when their personal lives, or society, or the world will be transformed. Martin Luther King Jr. foresaw change in his momentous “mountaintop” speech. King said that God had allowed him to go up to the mountain. “And I've looked over,” he said, “and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!” It was a vision of a new day and many associated it with American election night of 2008 when Barack Obama was elected president. There were moving scenes in the black community especially. There were celebrations. Some could not stop the tears from trickling down their cheeks for it was a day that many thought would never occur. A day marking acceptance, the hope of equality. It was a new day.
“A new day.” It’s such a popular theme that the words, “There’s a new day comin’” have been titles for a number of popular songs, and books, and poems. Politicians, they love to campaign on change and the promise of a new day. Barack Obama himself ran for office with the slogan “Change we can believe in.” Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are now championing change. Here at home, Justin Trudeau campaigned on change, real change, and “sunnier ways”.
The Bible is also something that promises us a new day. The thought lies behind almost every page. There’s a new day comin’ and like so many of the new days foreseen by Martin Luther King, Justin Trudeau and others, it is a day that brings hope. The downtrodden, the poor, the righteous look at this world and look forward to a day when God will come and right wrongs, put an end to injustice and evil, and establish a new society on earth. The scriptures point to a new world marked by peace, by goodwill, a society that worships God and follows his way of love. John looks forward to the day in the book of Revelation and says, “Then, the dwelling place of God will be with mortals, he will be their God and they will be his peoples … he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things will have passed away. See … I am making all things new.”
But as much as the new day of the Bible is a day of hope, it is also a day of judgment . Ridding the world of wrongdoing, injustice, evil and ungodliness requires the ability to judge between one behaviour and another. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of this day as one of salvation and judgment. He says, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep on his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” … Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”” Words of judgment! Perhaps we wish it were not so but if the world is to rid itself of injustice and evil, judgment is necessary. This new day carries with it both the great hope and an element of fear.
This coming great day runs throughout the scriptures and it was always a part of the apostle Paul’s thinking as he talked to people, engaged them about Jesus, and as he wrote to believers in various towns and cities that he visited. It was no less in his thinking when he wrote to his friends in Philippi. He had been to Philippi a few times, first during his second missionary journey when, in a vision, a man from Macedonia called him to bring the gospel to them. It was Paul’s first trip into Europe and Philippi was then a key Roman colony on the main road, the Egnatian Way. Luke’s Acts of the Apostles tells us how two individuals and their families turned to Christ in Philippi. There must have been others on subsequent trips and Paul evidently had a strong and positive connection with them. At least twice, without invitation the Philippian Christians supported Paul with gifts and his letter to them is one of the warmest, most personal letters written by Paul. Paul thanks God, he says, every time he thinks of them. He says that he prays for them constantly. He indicates that they hold him in their hearts and he “longs for them with the compassion of Christ.” It is not surprising then that Paul thinks of their future. He knows there’s a new day coming, the day of the Lord, and with a pastor’s heart, he encourages them. “This is my prayer,” he says, ‘that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of the Lord you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.’” Paul has the hope and judgment of God’s new day in mind. He is saying that the day of the Lord lies before us, we don’t know when, we don’t know how, but keep going in Christ Jesus, let your love overflow and then something like, “let your lives be worthy of Christ.”
Live in love, live lives worthy of Christ, those are still good words for today as we continue to look forward to the day of the Lord. Loving others, of course, is a very prominent biblical theme and it is popular in today’s church to be encouraged to love others. It has always struck me as odd, however, given the prominence of love in scripture, that more people outside the church do not associate it with Christians. Ask people a question like, “What is the first word that pops into your head when you hear the word ‘Christian’?” and very few would immediately associate Christianity with the word ‘love.’ Canadian stereotypes are often influenced by American media. Americans, particularly around election time, portray Christians and evangelicals in particular in certain ways. The American media tends to portray Christians as a block who are pro-life, anti-gay, anti-gay marriage, pro-gun lobby and a host of other things and it is these stereotypes that tend to be used to characterise a Christian more than anything else. Love isn’t the first thing people think of when they think of the word Christian, yet, Jesus says that the world will know we are Christians by our love.
Philip Yancey tells the story of a friend of his who worked as a consultant in the corporate world. One time his friend started thinking about all the courses he had taken or taught on the principals of good management and business when it occurred to him, as a Christian, that he had never thought about how love might enter into these fields and affect things in the business world. In a class, he asked participants to think about the question, “When have you felt loved?” He had established a list himself: when someone listens to me attentively, makes me feel important, encourages me (and sometimes challenges me), cares for me when I’m hurting, or gives me an unexpected gift.
As I was reading Yancey, my thoughts went to a funeral that I had recently attended and the woman whose funeral it was. Rosemary was a great soul and a dear friend of my mother’s. Rosemary had grown up in the Church that was my family’s home church in Belfast. She and her husband and family had moved to Canada three years before we did and when my mother decided to emigrate, Rosemary was kind enough to put us up for a little while until we got settled. What my mother had thought would be a few days turned into a few weeks before we landed in our own house. Rosemary and her husband who had four children of their own had taken in my mother and three children yet they were just wonderful and very gracious. With seven children running around the house it must’ve been chaos but before anything would really get out of hand, Rosemary would step in positively and suggest a game or a swim in the pool. I was the oldest of the group and I always found her fun and interesting and interested in us. To cap it all, one day Rosemary took me out in their new Pontiac Safari wagon. She pulled into a quiet neighbourhood and stopped. I wondered what she was up to but she said, “Right, David, how old are you?”
