Explore the Bible: What about the future?

• The Explore the Bible lesson for April 23 focuses on Matthew 24:36-51.

If the great reformer, Martin Luther, believed in anything, he believed in the resurrection of the dead, of God’s future eternal plan of salvation. Perhaps he was thinking of texts like today’s when he once said, “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”

It’s hard to remember exactly when and where, but, as I was being raised in the Baptist tradition of my forefathers, I grew to fear and dread the end of time. I never would have imagined that, with time, maturity and a more careful study of Scriptures, I would grow to find great hope in it.

A message of hope

That hope is nestled in Matthew 24:46 where Jesus says, “Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives.” 

Some faith traditions have so emphasized the second coming of Jesus that they have lost all reason to work meaningfully in the life God has given them now. Their whole life is spent waiting on what will happen someday instead of their responsibilities happening in this moment.

First, Jesus’ words give us hope. I often have wondered why God created earth and time as we know it in the present moment. Why not simply skip this life and let us be born into heaven from Day One? Wouldn’t that eliminate a lot of sadness, grief, sickness, death and so on?

It must be that God created us for this life because there is something about this life that ultimately matters, even beyond this moment. What we are doing now will count in eternity, too.

If this world as we know it never were going to end, what would life be like then? Even a party full of food, friends and fun would become a living nightmare if we didn’t know it would end. At any party, as the night grows long, people can be seen gazing at their watches. In knowing that time is moving on, they have hope.

So it is with life. It is in knowing that it will end that life is given earnestness, a sharpness of diligence and purpose. There is hope in knowing that, though our physical lives will end, the grave is not our destiny, only a doorway through which we will enter eternal future and find even more of the purpose for our being.

Words of warning

Certainly, Jesus warns us about living as though we would not someday meet God. Some of Jesus’ words are downright frightening. He speaks of a slave whom the master has placed in charge of his fellow slaves (vv. 48-51). Having misread the meaning of his master’s return, his whole outlook on life becomes self-centered. 

He begins to live in cruel, irresponsible, unloving and unjust ways toward those over whom he has charge. Jesus says that, in time, holy justice will be served, and it won’t be pretty. 

In some ways, all irresponsible and unjust living is rooted in ignorance of or indifference to the fact that time is coming to an end, and we will answer to God.

The only way to understand the words of Jesus about judgment is to let them shape our ideas of love and justice toward others. Are we living in a way, especially toward others, that we’d be unashamed for God to find us living if Jesus were to return today? 

If we use Jesus’ warnings about unjust living to beat others up who have been unjust toward us, we presume that we see the whole picture better than God does. Judgment is always God’s business and God’s alone. We’d best let Jesus’ warnings be personal before, if ever, we make them anything else.

That said, we must remember Jesus also said, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16).  Whatever God’s final judgment will look like or what shape it will take, we can trust even God’s ultimate judgment plays some role in God’s plan of salvation for mankind.

Giving meaning to our daily work

Second, parallel to the thoughts above, the coming of the end of the world, accompanied by the judgment of God, enlivens the meaning of our daily work. Again, Jesus said the blessed slave would be the one his master “whom (he) will find at work when he comes” (v. 46).

Martin Luther believed even the planting of an apple tree could be a holy task if it were work that honored God. Is the work we will do this day or this coming week be that work to which God has called us? If that is what God finds us doing, we can find hope in the coming again of Jesus as a time during which that work will be affirmed as good and righteous, even if it is the most common work.

God isn’t as interested in our resume as God is interested in our heart’s purpose.

Here is the good news in the coming of Jesus. God sent his Son in the manger at Bethlehem. When man killed Jesus, God sent Jesus back again in the now-empty tomb.  God will send Jesus yet a third time, when Jesus comes to see what we’ve done with what he gave us to do. That is not something to dread but something, indeed, to celebrate every day we draw breath.

Glen Schmucker is a hospice chaplain in Fort Worth.