How Do You See Things?
November 15, 2023
Fr. John Riccardo
“Concerning times and seasons, brothers and sisters, you have no need for anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief at night. When people are saying, ‘Peace and security,’ then sudden disaster comes upon them, like labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.
But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness, for that day to overtake you like a thief. For all of you are children of the light and children of the day. We are not of the night or of darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us stay alert and sober.”
1 Thess 5:1-6
“Already and not yet” is a classical expression in Christian thought and theology. In short, this means that ever since the Ascension of Jesus we are living in an in-between time, a time where Sin and Death and Satan have already been defeated but not yet destroyed; a time when we who have received new life in baptism have already become new creations but we are not yet entirely new; a time when Jesus has already been established as Lord of heaven and earth, but where that Lordship is not yet fully apparent.
How, as believers in Jesus, are we to live in this time of “already and not yet?” With the news seemingly getting worse (and crazier) each day in the world, the country, and the Church, this question seems increasingly important. Each day I’m in conversations with people who seem to be more and more confused not about just the events taking place, but about how we, as men and women who believe in a good, saving and merciful God, are to live, think and pray. And many days I’m in the same boat, if I’m honest.
Is Jesus Lord or isn’t He? Is everything really in His hands, or isn’t it? Does God in fact care, act and intervene or is He real but distant and therefore more or less irrelevant for our lives? Is history (His-story) going somewhere, or is everything just spinning at random and out of control? These kinds of questions have to do with what is called a “worldview.” A worldview is basically how you and I see the world, and every person has one, whether they know it or not.
N.T. Wright, in his The New Testament and the People of God, offers an incredibly helpful summary of the four basic questions every worldview has to address: Who are we? Where are we? What’s wrong? And what’s the solution? His summary of how Paul and the early Church answered these questions seems incredibly timely for us, given all that’s going on around us. Let us chew on these words of Wright’s this week, but let us especially ask again the intercession of St. Paul for the grace to see all of reality as it really is, so that no matter what might come across our news feeds, we might live in unshakable hope in Jesus, and continue to go about the urgent and Spirit-led work of evangelization and recreation in these days in which the Lord has chosen for us to live.
“Who are we? We are a new group, a new movement, and yet not new, because we claim to be the true people of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the creator of the world. We are the people for whom the creator God was preparing the way through his dealings with Israel. To that extent, we are like Israel; we are emphatically monotheists, not pagan polytheists, marked out from the pagan world by our adherence to the traditions of Israel, and yet distinguished from the Jewish world in virtue of the crucified Jesus and the divine Spirit, and by our fellowship in which the traditional Jewish and pagan boundary-markers are transcended.
“Where are we? We are living in the world that was made by the God we worship, the world that does not yet acknowledge this true and only God. We are thus surrounded by neighbors who worship idols that are, at best, parodies of the truth, and who thus catch glimpses of reality but continually distort it. Humans in general remain in bondage to their own gods, who drag them into a variety of degrading and dehumanizing behavior-patterns. As a result, we are persecuted, because we remind the present power-structures of what they dimly know, that there is a different way to be human, and that in the message of the true God concerning his Son, Jesus, notice has been served on them that their own claim to absolute power is called into question.
“What is wrong? The powers of paganism still rule the world, and from time to time even find their way into the church. Persecutions arise from outside, heresies and schisms from within. These evils can sometimes be attributed to supernatural agency, whether ‘Satan’ or various demons. Even within the individual Christian there remain forces at work that need to be subdued, lusts which need to be put to death, party-spirit which needs to learn humility.
“What is the solution? Israel’s hope has been realized; the true God has acted decisively to defeat the pagan gods, and to create a new people, through whom he is to rescue the world from evil. This he has done through the true King, Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, in particular through his death and resurrection. The process of implementing this victory, by means of the same God continuing to act through his own Spirit in his people, is not yet complete. One day the King will return to judge the world, and to set up a kingdom which is on a different level to the kingdoms of the present world order. When this happens those who have died as Christians will be raised to a new physical life. The present powers will be forced to acknowledge Jesus as Lord, and justice and peace will triumph at last” (pp. 369-70).