“Sixteen,” I replied.
“Well, you should be driving,” she said and motioned for me to get into the driver’s seat. It was sooooo great! It was probably the best gift you could ever give a sixteen year old boy, an opportunity to drive. Regardless of whether or not I had “365,” the old beginners Driver’s Licence, Rosemary took me out to drive and then bought me one of the books on the highway code so that I could learn the rules of the road and get the “365” asap. It was brilliant. I felt good, loved and it is a feeling that has stayed with me about Rosemary always. When she passed away, I was saddened. She was a great friend of my mother and had made a lasting impression on me. From all that I heard at the funeral, I was not alone, Rosemary had a similar effect on people wherever she went. That doesn’t happen by accident. Rosemary intentionally treated people well, made them feel important, she showed love to others.
Philip Yancey’s story continued about his friend who had thought and then taught about the value of love in the business world. Apparently, one female executive from a dysfunctional company decided to put the principles she had learned from him into practice. Although her company discouraged fraternizing, this woman started going down the hall and stopping in offices to visit her employees, with no real agenda. The first person was terrified, thinking she had come in to fire him. “No, no,” she said, “I just figured that after three years of working together, I should get to know you.” She spent time with him and then all the rest of her employees. One day, a couple of years later, her own boss called her in. “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing,” he said, “but this company was almost bankrupt. It’s turned around, and when I asked our personnel what’s happened, everybody says you’re responsible.” Taking a little time, showing a little interest in people, showing love and respect can have amazing ramifications in many aspects of life, including productivity. There’s a new day coming, love others more and more.
That was the easy bit. I’m not sure that I have to sell anyone on the biblical emphasis on love, but Paul also prays that believers will be found pure and blameless in the day of the Lord. Unlike love, purity isn’t such an easy sell these days. Some, and perhaps many people, stop themselves from fully embracing Christianity because there’s a fear that it might require too much of them. There are so many “Thou shalt nots,” they feel, and the nots usually involve all “the good stuff.”
The late Irish comedian, Dave Allen, used to tell a story about people in the next world that got a lot of laughs. I don’t remember the story fully but the gist of it was something like this. He described the goings on in heaven for people who had gone there. In heaven people are quiet all the time, reverent, they’re in the presence of God. In heaven people spend hours on their knees in prayer, and are generally flying around angelically quietly playing harps. Then he described the goings on in the other place where people were engaged in wild living, parties, great and loud music and drinking! Allen began to weigh the alternatives. Playing the harp – wild living. Hours kneeling in prayer – wild parties. Reverent quietness –music and dancing and drinking. Allen looked out at his audience with a glint in his eye he said, “I don’t know about you but I want to go to where they’re having fun.”
Now, I’m not sure that Allen got life in heaven and hell quite right but many think that this thing we call following Christ may take away all the fun and require too much of them. I’m equally not sure that Paul is suggesting a monastic existence to us. I like the way William Barclay interacts with this passage. He walks through Paul’s language and says that the love Paul speaks of in the first part of his prayer is not just a sentimental thing. It is a love which grows more and more in knowledge, and more and more in sensitive perception so that the believer is better able to distinguish between right and wrong. Love is always the way to knowledge, says Barclay. If we love any subject, we want to learn more and more about it; if we love any person, we want to learn more and more about him or her; if we love Jesus, every day we will want to learn more and more about Him and about his truth. Love, says Barclay, is always sensitive to the mind and the heart of the one it loves. If it blindly and blunderingly hurts the feelings of the one it claims to love then it is not love at all. If we really love Jesus, we will be sensitive to his will and desires.
There have been great changes in the way we understand Jesus’ ways these days compared, perhaps, to some of the thoughts that some of us grew up with. Some of it has do with the fact that the church of past generations often fell into over-the-top pietism and judgmentalism. The rules, the “thou shalt nots” were many and became so instilled in culture that people forgot about grace and love. There was a stage, if a person had really screwed up in life, almost the last place they would go for help would be the church for people were more likely to judge than they were to help.
When we look at Jesus in our NT sources, on the other hand, we see Jesus reaching out to tax collectors and sinners and people who had screwed up. Jesus did not turn away from the woman caught in adultery, or the prostitute, or the woman who had seven husbands, even if he might advise them to go and sin no more. Jesus treated them with respect, he defended them. Compare this to the report that has come out of Germany yesterday where two transgendered women were attacked by several men (described as North Africans). Th emen hurled abuse at them and attempted to stone them. Jesus faced a similar crowd intent on stoning a woman. He treated the woman with respect, defended her, he offered her grace and an opportunity for change. And maybe that’s got more to do with being pure in God’s eyes than anything else. Maybe that’s what Paul calls “the harvest of righteousness.”
We have this opportunity as we await the new day. We can learn from Rosemary and the way she encouraged even young people, we can learn from the executive who took interest in her workers and they became better employees, but more than all we can learn from Jesus who offered grace, love, and an opportunity for change. A new day is comin’, a day of great hope, a day of judgment, and Paul’s prayer, my prayer, is that “your love would overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.” There’s a new day comin’!